Caregiver-child Interaction And Development Of Orphaned Children With Disability

The benign interaction between caregivers and children is a very important aspect of improving the quality of caring for orphaned children with disability, which makes a significant influence on their development. However, the interactions between caregivers and children in social welfare institutes have not been taken as much attention as concerned. This study is to compare the difference of the caregiver-child social-emotional interaction and children’s development under two caring situations, and explore the impact of early interaction improvement on physical development of orphaned children with disability. The sample included99caregivers and86children aged0to7years old cared by these caregivers from two social welfare institutes. Caregiver-child interaction, children with disabilities, children’s problem behaviors were observed and measured by Caregiver-Child Social-Emotional Relationship Rating Scale (CCSERRS), Children with Disabilities Rating Scale (CDRS) and Children’s Behavior Scale (CBS). Children’s physical indexes including height, weight and head circumference were measured by the method recommended World Health Organization. These two models are:the traditional gathering caring model----each caregiver took care of6children, but the children they took care are not fixed; and the group caring model which is under structured adjustments----every caregiver who was been trained professionally took care of2-3stationary children, and there are more educational, rehabilitation activities and games in this style. Furthermore, this study also hopes to examine the applicability of the above assessment scales in China culture background.The results are as follows:1. Structural change in small range and staff training implemented in social welfare institutions have good improvement on the ways of taking care of the orphaned children with disability. And the relationship between the children and caregivers can be significantly improved, which is the same to the quality of caring for the disabled children.2. The improvement of interaction between caregivers and children can help reduce the incidence of the children’s problem behaviors. 3. The improvement of interaction between caregivers and children will contribute to children’s physical growth. The earlier the intervention can be carried forward, the greater change of children can be seen. Meanwhile, the worse the children’s physical development is before the intervention, the more obvious effects would be obtained.4. The assessment tools used in this paper showed good reliability and could be applied to social welfare institutes in China.As a conclusion, quality of caregiver-child interaction under the group caring model was significantly higher than that under traditional care model in social welfare institutes, and orphaned children with disabilities developed better in the high-quality group caring model. The improvement of early caregiver-child interaction should be promoted to more social welfare institutes.