Parents’ Understanding of Special Education Service System and resources:
Comparison between Korean American and European American parents
By Sungho Park, Ph.D
California State University, Los Angels

It is generally believed that culturally diverse parents including Korean American parents have more difficulty in understanding and locating special education system (Park and Turnbull, 2001). There are numerous factors that might contribute to the lack of these parents’ knowledge on special education system and resources. Culturally diverse parents tend to have limited English proficiency, which make it difficult for them to understand such a complex system. Also, these parents are not used to actively seek after appropriate services for their children due to their unique upbringing.  
The author of this article conducted qualitative interviews with ten European American parents and ten Korean American parents of children with developmental disabilities to compare their understanding of special education systems and resources available for their children and families.  All of the participants were receiving behavioral intervention services in Southern California at the time of interview.
             Seven Korean parents, when asked about how they accessed services, displayed lack of understanding of service delivery system. One Korean mother mentioned this.
The teacher asked what kinds of services I was receiving from a regional center. I asked what regional center was. She asked again if I was not register at the regional center. She was 5 then, and she did not receive any services until she was 5 because no one told me the existence of such services.
Another Korean mother stated the following.
I did not know anything about behavioral intervention and heard from other Korean mothers that regional center will arrange behavior intervention services for family with a child with problem behaviors.
On the other hand, six European American parents discussed the service delivery system in a detailed way and showed their understanding of how the system operated. One European American mother described how she was able to access the service earlier.
The pediatrician was not concerned, he wanted, his compromise was that well he could see Alan at 30 months instead of 36 months like the rest of the kids and we could see how he was doing then and then decide if we wanted to do further evaluations.  I mentioned I had another friend whose child had gotten services through regional center and I mentioned to him that I knew that we could go to the regional center for free and I knew that it was important to do that before they turned age three to get more services. So I went ahead and did that
          This comment clearly shows that actively seeking after services, even against a pediatrician’s suggestions, this mother was able to help her child receive an early intervention services in a timely manner. In addition, three European American parents said they customized service programs that can meet the needs of their children. One European American mother mentioned the following.
           The county schools tend to want to pull kids once they are identified with special needs. They pull them out of their existing typical setting and plop them in that what they manufactured settings whether it’s a special day class or inclusion program or whatever because they have already paid their staff and they have already got the spaces contracted so it does not cost anything more to add a kid to a existing opening. What they really don’t want to do and you really have to fight for is to have special education services brought in to another settings where the kid already is…... We really resisted and it took a lot of arguing but we resisted county school’s pressure to move him into one of their programs and forced them to send in a preschool specialist for speech therapy..
This account demonstrates that the mother’s understanding of the special education delivery system in the local school district and how she was able to develop a program for her child.
However, two out of ten European American parents mentioned that either at the time of interview or in the past they did not know how to receive or locate the services their children needed. One of them has received services she is satisfied with and the other has not received any yet. One European American mother mentioned the following.
          It was suggested that she has a behavioral intervention because of some of issues, the problem that we have in house. Nobody knew how to get behavioral therapy for us. If we had known how to get it, we couldn’t have afforded it because it was very expensive to contract privately for behavioral therapy. So, she has been in a psychology counseling and social skill group with psychologist and several of them suggested behavioral therapy. When she was 13, we were able to get behavioral therapy.
This finding shows that the European American parents in this sample were generally more knowledgeable and knew better how to access and even develop services for their children. However, it is also important that there were two middle class European American parents, including a resource room teacher, who mentioned that they have had difficulty in accessing services. Thus, accessing special education services is not an easy task for either group of parents, even though Korean parents find it much more difficult. European American parents were more likely to advocate for their children’s education right.  

References:
Park, J. & Turnbull, A.P. (2001). Cross-Cultural competency and special education: Perceptions and experiences of Korean parents of children with special needs. Education and training in mental retardation and developmental disabilities, 36 (2), 133-147.

Park, S. (In press). Korean American parents’ communication with European American therapist during behavioral intervention services. Education