Summary

The German child and youth welfare system can still be described as excluding, even with recent legal improvements. Thus children and youth affected by disability or medical fragility in foster care is a somewhat rare situation in Germany. Mostly these children, who are in need of Out-of-Home-Care, are cared for in residential homes. In the area of foster care for children and youth with disabilities, there is still sparse research and knowledge.\ The purpose of the study was to understand how caregivers manage their lives with a child or youth with extra needs and meet the challenges of assisting them adequately. It aimed at insights how Social Work contributes to good outcomes. A follow-up study explored how the families were doing after 9-18 years.\ The qualitative research design used the instrument of narrative inquiry through 19 in-depth interviews with caregivers. Within the framework of Grounded Theory, a theoretical structure of the strategies used for coping was developed. For the follow-up study, 58% of the sample of caregivers were revisited.\ Results show that caregivers deal with this new and often unpredictable situation by applying an Action-, Resource- or Reflection Strategy based on their own personal biographic experiences and their worldview. They also show that the families and dedicated persons build strong relationships with the children and youth in their care and among partners in the support net. Living their “new normal”, the relationships built with the children and youth in their care often last for a lifetime.Strong familial bonds and relationships reveal to have a great potential to support, protect, care and advocate for children affected by disability and medical fragility. Living human, inclusive values is time-consuming and requires a more of personal commitment, which foster families and the supporting environment provide on a daily basis.\ 

Keywords (separate with commas)

Foster Care, Children and Youth, Disability, Medical Fragility, Caregivers

Summary

Women with disabilities encounter a high risk of violence, especially in Canada. Canadians with disabilities are twice as likely to experience violent victimization as non-disabled people and face a wider range of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Yet, the lack of research attention focused on gender-based violence (GBV) and disability has contributed to the invisibility of the victimization of women with disabilities. This study aimed to provide a new and more comprehensive understanding of the lived experiences of GBV among disabled women to promote best practices by strengthening services and building community capacity. A qualitative meta-synthesis was carried out to examine and synthesize qualitative data exploring the experiences of GBV among disabled women. Forty-nine studies spanning over 45 countries met the inclusion criteria for this study. The findings suggest that GBV remains hidden behind a wall of silence despite its historical and cross-cultural prevalence. For disabled women, silence is an ongoing problem. Silence increases the difficulty in identifying GBV among disabled women and discourages women from seeking support and disclosing violence. Disabled women report that when they ask for help, there’s no one to help them. Moreover, many women describe how living with a disability significantly contributes to violence against them. Women report that being disabled aggravated the abuse they endured and limited their ability to escape or receive effective service responses. For instance, dependency and reliance on perpetrators shaped disabled women’s exposure to violence, prolonging a pattern of domestic abuse. GBV services must be accessible to disabled women. Disabled women report difficulty finding accessible services, as they sometimes encounter architectural and environmental barriers preventing them from accessing services, such as a lack of proper assistive technology, policies against service animals, and restrictions on children remaining in the facility. Additional policy and practice implications will be discussed.

Keywords (separate with commas)

gender-based violence, disability, qualitative research, meta-synthesis, accessibility, domestic violence