Families who have a child with a disability: a literature review of quality of life issues from a Chinese perspective

ABSTRACT

The family is described as a complex system of relationships and functions of individual members. If a child with a disability is present in the family, this is an important characteristic of the family that affects the functioning of the family system. At an early age, children with disabilities are dependent on a certain level of family support that is proportional to the type and extent of their disability. The level of support subsequently affects the quality of life of the family. The literature study aimed to characterize and analyze available research on the quality of life in families with a disabled child in China. The search for relevant resources for this study was carried out in China’s National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang Data, and VIP databases. The search strategy was based on the following construct: (a) the quality of life of the family; (b) AND parent OR carer OR mother OR father; (c) AND disab * OR disability OR special needs; (d) AND AB = children OR child OR student OR infant. This review consolidates the empirical research to date on families’ quality of life and outlines areas of research for further exploration.

KEYWORDS:

• Family quality of life
• family
• child with disability
• China

Study limits

The main limit of the study can be considered to be that the publications analyzed sometimes lacked basic data for assessing the methodological quality of the studies. Another limit related to this is that their outputs cannot be generalized. The target group of the research is significantly heterogeneous. However, these limits are based on recommendations for practice and other research: to map the different types of disability and their impact on quality of life, so that these groups can subsequently be compared. Another part of the research could then focus on the importance and meaning of social support for families with children with disabilities. Here, however, it is necessary to consider cultural aspects.

Further direction of research

The study introduced areas which should be of interest to researchers. These include, in particular, the quality of life among families with a child of young age with a disability, the quality of the family climate and the possibilities of supporting it, and the attitudes and concerns of intact siblings of a child with disabilities, as well as the possibilities of professional intervention leading to the effective functioning of the family and maintaining the expected quality of life.

Ethical rules

The authors complied with APA (2017) in their study of the texts and data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure), Wanfang Data, and VIP are the three most important Chinese journal databases.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants Uniwersytet Śląski w Katowicach 2020/IPE/Z.47; Sichuan Normal University SCTJ-2019-04; Palacký University Olomouc IGA CMTF_2021_001 and Palacký University Olomouc IGA PdF_2022_010.