Our Family Our Child: Asian Families and Children with Disabilities for Professionals
PACER Center
This 17-minute open-captioned videotape, intended for professionals, features Southeast Asian parents who have children with disabilities speaking about their experiences with special education and other services. It looks at some of the cultural and linguistic barriers that these families face. Family traditions and attitudes toward education, authority, and disabilities are explored. The video discusses specific cultural issues that might prevent the best delivery of services and gives suggestions for communicating with the parents and families.
PACER Center. Our Family Our Child: Asian Families and Children with Disabilities for Professionals (1996). PACER Center, Inc.: Minneapolis, MN.
Language: English
Reading Level: Average
Formats Available: Videotape
(The video may also be rented from PACER for $10.00)
PACER Center, Inc.
8161 Normandale Blvd.
Minneapolis, MN
55437
Phone: (952) 838-9000
Fax: (952) 838-0199
Email: pacer@pacer.org
URL: http://www.pacer.org
Languages Available: English
Intended User Audience:
Intended for professionals. Features Southeast Asian parents who have children with disabilities speaking about their experiences with special education and other services. Explores family traditions and attitudes toward education, authority, and disabilities. Discusses specific cultural issues.
Product Development:
Specific product development information is not available for this material.
Product Evaluation:
Product evaluation information is not available for this material.
Product Dissemination:
Product dissemination information is not available for this material.
Review #1
About the reviewer:
The reviewer has worked for over thirty years as a researcher, trainer and technical assistance provider focused on inclusion, teaming, early intervention, and early childhood special education. Her most recent research considers variables affecting engagement in culturally diverse inclusive preschool settings. Over the past twenty years, she has worked closely in a consultation and advisory capacity with programs that serve families from Native Hawaiian, Samoan, and Asian cultures. Also, being married to someone who is part Native Hawaiian and part Chamorro has provided many opportunities to learn about and participate in the traditions of these cultures.
Audience:
This videotape was developed for service delivery personnel across the nation. Near the beginning, the narrator states that the purpose of the video is to help educators and others gain a "greater understanding of family tradition and attitudes toward education, authority and disabilities." Instructors (inservice or preservice) could use it with professionals and paraprofessionals in interdisciplinary groups, early childhood education personnel, and related service disciplines (e.g., nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech and language pathology). Since there are captions throughout, the potential audience would include service providers who understand oral and/or written English and persons who are deaf. The comprehension level is easy to average. Jargon is limited to a few terms for disabilities (attention deficit disorder, learning disabilities, and emotional or behavioral disorders) and references to the IEP and the IEP meeting.
Strengths of the Material:
This videotape is designed to help educators and others understand the traditions and attitudes of families from Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos). It focuses on how the attitudes and beliefs these families hold about education, authority, and disabilities affect their interactions with professionals. The narrator acknowledges that traditions vary among the nations of Southeast Asia, but that there are also many generalities. The importance of family is highlighted as a commonality among families from this region. Family-related traditions include (a) loyalty to the family and to all authority figures; (b) reliance on advice from extended family; (c) frequent contact with extended family for emotional support; and (d) concern for how a decision will affect the whole family.
This video is not commercial quality, nor is it amateur. It is good to see the faces and hear the voices of real people - not actors. There are many scenes showing groups of family members and parents with their child with a disability. Parents talk (in their native language) about how hard it is to understand their child's difficulties, how much trouble they have dealing with the medical and educational communities, their feelings of isolation, and their worries about the future. One mother says, "It seems to me we are the only one on earth with this difficulty." Another describes her fear that a particular medical procedure would make her child's condition worse. They also discuss how difficult it is to accept learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, and emotional and behavioral disorders, noting that it is easier to understand disabilities that can be seen. Most of these parents are familiar with disabilities caused by ailments or by war, but they may view other types of disabilities as caused by evil spirits. Many (especially those from the Hmong culture) still seek traditional healing from a shaman (a spiritual leader in the community). Others pursue western medical and psychological evaluations and resources.
A strength of this video is that it offers suggestions for working with families from this region. It emphasizes the importance of using terms that the parents can understand to explain (a) the disability; (b) why the recommended intervention is needed; (c) what type of progress to expect; and (d) the anticipated outcome(s). The final minutes show parents who are generally very optimistic about their own and their children's future. They express how much they are learning and how much they want to collaborate with teachers in the educational planning process.
Limitations of the Material:
This videotape does not include any supplementary information. There is not even a brochure giving the name(s)of the developers.
Adaptations:
The key to the successful use of this videotape would be embedding it in a module or workshop plan with discussion questions, role-plays, case studies, cooperative group activities, and additional materials to supplement and highlight the important concepts. The video has many really important concepts that can be missed with only one viewing. One idea would be to review the video and record possible places to pause for discussion; then stop the VCR at these points for students to reflect on and discuss what the parent(s) may be feeling and ways to acknowledge and address the family's concerns. A way to make the material more meaningful would be to ask persons from the community (parents and others) who are from Southeast Asia to view the video with students and share their own experiences and perceptions.
Generalizability:
The usefulness of this material is not restricted to a single geographical area. The information is appropriate for any community and any state where there is a concern for understanding and providing culturally sensitive services for families from Southeast Asia.
Recommendations:
Recommend. There are extremely few videotapes that depict the difficulties facing immigrant families who have children with disabilities. This video provides a sensitive picture of families from Southeast Asia and some useful suggestions for educators and others.
Producer's Response:
Not available at this time.
Review #2
About the reviewer:
The reviewer is originally from the People's Republic of China. She
holds a master's degree in early childhood special education from
Eastern Illinois University and is now pursuing her Ph.D. in early
childhood special education at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. During her studies, she has had varied practical
experiences working with children with moderate to severe
disabilities. She is very interested in family-professional
collaboration, particularly between families from diverse backgrounds
and their service providers in the early intervention service
delivery process.
Audience:
This video was developed by the PACER center to assist professionals to provide culturally sensitive services to Asian families, especially Southeast Asian (Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam) families of children with disabilities.
Strengths of the Material:
First, this video was produced with the input of a bilingual and bicultural service provider from Southeast Asia; thus, many families from that area will be very familiar with the music, family characteristics, and customs presented in the video. Second, the video also provides a brief historical background of this group's immigration to the United States, the group's characteristics (e.g., family values, customs), so that service providers will gain an understanding of the families from these areas.
Third, this video presents much information about cultural beliefs affecting the provision of special education services to Southeast Asian families. For example, it discusses families' views of visible (i.e., chronic illness, disabilities caused by diseases) and invisible disabilities (i.e., learning disabilities, emotional disorder), and the treatment strategies for both types of disabilities (i.e., a combination of traditional healing and educational and psychological services).
Fourth, parents shared their positive and negative perspectives and experiences (e.g., IEP experiences) when working with service providers, which will help service providers be aware of the expectations and concerns of these families. Fifth, the video provides tips for service providers to provide culturally sensitive and competent services. These tips may be generalized to service providers working with all families. For example, families said that service providers need to assist parents to understand the special education system, and ask parents about their concerns (e.g., worry about their children's future) to help parents address these concerns and help children make progress toward the goals identified by parents and service providers.
In addition, service providers need to be open-minded and show respect for families' beliefs and values, which is the key to a flexible and responsive approach to service delivery. Last, PACER is introduced at the end of the video, so that this resource becomes available to families and service providers viewing this video.
Limitations of the Material:
It appears that the language barriers are not addressed to the extent that they need to be. The video could be strengthened and more comprehensive if it included information about communicating and working with families who do not speak English and who have limited English proficiency. Another limitation is that this video is developed for helping service providers working with Southeast Asian families. The title of the video needs to be more specific for this group, because certain information in the video might be very offensive to other Asian groups, even within Southeast Asian families. For example, people from other parts of Asia might have different traditional healing practices (e.g., shaman), educational, and life experiences (e.g., military training) from the families in the video. And they came to the United States for different purposes and reasons.
Adaptations:
Most of the information will be very helpful for all families. In order for this video to be helpful to all families, the following adaptations are suggested, and staff trainers need to be aware of the following information.
a) The video titled Our Family, Our Child: Southeast Asian Families And Children With Disabilities is more applicable to Southeast Asian families.
b) A brief brochure describing the purpose of the video, the families in the video, and major issues discussed can accompany the video so as to provide a context for the video development.
c) Staff trainers need to be aware of the individuality of all families, and need to take an adaptive and flexible approach when working with Southeast Asian families. Even within Southeastern Asian families, the situation is changing. Second-generation Southeast Asian Americans are different from their parents who came to the United States in the 1970s and 1980s.
d) The tips in the video are very helpful. In addition, staff trainers need to be aware that it is important to gather specific information about the characteristics of the specific groups from local community leaders and family liaisons from different agencies. Staff trainers might want to gather information from trainees about the characteristics, beliefs and values, and traditions and customs of the families served in their programs. This information is critical for the trainers to have a realistic picture of the individuals and groups in the region. Thus they will be able to apply and expand the information in the video regarding culturally and linguistically sensitive practices.
Generalizability:
This video has much generic information that can be used for all service providers serving all families, including Asian Americans and other groups. It also has some specific information for working with Southeast Asian families who immigrated to United States in the 1970s and 1980s. Service providers can take in the generic information and develop cultural sensitivity by being flexible, responsive, and respectful of all families they serve. Meanwhile, they need to bear in mind that this video was originally developed for Southeast Asian families, and that the families they serve have their own unique characteristics and needs. Thus the video can be useful for service providers across the nation.
Recommendations:
Highly recommended with the adaptations suggested above, because this video was specifically developed for working with Southeast Asian families. It has the potential to be generalized to train professionals providing services to all families.
Producer's Response:
Not available at this time.
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