Understanding the parental experiences of raising deaf children in Ghana

Effective parenting promotes the physical, emotional, mental and social well-being of children. However, communication barriers between hearing parents and their deaf children can hinder these children's upbringing and deprive them of the benefits of parental care and support services. While much is known about the challenges faced by persons with disabilities in Ghana, there is a dearth of knowledge about the parental experiences of raising deaf children. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 hearing parents of deaf children (3-15 years) to determine how they provided personal care to their deaf children, the support survices available to them and the challenges they faced. The participants spoke about their inability to communicate with their deaf children because they lacked sign language proficiency. This has had adverse impacts on the ability of most of the participants to provide basic skills training or determine their deaf children's needs. We discuss the need to develop comprehensive support programmes to equip parents with skills to raise their deaf children.