Improving Family Functioning of Parents of Children with Intellectual disability in Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus Centre for Mentally Challenged Children

Abstract

Parents of children with intellectual disability tend to go through a period of insecurity and dispute that may affect their overall family functioning. The purpose of the present intervention was to investigate if the family functioning of these parents could be improved using the Cognitive Behavioural Family Therapy (CBFT) model. A pre-test post-test quasi-experimental design was used with 14 parents (mean age 41.28 years) of children with an intellectual disability meeting inclusion criteria in Family Assessment Device. Both descriptive and inferential statistical techniques were employed to analyse data. Results revealed that the intervention improved parents’ self-reported dysfunctional family functioning symptoms. Furthermore, analysis of covariance verified that there was a statistically significant difference between the intervention and control group on the post-intervention score of family functioning, F (1, 11) = 565.714, p=.000<0.05, with a strong effect size. At the same time, when each dimension of the family assessment device was considered independently, there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups on their post-intervention score excluding role and affective involvement factors. Concerning gender and family structure, there was no statistically significant interaction effect between them in their pre-test - post-test scores. Overall, the result of the study indicated that the psycho-educational approach of the CBFT model had a significant contribution to improving family functioning of parents of children with intellectual disability and it implied that there were several avenues in the area for future research.