Foreigners children with special needs: the representation of disabled children about parents

Abstract

Qualitative interviews of fathers, mothers and teachers of disabled children (9 children) The children frequent elementary school; with the interviews we have a picture of the story of the development of their disabled children; stories which are influenced by the migration story and the cultural cause. In the narration of the children’s stories we have a few indications about the clinic history and the family’s history before and after the migration. We have children with sensorial disability and with intellectual disability; the parents representation is much more important for the development of each child: this representation come from cultural framework, social origins, motivations for the migration, conditions of the travel, the hopes and the situation that find when arrive in Italy. A few parents hope to take care of their disabled children with the occidental medicine; others have a few difficulties to understand the cultural language of psychiatric approach because have an other diagnostical model. Is not easy to create the possibility of a meeting between the different cultural patterns. There are the much more important affec-tive function of the mothers which have a specific kind of relationship with her sons. It’s important to create the possibility for the valorization of these model of relations mother-disabled son; the pedagogic and social workers must to change approach to favour and to support the development of child and the social and scholastic inclusion.