How services for children with disabilities in Serbia affect the quality of life of their families.
Community services lifted Serbian families’ quality of life the most when they started at the bottom.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Dzamonja and colleagues tracked Serbian families before and after new community services started. The team asked parents about family quality of life at two time points. They looked at kids with different disabilities, not just autism. The study had no control group; every family got the new help.
What they found
Family quality of life went up, especially for the families who started lowest. The boost happened no matter which service the child used. Kids with more severe needs saw smaller gains, but families still felt better overall.
How this fits with other research
S-Anthony et al. (2020) saw the same climb in Taiwan after early intervention, peaking at six months. Their data extend the Serbian finding by showing the lift can last at least a year.
McSweeney et al. (1993) tested the first wave of community services in the UK. They also saw good adaptive gains, but warned that moving from hospital to community can spike problem behavior. The Serbian study adds the parent view: even when behavior is rough, family life can still feel easier.
Joëlle et al. (2022) looked at rural Tanzania where no services exist. Those families report constant stress and no relief. The contrast looks like a contradiction, but it is not. Serbia now offers help; Tanzania does not. The lesson is clear: services matter.
Why it matters
If you run parent training, respite, or any new community program, measure family quality of life, not just child skills. Start with the most stressed families; they gain the fastest. When you move a child from hospital to home, add extra behavior support during the switch. And remember, simply having a service beats having none at all.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Families that have children with disabilities face numerous difficulties related to the lack of services support, social isolation and poverty in Serbia. Mostly due to the prolonged effect of social and economic crisis, there are insufficient adequate and diverse community-based services for those families. AIMS: The aim of the study was to examine the effect of newly introduced services on the quality of families' life. METHODS: A pretest/posttest study was conducted at the beginning of service and one year later to evaluate the effect of services measured by Family Quality of Life Scale (Hoffman et al., 2006). The sample consists of 153 families of children with disabilities from 35 different places in Serbia. RESULTS: The results show that the services generally improved the families' quality of life, particularly in the aspects targeted by services, but also had significant positive effect on family interaction and parenting. The services had the highest impact on the families that perceived the lowest life quality before using them. The life quality was improved, regardless of the type of services, but the effectiveness is affected by the severity of child disability. IMPLICATIONS: The results might be useful for further steps in developing and evaluating individually and flexible tailored service that support families' needs and suits them the best.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2017 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2017.06.009