Grandparents Involvement & Support for Grandchildren with Mental Retardation

Abstract

Grandparents' support to families of children with disabilities is generally associated with Improved parental well-being. They can help by sharing the house hold responsibilities and looking after the child care needs, provide emotional support to their own children. Hence an attempt was made to study the grandparent's involvement and support as a caregiver, as a disciplinarian and as a friend in a family having a mentally retarded child. Families with mentally retarded children from RASS and MORE CBR projects in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh numbering 200 families with boys and girls of age 6-15 yrs. having mild moderate and severs levels of retardation was selected. Out of 200 families only 81 grand parents came forward voluntarily for the study. A designed grandparent's involvement inventory comprised of as a caregiver, as a disciplinarians and as a friends was used for the study. The results of the study reveal that grandparents perform the roles as care takers, disciplinarians and as friend to the possible extent, with their abilities for observation, control and guidance.