Abstract:

A child is the most important emotional value for each parent, it gives parents´ life real sense. The child enriches the family with new experiences, knowledge and moments, strengthens emotional family ties, strengthens the social status of parents and provides a certain perspective for the future that goes beyond their own lives.
The birth of a child with a disability seriously disrupts the personal identity of the parents and fundamentally changes their ideas and expectations that they formed about their child before his /her birth. On their parents there are much greater demands related to the child´s upbringing and to ensuring the functionality of the family and stable background for all family members. At the same time, parents must be prepared to face unexpected reactions and inappropriate attitudes from the external environment and from the unprofessional public.
The presented text introduces the results of a research survey focused on the issue of the life quality and resilience of families raising children with disabilities.
The research objectives are focused on variables that significantly affect the quality lives of families in which children with disabilities are raised: family relations with the emphasis on the relationship between the parents, siblings of a children with special needs, changes in the professional orientation and employments of the parents, leisure time activities of the whole family, cooperation with the experts and assistants, consulting and advisory services support to families, etc.
We used a qualitative research procedure and a design of a grounded theory, coding and a categorization of phrases and terms. The target group and the respondents of our investigation were parents of children with disabilities. We collected data and information through the qualitatively focused research methods such as observation, interview and analysis of the case studies. The final contribution provides interesting results about specific differences in the functioning of families raising the children with disabilities, resulting from the personal experience of informants. The attention is paid to the strengths and weaknesses of the quality lives of the interviewed families in the context of defined variables.
We formed the conclusions based on the interpretation of the obtained results, with a focus on the support possibilities to parents in the situation of extraordinary family burden associated to the upbringing of the disabled children. We put emphasis on special strategies of the defence mechanisms of the family members behaviour - adaptation, coping and compensation.

Keywords:

Parents of children with disabilities, resilience, quality of life, counseling services and support, socialization, adaptation, coping, compensation.