Life Experiences of Having A Disabled Child: A Qualitative Research On Mothers

The aim of this study is to reveal what kind of support the mothers of disabled children receive for their children, their anxiety and participation in social life. Qualitative research design was used in the research. The most important reason for using qualitative research design in the study is that qualitative research design is a method that tries to understand how individuals live, how they behave, how they talk and how they react. The study was conducted in Konya between September 2017 and May 2018. The snowball sampling was used as a sampling method in the research. 14 mothers with disabled children participated in the study. The data were collected by in-depth interviews with individuals with semi-structured interview form. In-depth interviews with mothers took an average of 45-60 minutes. During the interviews, a voice recorder was used. The tape recordings received as a result of the interviews conducted as part of the study were written out and approximately 60 pages of data set was obtained. The data collected by the semi-structured interview form prepared by the researchers were subjected to descriptive analysis and then thematic coding was applied. As a result of the study, mothers with disabled children stated that they received social support from their family members regarding their children s care, but they did not receive any from the society because they were not conscious enough about disability. They also claimed that the disturbing gaze of individuals in the society is one of the biggest obstacles to their participation in social life and that it can be solved with sensitivity education on disability. Another point they made was that they were worried about what would happen to their children in the future and they emphasized the importance of the policies that the government would create in order to overcome this concern.