The journey to accepting support: how parents of profoundly disabled children experience support in their lives

Advances in medical knowledge and care have extended the lives of children with profound and multiple disabilities. In most cases it is the parents who meet the often complex and continual needs of their child with disabilities in their own home. This study explored the experience of support in the lives of such parents. The interpretive, hermeneutic phenomenology of Heidegger was employed to create a detailed and authentic account of the parents' experiences of support. Five interrelated themes emerged from data from in-depth interviews with six parents randomly selected from a purposive sample in a special school setting. The themes were: parents' feelings about support, the journey to accepting support, support as a loss, disability and the parent and the supportive relationship. Understanding the experience of support from the parent's perspective may lead to a consideration of flexible systems that challenge practice to ensure that supporters listen, learn, develop and deliver support in ways that are helpful.