ABSTRACT

Effective parenting promotes the physical, emotional, mental and social well-being of children. However, communication barriers between hearing parents and their deaf children can hinder these children’s upbringing and deprive them of the benefits of parental care and support services. While much is known about the challenges faced by persons with disabilities in Ghana, there is a dearth of knowledge about the parental experiences of raising deaf children. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 hearing parents of deaf children (3–15 years) to determine how they provided personal care to their deaf children, the support survices available to them and the challenges they faced. The participants spoke about their inability to communicate with their deaf children because they lacked sign language proficiency. This has had adverse impacts on the ability of most of the participants to provide basic skills training or determine their deaf children’s needs. We discuss the need to develop comprehensive support programmes to equip parents with skills to raise their deaf children.

摘要

有效的养育方式可以促进儿童的身体、情感、心理和社会福祉。然而，听力正常的父母与其聋儿之间的沟通障碍可能会阻碍这些孩子的成长，并剥夺他们享受父母照顾和支持服务的好处。虽然人们对加纳残疾人面临的挑战了解很多，但对父母抚养聋儿的经历却知之甚少。对 20 名听力正常的聋儿（3-15 岁）父母进行了面对面的半结构化访谈，以确定他们如何为聋儿提供个人护理、他们可以获得的支持服务以及他们面临的挑战。参与者谈到他们无法与聋哑孩子交流，因为他们缺乏手语能力。这对大多数参与者提供基本技能培训或确定聋儿需求的能力产生了不利影响。我们讨论了制定综合支持计划的必要性，以使父母具备抚养聋儿的技能。