Empowering parents to support their deaf children

Abstract

This study investigates the need for a booklet targeted for parents of hearing impaired children in our Maltese native language. Importance is given to parental involvement in every aspect of their children's developmental stages to contribute to their achievement. The aim is to sustain parents with adequate information which is jargon free and practical to use in their everyday life. By empowering parents, children are much more likely to excel and develop their full potentialities. To gather information which represents the needs of the Maltese parents of hearing impaired children, a number of 31 hearing impaired children were chosen from different localities in the island, whose parents were given a set of questions. The age range of the children varied from 6 to 17 years. The questions were all targeted to elicit the parents' views about the need for our study as well as to gather their overall opinions regarding what type of information should be included in our booklet.