Empowering Children with Disabilities through Communication and Social Skills

Abstract

The study focuses on the empowerment of disabled children at the Community-Based Rehabilitation Center (CBR) in Kubang Pasu, Kedah, Malaysia. The objective of the study is to examine the communication and social skills of children with disabilities attending CBR based on parents' perspective. This study is quantitative in nature where data collection is done using the survey method involving parents/guardians who send their children/wards to CBR. A total of 95 respondents were involved in this study from the 137 trainee population.  Findings show that the number of disabled children with a good, moderate and low levels of communication and social skills is almost the same at 35.79%, 32.63%, and 30.53% respectively. It is found that the relationship between age, and communication and social skills of children with disabilities have a moderately positive relationship,  where the improvement of skills is aligned with the increment in age.  Further, communication and social skills are different for all categories of PWD. Overall, this study found that CBRs are effective in empowering disabled children to participate in formal education.