Effective Life Management in Parents of Children with Disabilities: A Cross-National Extension

This study is part of an on-going research program exploring life management in families of children with a variety of disability characteristics and age ranges. Scorgie, Wilgosh, and McDonald (1996) used a qualitative, interview methodology to identify effective strategies, qualities, and transformational outcomes for parents of children with disabilities who had been identified, by service agencies, as having effective life management strategies. A larger group of parents, from similarly identified, effectively managing families, was surveyed (Scorgie, Wilgosh, & McDonald, 1997), using the Life Management Survey (LMS) developed from the nine themes found in the qualitative study, supporting the original findings. A replication of the LMS survey study (Wilgosh, Scorgie, & Fleming, 2000) confirmed the previous findings with parents who were not preselected as effective life managers. In fact, the consistency across the three Canadian studies supported examination of family life management cross-nationally. The present study shows that Catholic Italian parents of children with disabilities have patterns of effective life management strategies, parent qualities, and parent transformational outcomes which characterize them and are similar to those of the Canadian parents. However, in the Italian study, some differences were found related to type of disability, emphasizing the need for qualified professional support, guidance and counselling, focused on the unique needs of each family, as related to the child\u2019s disability needs

Life Management and quality of life of parents of children with diverse disabilities

This paper reports on the second of two studies which involved a cross-national application of the Life Management Scale (LMS; Scorgie, Wilgosh, & McDonald, 1997), developed in Alberta, Canada, to families of children with disabilities in Italy. The first study (Wilgosh, Nota, Scorgie, & Soresi, 2004) identified similarities in effective life management among families of children with disabilities cross-nationally, as well as some differences specific to disability groups. In order to increase our knowledge of both similarities as well as differences among these families, the Italian data collection was extended to additional disability groups, including Down syndrome, autism, visual and auditory impairment, and a control group of families with no children having disabilities. As well as examining effective life management (LMS), family self-efficacy beliefs (How much faith do I have in myself? Parents' questionnaire; Soresi, Nota, & Sgaramella, 2003) and quality of life (My life as a parent; Soresi, Nota, & Sgaramella, 2003) were considered. As with our first study, findings indicated that there were broad commonalities across family groupings, as well as differences between disability groupings, regarding the effective life management strategies and the interrelationships among life management strategies, parent self-efficacy, and quality of life ratings