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The number of children with disabilities is considerable and tends to increase alarmingly over the years. Through the appearance of the child's disability, the whole family system is disturbed, generating a crisis situation that can have negative effects upon it. Parents’ reactions are diverse; they adopt coping strategies due to several factors such as: intra-family relationships, the influence of the social environment, the social support they benefit from and their access to information. This paper presents the results of a qualitative research aiming at identifying main parental coping strategies, based on semi-structured interviews with mothers of children with various forms of disability. The findings uncovered certain shortage in the level of social services provided to people with disabilities. Each family is unique and adopts both adaptive and maladaptive strategies. However, through social work interventions in the form of assisted resilience, essential support is provided and maladaptive strategies can metamorphose into some adaptive ones.
Keywords: crisis situation, disability, assisted resilience, coping strategies, social services
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