Research Article | Open Access
Rehabilitation of Special Needs Children at Pre-school Level: A Study of Attitude of Integrated Child Development Services Functionaries and Parents
T.K. Basantia J.H. Alom
Pages: 203-219
Abstract
The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) is a significant scheme that
works for rehabilitation of different categories of children including special needs
children at pre-school level in India. For rehabilitation of special needs children at
pre-school level, the ICDS functionaries and parents (of the children) play the vital
role. For developing the favorable attitude of ICDS functionaries and parents towards
rehabilitation of special needs children at pre-school level, it is important to study the
attitude of ICDS functionaries and parents towards rehabilitation of special needs
children at pre-school level. Hence, in this study an attempt was made to study the
attitudes of ICDS functionaries (Child Development Project Officers, Supervisors and
Anganwadi workers) and parents towards rehabilitation of special needs children at
pre-school level. The study was a descriptive survey-cum-comparative type research.
36 Child Development Project Officers (CDPOs), 108 Supervisors, 108 Anganwadi
workers (AWWs), and 216 parents under thirty six ICDS projects from nine
administrative districts of Assam were taken as participants of the study. A selfdeveloped attitude scale was used to collect data from the participants. Mainly
quantitative data analysis techniques were used to analyze the data of the study. The
major findings of the study indicated that all the ICDS functionaries and parents have
shown high attitude towards rehabilitation of special needs children at pre-school
level; and CDPOs possess better attitude than the supervisors, and parents possess
better attitude than the supervisors towards rehabilitation of special needs children at
pre-school level. And from the study, it is also found that the background variable
‘experience’ of the supervisors acts as a determining factor in determining the
attitude of the supervisors towards rehabilitation of special needs children at preschool whereas no other background variable of the supervisors and none of the
background variables of the CDPOs, AWWs and parents acts as a determining factor
in determining their attitude towards rehabilitation of special needs children at preschool level.
Keywords
Rehabilitation, Special Needs Children, Pre-school, Attitude, Integrated Child Development Services functionaries, Parents.