The effect of the caregivers’ skills program in improving the level of empowerment skills of mothers of children with developmental disorders in Jordan

Abstract

The current study aimed to reveal the effect of a program based on caregivers' skills in improving the level of empowerment of mothers of children with developmental disorders. The sample consisted of mothers whose children's ages ranged from (2-9) years and included (60) mothers of children diagnosed with developmental disorders who do not receive special education treatment services in Amman. They were selected using the facilitated method and distributed into two groups: The experimental group, which was subjected to training, consisted of (30), while the control group, which was not subjected to training, consisted of (30) mothers. To achieve the objectives of the study, the World Health Organization's Caregiver Skills Program (WHO-CST) was translated and standardized, and the Mothers' Empowerment Scale was constructed (Silva, & Schalock, 2012; Johnston, & Mash, 1989), and the psychometric properties of the scale were verified.  The results showed that there were statistically significant differences at the significance level (α≤0.05) between the means of the experimental group and the control group on the scale of empowering mothers to help their children with developmental disabilities, indicating that there was a significant impact of the program on empowering mothers with skills to support their children.