gms | German Medical Science

Background: The Social Insurance Institution of Finland organizes intensive medical rehabilitation for children with disabilities. The aim is to support the child’s ability to function in daily life. Family empowerment is defined as a family’s ability to cope with daily situations taking into account the child's development.

Aim: The study focuses on health-related family empowerment and rehabilitation characteristics and their connections with empowerment. It is part of a larger cross-sectional study of intensive medical rehabilitation.

Method: A survey questionnaire was answered by parents (n=966) of children attending outpatient intensive medical rehabilitation. In addition to socio-demographic factors, it included questions of e.g. the child’s disability, client-orientation of the intervention, correspondence of the intervention with individual needs, and health-related family empowerment.

Results/findings: Positive scores in client-orientation, correspondence with one’s needs and parents’ active involvement in their child’s rehabilitation were associated with stronger empowerment. Family empowerment was stronger if the child’s disability was present at birth than if it was discovered later. No statistically significant association was found between empowerment and the child’s age or gender, age of the parents or other socio-demographic factors.

Discussion and conclusions: The results indicate that health-related family empowerment is associated with the manifestation time of the child's disability, client-orientation of rehabilitation and co-operation between the family and rehabilitation experts. Despite the restrictions of the study design, these connections should be given attention in rehabilitation planning.