Parents Driving Activism Globally Sample Clauses

Parents Driving Activism Globally. One of the central stakeholders in inclusive education advocacy has always been the parental community. Parental advocacy groups around the world have initiated and contributed to the recognition of the rights for educational access and other social services for children with specific educational needs. For example, a grounded theory study concerning adoptive parents of children with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome in the US revealed four dimensions of advocacy that the parents engage in (Xxxxxxxx, Xxxxxx, Xxxxxxxxx, & Xxxxxxxx, 2012). The first one is raising awareness about the presence and the needs of their children. The second dimension is information seeking, which refers to the investigation of what conditions their children require, finding experts available to help and to consult, researching educational programs that would suit their children best, and assessing school options. The third contribution is presenting the case of their children in order to advocate for individual accommodations in education. Lastly, the parents take initiative and leading role in monitoring to ensure proper implementation of either policies or Individual Education Plans (IEPs). It is important to note that the US legislation requires parents to participate in policy-making in special education in order to ensure democratic governance. In most other countries, it is not required by the law to attract parents to planning and implementing the educational policies for children with special needs, but parental groups often show high involvement regardless of having or not having an official invitation. For instance, in Romania, parental NGOs serve as promoters and advocates for inclusive education, signaling a growing number of incidents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and suggesting changes in legislation to ensure the rights of their children. Following initial information and awareness campaigns, NGOs began an active collaboration with the government to refine policies for inclusion (Cretu, 2015). This example suggests that Romanian parental NGOs engage in two dimensions outlined by Xxxxx and Xxxxxxx (2002): building inclusive policies as well as promoting inclusive cultures. Another study involving interviews of 89 parents of children with special needs in Bosnia Herzegovina and Croatia reported being very satisfied with the role of the parental organizations in relation to advocacy for inclusion, as they revealed successful examples of grassroots NGOs activism...