Department of Special Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA.
J Intellect Disabil Res. 2019 Aug;63(8):969-980. doi: 10.1111/jir.12613. Epub 2019 Feb 28.
Internationally, it has been recognised that parents need to advocate for their children with disabilities to receive services. However, many parents find advocacy difficult because of systemic and logistical barriers. As such, parents of children with disabilities may seek a special education advocate to help them understand their child's rights and secure services. Yet little research has been conducted about programmes to develop special education advocates.
In this study, we conducted a comparison study to determine the association of an advocacy programme (i.e. the Volunteer Advocacy Project) on a primary outcome (i.e. special education knowledge) and other outcomes (i.e. family-school partnership, empowerment and parent well-being). Specifically, in 2017, 34 participants, all mothers of children with disabilities, were recruited from disability organisations in the USA. Seventeen mothers participated in the intervention group (i.e. the advocacy training), while 17 mothers participated in the wait list control group. The Volunteer Advocacy Project is a 36 hr advocacy training for individuals to gain instrumental and affective knowledge to advocate for their own children with disabilities and for other families. All participants completed a pre-survey and post-survey; only intervention group participants completed a 6-month follow-up survey.
Compared with 17 wait list control group participants, the 17 intervention group participants demonstrated improvements in special education knowledge, P = 0.002, η = 0.32, and self-mastery, P = 0.04, η = 0.15, and decreases in the quality of family-school partnerships, P = 0.002, η = 0.32. At the follow-up survey, intervention group participants demonstrated increases in empowerment, P = 0.04, η = 0.29, and special education knowledge, P = 0.02, η = 0.38.
Implications for research including the need for a randomised controlled trial are discussed; also, practitioners need to evaluate advocacy training programmes regarding their effectiveness.
国际上已经认识到，父母需要为残疾儿童争取服务。然而，由于系统和后勤方面的障碍，许多父母发现倡导工作很困难。因此，残疾儿童的父母可能会寻求特殊教育倡导者的帮助，以帮助他们了解孩子的权利并获得服务。然而，关于培养特殊教育倡导者的计划的研究很少。
在这项研究中，我们进行了一项比较研究，以确定倡导计划（即志愿倡导项目）对主要结果（即特殊教育知识）和其他结果（即家校合作、赋权和家长福祉）的关联。具体来说，2017 年，我们从美国的残疾组织招募了 34 名参与者，他们都是残疾儿童的母亲。17 名母亲参加了干预组（即倡导培训），而 17 名母亲参加了候补名单对照组。志愿倡导项目是一项 36 小时的倡导培训，旨在为个人提供工具性和情感性知识，以倡导自己的残疾儿童和其他家庭的权益。所有参与者都完成了一项预调查和一项后调查；只有干预组的参与者完成了一项 6 个月的随访调查。
与 17 名候补名单对照组参与者相比，17 名干预组参与者在特殊教育知识方面的表现有所提高，P=0.002，η=0.32，自我掌控感方面的表现也有所提高，P=0.04，η=0.15，而家庭-学校伙伴关系的质量有所下降，P=0.002，η=0.32。在随访调查中，干预组参与者在赋权方面的表现有所提高，P=0.04，η=0.29，特殊教育知识方面的表现也有所提高，P=0.02，η=0.38。
讨论了包括需要进行随机对照试验的研究意义；还讨论了从业者需要评估倡导培训计划的有效性。
