Purpose: School reintegration following children's traumatic brain injury (TBI) is still poorly understood from families' perspectives. We aimed to understand how both unique and common experiences during children's school reintegration were explained by parents to influence the family.
Methods: Data came from an investigation using descriptive phenomenology (2005-2007) to understand parents' experiences in the first five years following children's moderate to severe TBI. Parents (N = 42 from 37 families in the United States) participated in two 90-min interviews (first M = 15 months; second M = 27 months). Two investigators independently coded parents' discussions of school reintegration using content analysis to understand the unique and common factors that parents perceived affected the family.
Results: Parents' school negotiation themes included the following: (1) legal versus moral basis for helping the child; (2) inappropriate state and local services that did not consider needs specific to TBI; and (3) involvement in planning, implementing and evaluating the child's education plan. Parents perceived that coordinated and collaboration leadership with school personnel lessened families' workload. Families who home-schooled had unique challenges.
Conclusions: School reintegration can add to family workload by changing roles and relationships and by adding to parents' perceived stress in managing of the child's condition.
Implications for rehabilitation: Moderate to severe traumatic brain injury is assumed to be the primary cause of children's morbidities post-injury. Despite laws in the United States meant to facilitate children's school reintegration needs, parents often perceived that policies and practices differed from the intentions of laws and added to the family workload and stress. The school environment of the child (physical, cultural or psychological setting) plays an important long-term role in shaping family roles, relationships and management of the child's condition.
Keywords: Children; parents; traumatic brain injury; young adults.