Caregiver voices in Cambodia

Abstract

Young children with disabilities require extra time and resources to ensure that they are able to reach their full development potential. In order to explore how caregivers of young children with disabilities provided nurturing care, the challenges such caregivers face in accessing necessary resources for their children, and caregivers' resilience in the face of those challenges, members of RTI's Center for Thriving Children and the Cambodia Physical Therapy Association conducted a study among caregivers of children under five with disabilities.

Caregivers in our study group reported that their child required more support to satisfy basic needs such as eating, moving, and communication, as compared to children without disabilities of the same age.