The importance of extended family relationships

Family Advocacy encourages the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, other relatives and friends of people with developmental disability to come to workshops and become informed.

Relationships – both of family and friends – are important both as a source of enrichment and as a safeguard for people with developmental disability.

Relationships

Relationships for people who have a disability, are frequently restricted to immediate family members – often largely to their Mum and/or Dad and to those in paid roles. They often have restricted opportunities to explore and develop relationships and friendships outside the family.  Some of their attempts at friendship may have failed for various reasons and in turn may result in a reluctance to try again.

Sometimes, parents discourage the brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles and other family members from taking an active role in the life of the person with a disability for a range of reasons.

Family Advocacy believes that people who have developmental disability, like everyone else, benefit from having a rich social life that includes the extended family and members of the broader community.

Having extended family members as pro-active role models for others is one way of progressing relationships between people with and without a disability label.

Safeguards

It is also important that people with disability have a range of people in their lives as a safeguard against harm. People with disability are increasingly outliving their parents.

It makes sense to increase the number of family members and friends who are actively involved in the life of the family member with disability.

Families have exerted great influence and leadership over time. In fact, families constitute a primary source of leadership within the community inclusion movement. Their power to effect change is, and always has been, grounded in love.

This leadership has shifted what the world does now, and continues to do, in relation to individuals with disability.

With more family members and friends involved, the number of people conscious of the needs and aspirations of the person with disability will be larger and make it more likely for him or her to have a good life of his or her choosing.