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7. CONCLUSION So where does this leave hearing families? I have showed that the educational provision causes concern to parents but that this cannot be remedied overnight because of financial pressures and educational policies, and because of problems surrounding attitudes and training of hearing and Deaf staff in schools. On the linguistic and social levels the needs of the family have not been addressed and the current provision does not support the family. Yet the family have the responsibility of caring for the deaf child daily and for his/her emotional, social and psychological wellbeing. I have hinted at difficulties in the relationship between families and Deaf people. Families are left to deal on their own with their frustrations and challenging situations at home. In the next session the theories and research on hearing families with deaf children will be presented and discussed. Research has traditionally focused on the concept of family’s adjustment to a child’s deafness. It has been mainly based on the medical/disability model of deafness, the assumption being that the deaf child was an “abnormal” child whose presence in the family caused the family to function outside the normal range. A comparative body of research has looked for differences between families with deaf children and families with hearing children – experiential and behavioural differences and differences in the way society treated them. A more recent body of research has investigated the impact of the deaf child’s presence in the family from a phenomenological perspective ie grounded on the principles that it can only be understood in the family’s own terms, and from within its own experience. The practice of intervention programmes for families with deaf children has led to investigation of parents’ expectations and appraisal of services. Such research gives greater understanding of the family. My own research will also be described. It adopts a different methodological framework from all previous research and it goes some way towards making the family a real partner in the deaf child’s bilingual environment. |
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