Critique of Articles about Complications of Parents with Children Having Challenging Behaviours - Essay Example

Article Critique Course Name and Code Institution Name Faculty Name Insert Your Name Insert Your Number Instructor’s Name 26 July 2009 Different authors have written many articles and books. Some of these books and articles are exhaustive while others, to some extent, lack crucial information. These written materials are educative and they have been structured effectively in that it has covered the topic that is introduced in the thesis section. Some important aspects associated with the authors are their effectiveness in terms of flow of statements and clarity of written information. In Support for family carers of children and young people with developmental disabilities and challenging behaviour: what stops it being helpful? Wodehouse and McGill clearly bring out complications faced by parents with children having challenging behaviours. In fact, the authors try to understand the problems that parents have faced in trying to receive support and their (parents) own perception of helpful support. Wodehouse and McGill’s article is fascinating in showing the contagious issues that parents or carers face when they require support. Wodehouse and McGill utilises previous researches to elaborate on children with challenging behaviours and perceptions of assistance that is provided. The qualitative research is well designed in that it incorporates thirteen mothers with fourteen children. Twelve of the mothers are White British while the other has origins of Anglo/North African but all of them speak English as their first language. The mothers have an average of 38.7 years while the children are between 7 and 17 years. Out of the fourteen children, ten are male four are female additionally, apart from the diverse diagnostics; also ten of these children have other impairments. Moreover, ten of these children lived in parental homes while the others somehow lived or will live in residential schools. In obtaining appropriate information and data, the author used interviews, the author called the parents first to book for the interview, and later they interviewed the parents at their homes, then the information that they received was transcript and analysed by the use of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The interview and questionnaires had to pass through two pilot tests. Moreover, to ensure that the right answers were put down, the other author had to countercheck some information with the interviewed parents, and the results showed that the first author had tried to state clearly the views of the patients and thus the results were valid. The authors find out that providers do not accord appropriate assistance to the parents and their children. The results show that parents have difficulties in accessing appropriate assistance and thus have devised ways and strategies that enable them to understand better their children; informal collection information from other parents with the same problems. In fact, the parents state that some problems that they face when they address the service providers includes insufficient specialist services, ineffective strategies, lack of expertise, exclusion and inappropriate general service provision. Nevertheless, the authors are in a position that they have to make complex decisions. In fact, the authors exhibit moral and social bias. The sample that the authors utilised and analysed was specific to the study question. For example, they interviewed English-speaking communities and the parents were 12 White British and an Anglo/North African. This means that the author did not consider the perspectives of other communities such as Asians, Chinese or French communities to name some. Conversely, the authors are not gender sensitive because they factor into consideration mothers rather than including the male communities in better understanding the challenges that they face. Wodehouse and McGill neglects complications that are faced by service providers e.g. psychologist and nurses, and they only take the perspectives of the mothers. In fact, the authors could have asked providers means and strategies to improve the quality and quantity of service that is provided. Wodehouse and McGill acknowledge that there are many limitations that the study faced. Some of these limitations include the sample that they used was not representative, there was no standardized measure to analyse the sample and the study was supposed to be subjective rather the information that they received was objective. Nevertheless, even though the authors faced many complications and limitations, they proposed some measures that should be put in place to ensure that children with challenging behaviours are helped. The authors propose that there should be appropriate training in terms of behaviour management. This means that the parents and carers should undertake training that would provide restraint against the use of physical means. Moreover, major complains by the parents was that the service providers neglect their views and prepositions. Thus, it is important for the professionals to adopt family centred focus in bringing together the parents’ views into developing a framework that suite both the parents, children and professionals. Generally, this article is educative and elaborate. The author was able to balance primary information with secondary information that is within the study topic. It conclusively addresses most of the problems that are faced by parents who have children with behavioural challenges and develop means in which these problems can be addressed. To the authors, collaborative care is important and will result in benefit for all stakeholders involved. In fact, they propose that studies should be undertaken to understand the experiences of helpful support in accomplishing their respective tasks. Hence, the article lays a foundation for other researches to continue from. In the article Support for family carers of children and young people with developmental disabilities and challenging behaviour McGill et al. somehow address the same study with that undertake by Wodehouse and McGill. The authors aim to know the help that the parents received with children having developmental disabilities and challenging behaviour. The questions were based on psychological, medication and communication. Additionally, the parents were asked to state complementary help that they received and were supposed to rate the service or help that they receive from service providers. McGill et al. used Challenging Behaviour Foundation (CBF) mailing list to send questionnaires to 250 parents. The respondent rate was 35% (87 questionnaires were returned) and later were screened and those that passed the screening process were 66. Among the respondents, 90% were mothers, 8% fathers and 2% were relatives. Moreover, 87% of the respondents were White while 13% were from Black and Minority Ethnic communities. The questionnaires were filled in terms of ticking boxes on the Likert scales, and some of the questions include background of the family, child’s behaviour and disability, nature and perceived helpfulness that they received and respite care, and rated the overall satisfaction. The results indicate that the average age was 12.3 years (but their ages range from 3 to 19 years). Seventy percentages were male while 30% were female. Apart from challenging behaviour and developmental conditions, 41% of the children had additional disabilities such as epilepsy and hearing impairment. Moreover, the information indicated that aggression was reported for 95% and was a serious problem for 45% of the sampled children. In terms of medication, the authors summed that 53% had used psychotropic medication (49 prescribed medications) and in this case, the parents reported 49% of the medications had side effects while only 24% of the medication was helpful; 17% of the parents stated that at least one of the medication was helpful. In the case of psychological advice, 71% of the respondents had sought for help to manage their behaviours; received a total of 91 treatments. 24% of the parents view this as helpful while 27% viewed that one of them was helpful. Communication advice was visited by 58% of the respondents and they received 59 different treatments in which 49% were helpful while 44% acknowledge that at least one of them was helpful. The data that was received was analysed the help of Chi distribution. The authors have not started means to ensure validity and credibility of data collected. This can be shown by the lack of correlation between the three main questions: medication, psychological and communication. Additionally, there were a number of limitations, which include summarisation of children entire development rather than specific periods, the information, especially in terms of parental accounts might be faced by bias, the sample that was used was convenience and the entire research was quantitative; these major limitations characterised this study. McGill et al. findings can be used in both clinical and research fields. The first implications of the findings indicate that parents of children with disabilities and challenging behaviours usually do not receive helpful assistance – treatment, support or advice. Lack of these help results in parents taking their children to residential places, limits the development of the child and negates the development of the family. Secondly, the findings raise concerns to the extent of treatment in that medication persists but there is lack of evidence of efficacy. Lastly, the findings indicate that the provision of service is based on social status and psychological resources possessed by the given families. Some shortcomings are associated in the way that the authors addressed the question of development complications and challenging behaviours. The authors used the mailing list of CBF and in most cases; few families are enlisted to these services. Thus, the information that was received was specific and only suited specific social class of people. Additionally, the response rate was not satisfactory in that only 35% respondent returned the filled up questionnaires. Moreover, the authors used only the Likert scale thus restricting the respondents and may be some issues are were not addressed. Generally, McGill articles as the initial one with Wodehouse conclusively addresses specific problem and provides means in which the problem can be addressed. The authors of this article were able to balance between the primary data that they received and secondary data. They were able to clearly define and provide means in which future research can be addressed and strategies to reduce such complications. There are numerous challenges that are faced by children especially in terms of development. Wodehouse and McGill (2009) references Mental Health Foundation (1997) bys stating that “In an average area of 250,000 people there will be approximately 25 children with developmental disability (mostly living with their families) exhibiting at least one form of serious challenging behaviour” (p. 644). Even though, the percentage of children facing various development challenges is small, the impact that the society and community because of these cases is large. It affects the families where the children comes from, the children have little freedom to get involved with their peers and may generally affect their entire growth process. Thus, due to the suffering and ignorance associated with taking care of these young children was the major reason of discussing and reviewing these articles. The two articles clearly illustrate the problems and challenges that are faced by parents and carers in ensuring that the challenged children receive optimal assistance. Moreover, pursing nursing career at one time I will able to encounter child challenging cases. Hence, analysis of these articles has expounded my knowledge on the complexities that parents and communities face when they are inappropriate assisted in health care facility. Reference McGill, P., Papachristoforou, E. and Cooper, V., 2006. Support for family carers of children and young people with developmental disabilities and challenging behaviour, Child: Care, Health & Development, 32(2), 159 -165. Mental Health Foundation. 1997. Don’t Forget Us: Children with Learning Disabilities and Severe Challenging Behaviour. London: Mental Health Foundation. Wodehouse, G. and McGill, P., 2009. Support for family carers of children and young people with developmental disabilities and challenging behaviour: what stops it being helpful? Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, 53(7), pp. 644-653. Read More