Barriers to African American And Latino Families in Special Needs Education. Parents Participation in Special Needs Education

Parents Participation in Special Needs Education
Student’s Name
Institution
 Parents Participation in Special Needs Education
A more wholistic and effective learning process is one where teachers, learners, parents, and any other key stakeholders in the environment play a role. Failure of the parents to play a role in the learning process of their children is even more ruinous. Researchers have established that African Americans (Brandon & Brown, 2009) and the Latinos (Lobato et al., 2011) are the least involved in the learning process of their children. There are numerous justifications for this behavior of non-involvement by the African Americans and the Latinos and also the consequences that are certain to occur have been highlighted. Furthermore, there have been suggestions on how to improve on the involvement. This paper purposes to provide further insight on the various barriers, the effects caused by these barriers, suggest the ways to improve on involvement as well as highlight the benefits of active involvement mainly by the minority groups and the children with disabilities.
Numerous factors are hindering the minority groups (African Americans and Latinos) from actively engaging in fostering the welfare of children with disabilities. Brandon and Brown (2009) point out several factors including the lower level of education of the parents, the perceived racial discrimination, and the poor performances of the handicapped child giving rise to embarrassment, among other barriers (p. 87). It is however important to note that personal matters such as lack of funds, unavailability of time, and even depressions are among the major barriers of involvement. Members of the minority groups are the ones working long hours on jobs barely sustain their families and thus finding time and resources to partake in child involvement becomes a luxury. Also, the poor performances of their children with disabilities become a major source of stress which can further escalate to depression, alienating them from actively participating in ensuring the welfare of the children with disabilities. 
Another common barrier to parent involvement is the inadequacy of an effective communication scheme between the school and the parents (Urtubey, 2020). The communication medium and the language used might as well cause huge misunderstanding bearing in mind that the majority of the minority group's parents are hardly educated. The entire education system including the special education seems to be structured in a way that favors a particular group of people, failing to incorporate the aspect of diversity, which is dominant among the minority groups hence inhibiting their involvement even further. 
Lack of mutual and healthy coexistence between the school and parents can cause numerous repercussions not only to the children but also the parents. The involvement is crucial in ensuring a natural and healthy development of the cognitive function as well as  social and psychological development of the child (Lobato et al., 2011). Children with disabil...