A scoping review of parental roles in rehabilitation interventions for children with developmental delay, disability, or long-term health condition

Abstract

The importance of parental roles in rehabilitation interventions (i.e. the tasks and responsibilities assigned to parents in intervention) is widely reported but there is a paucity of information regarding the tasks linked with specific parental roles. A rigorous scoping review was conducted to understand the various roles that parents of children with developmental delays, disabilities, and long-term health conditions perform in intervention and the tasks and responsibilities associated with each role. The results confirm that parents take on distinct intervention roles which can be placed on a continuum from passive to active responsibility. Some parental roles are clearly associated with tasks completed in-session, some are linked with out-of-session tasks while others entail a combination of in-and out-of-session tasks. The in-session tasks linked with the Learner role emerged as central to enabling parents to assume other in-and out-of-session roles. The results also highlight the influence of the parent-professional relationship on the type of roles parents take on in their child’s intervention. The findings of the scoping review serve as the initial step in generating items for a tool to measure the type of roles that parents assume in intervention to empirically test the relationship between these roles and parental engagement.