GSDD5014 Parenting with Developmental Disability

Listen to a brief audio introduction by Rachel

This unit introduces students to the challenges and achievements typically found in the lives of parents with a developmental disability and their children. Students will critically examine ‘popular’ and professional narratives about, and responses to parents with a developmental disability. Students will become familiar with the empirical literature on parenting with a developmental disability, including but not limited to evidence-based parent education and family support strategies. Students will apply this knowledge to identify service gaps, and opportunities in their own local areas to promote the health and wellbeing of families headed by a parent with a developmental disability.

At the end of this unit of study, graduate students will be able to:

1. Critically examine their own assumptions about parenting by people with a disability and particularly by people with intellectual disability
2. Explain the facts and fallacies that abound about parents with intellectual disability, their parenting capabilities and outcomes for their children
3. Provide an informed critique of how parents with a developmental disability are portrayed in the popular media
4. Specify significant gaps in the empirical knowledge-base, and future directions for research
5. Identify common ‘threats’ to the health and wellbeing of parents with intellectual disability and their children
6. Compare and contrast different approaches to ‘assessing’ parents with intellectual disability and determining their support needs
7. Describe features of competence-promoting and competence-inhibiting support for parents with intellectual disability
8. Identify the place of social support and community connections for parents with intellectual disability
9. Describe the features of evidence-based parent education, advocacy and support programs for parents with intellectual disability

Rachel graduated in 1997 from the University of Sydney with a B.App.Sc (Occupational Therapy) and Class 1 Honours. Rachel spent two years working as a parent educator with the NSW Parent-Child Health and Wellbeing Project before heading overseas in 2000. Rachel worked as an OT in the UK and Africa, in diverse areas from wheelchairs and seating, to teaching occupational therapy students in the newly established OT school in Tanzania. Her final position was setting up an OT service for people with intellectual disabilities in northwest London. With her desire to work and study in the area of intellectual disabilities firmly established, Rachel has returned to the School of Occupation and Leisure Sciences and the Australian Family and Disability Studies Research Collaboration to undertake and complete a PhD. Her main research interest is the experiences of pregnancy and antenatal care for women with intellectual disability.