Nutnost rozšíření poradenství speciálních pedagogů a psychologů pro sourozence dětí s postižením

Abstract

Poradenství pro rodiny dětí s postižením je pochopitelně zaměřeno primárně na děti s po- stižením a podporu rodiny. Sourozenci těchto dětí, mladší i starší, stojí na pokraji zájmu služeb a mnohdy i rodičů, nicméně právě oni mají s dítětem s postižením vlastně nejdelší vztah. Příspěvek zdůrazňuje potřebu věnovat zdravým sourozencům podporu. Potřeba pracovat se sourozeneckými skupinami v rámci poskytovaných služeb se již odrazila v mnoha zahraničních organizacích s vý- bornými výsledky, které měly vliv i pro kvalitu života těchto sourozenců (a potažmo vlastně kvalitu života dětí s postižením i jejich rodičů).

The article is focused on the siblings of children with disabilities, who continue to be marginalised from the point of view of advisory services even though siblings are in long-term perspective the people on whom the disabled individual will be relying in the future for help and support. During socialisation, healthy siblings face a risk of social exclusion, with known cases of bullying on account of a disab- led brother or sister. The experience of a life situation associated with stress, conflicts and a feeling of personal failure may consequently cause changes in self- image and self-value and may cause difficulties in later life. The article therefore draws attention not just to the positive factors that we notice in the siblings of disabled children, such as empathy, altruism and considerateness, but also to the stress factors on these siblings. They include the fact that they are required to be more independent than corresponds to their developmental stage defined by age, and that they have to take responsibility for a range of activities and to cope with the distress of their parents, their suffering, grief and tendency to emotional mood swings. Exaggerated parental focus on caring for the disabled sibling means that other siblings feel that they cannot access natural parental emotional and social support. In other countries advisory services - organisations that pay attention to healthy siblings, have been appearing. Since 1990 the “Sibling Support Project” has been working in the United States of America. Its director is Don Meyer of the Kindering Center in Seattle, who is also the founder of what is known as SIB- SHOPS. The organisation’s mission is to increase the mutual support of siblings of disadvantaged children and to raise awareness and understanding of problems of sibling relations among parents and professionals. Future Sibshop organisers attend two-day training courses where they are taught about the lifelong fears of siblings and their needs, but are also managerially trained on how to organise the Sibshop events. The training for founders of Sibshops has led to the establish- ment of more than 430 of these support groups, for example in Canada, England, Ireland, Japan, Iceland, Guatemala, Turkey and New Zealand. The author has started collaboration with the President of the society Don Meyer and believes that it will prove possible to develop the possibilities of expanding advisory ser- vices and organising sibling groups in the Czech Republic.