Background: Latina mothers who care for children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) over the lifespan struggle to take care of their own health needs in the context of their caregiving experience. Services are typically aimed at the persons with IDD and not their family caregivers. Yet, attending to family caregiver needs may…

Early intervention (EI) provides critical services to families with young children who have diagnosed disabilities, developmental delays, or who are at-risk for developmental delays. Very little is known about the experiences of adolescent mothers who have children who qualify for EI services. The authors investigated the perceptions of adolescent…

This study explored the extent to which mothers experienced depressive symptoms associated with having a child with a disability and if journal writing would reduce maternal distress. Thirty-eight Korean-American mothers of children with disabilities filled out pretest data using CES-D (Radloff, 1977) and IES-R (Weiss & Marmar, 1997). Based on…

This study of 78 mothers of mentally retarded children and adults found that respite care acts as a differential service that can enhance coping resources and is of most benefit to high self-esteem mothers of young developmentally disabled children, especially as a home-based model. (Author/JDD)

The present study aims to assess the parental outcomes of an early intervention programme, designed to enhance the development of children zero to four years old with developmental disabilities through parental training. The parents of children with developmental disabilities who participated in the study (mothers, n = 29; fathers, n = 28)…

Follow-up study of 4- to 14-year-old children (N=42) who had participated in a home-based infant stimulation program indicated that approximately 66 percent of subjects (most of whom had serious developmental disabilities) were in special education programs full-time, 20 percent were mainstreamed, and 15 percent were in regular classrooms…

This study was conducted to examine the impact of Relationship Focused Intervention (RFI) on a sample of Korean mothers and their preschool-aged children with disabilities. Subjects were 18 mothers of children with developmental problems (ages 3-8 years). Ten of these mothers were assigned to an RFI Treatment group and eight to a No RFI Control…

A meta-analysis of the group intervention research for parents of children with developmental disabilities was conducted in order to characterize the efficacy of treatments in reducing depressive symptoms and other forms of psychological distress associated with stress in parents of children with developmental disabilities. An extensive search led…

Mothers of 23 infants with developmental disabilities were given suggestions for ways to interact in a contingently responsive manner. Compared to a control group, the interaction coaching group mothers increased responsivity and decreased stimulation, and the infants were less fussy and performed better on developmental assessments. (Author/JDD)

The aim of the study was to examine factors that predict maternal stress, reported by mothers whose infants were diagnosed as having developmental disabilities at the beginning of participating in an early intervention programme "Me and My Mommy" and after one year. A second goal was to identify and to portray a subgroup of resilient…

A study evaluated impact of supportive paraprofessional home visiting on 88 mothers and young children with or at-risk for developmental disabilities and at-risk for inadequate parenting. Mothers who received services demonstrated moderately better mental health than controls, and their children were more likely to have an Individualized Family…