Perceptin of social support in mothers of children with special needs: Ankara Sincan case

Evaluation of social support perceptions, satisfaction levels and views of mothers who take care of the child in families of children with special needs is aimed in this study. Convergent parallel mixed method which uses quantitative and qualitative data in together is used in the study. Definitions of concepts such as sociology of disability, disability, special needs, social support were given and their historical development process was tried to be analyzed. 100 mothers with children with special needs living in Ankara city, Sincan county were contacted and asked to answer to scale survey as well as participate in structured interviews. The demographical data obtained fvrom the participants such as age, occupation, monthly income, level of education, number of members in family, occupation and education status of the father were analyzed with SPSS data analysis program in means of their relation to social support perceptions and satisfaction levels of participants. Data obtained by structured interview was evaluated by the descriptive data analysis method. It was found that there was significant correlation between age and education levels to social support perception and satisfaction levels of mothers with children with special needs but there was no significant correlation among other variables. It was also foung that mothers in majority had insufficient social support perception which resulted in low levels of satisfaction; mothers had physical and psychological problems due to disability type and rate of their children, had insufficient oppurtunities for social activites and self care and had show anxiety about future of their children.