Social Support for Parents of Disabilities Children: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Raising children with disabilities can be a heavy burden for families which ultimately has a negative impact on the child. Many studies recommend the need for social support for parents. Although the need for social support has been widely reported, the impact of social support for parents with disabilities children in the literature is very diverse. Therefore, a scoping review was conducted to identify the impact of social support for parents of children with special needs in international studies. Four databases were systematically searched. Boolean operators were used to search multiple online databases. Ten studies were included in the review, from which positive impacts of social support for parents with disability children were identified on parents themselves, families, and children. The positive impacts of social support on parents were increasing resilience, coping skill, parenting efficacy, parenting mental health literacy and decreasing psychological distress and depression-anxiety symptoms. The impacts for parents are also buffering effect on parenteral stress-depression, parenteral stress-efficacy and parents’ satisfaction, positive affect, and depression. The positive impacts on the family increasing family psychological health and family quality of life, and decreasing family burden. Social support is also buffering the effect on family burden-psychological health and resilience. The positive impacts on children are decreasing the emotional and behavioural problem. Social support for parents of children with disabilities has many positive impacts on the parents themselves, the family, and the child. Through identifying the benefits of social support, direction can be provided for interventions by enabling professionals to detect and address available social support. Recommendations for future research are made.