Role of gender and age in the cooperation between parents of people with intellectual disabilities and professional staff in care centres

Abstract

Introduction: understanding factors that influence the cooperative relationship between parents of people with intellectual disabilities and professional staff comes from understanding how parents and staff function and, on this basis, from understanding their abilities and skills reflected in their interactions and cooperation. This paper presents some results of a broader study which examined: The aim or research question is how the level of the cooperative relationship between the parents of persons with moderate, severe and profound learning disabilities and the professional staff of Training, Occupation and Care Centres in Slovenia is correlated to the age and gender of parents, and the age and gender of staff. In addition, the study focused on investigating how the gender and age of parents and staff correlates with their inclusion in support groups. Methods: the sample comprised 296 randomly selected parents and 298 randomly selected professional staff. The statistical method of two-way analysis of variance was applied to establish the differences in the level of the cooperative relationship given the gender and the age of the parents and staff. Results: the results confirmed differences relative to the age of the male staff, namely, that with their age the degree of co-operation relationship with parents increases and that fathers are statistically significantly less involved in support groups than mothers. Conclusions: we draw attention to certain concepts associated with a successful cooperative relationship, helping to better understand this relationship and seek new possibilities for more effective cooperation between the parents of PID placed in centres and the staff employed at these centres in Slovenia.