Impact of swallowing difficulties of children with CP on caregivers

Abstract

People who are engaged with caregiving faces difficulties in their livelihood in all spheres such as daily life activities, social communication, feels stress and burden due to caregiving. When it comes to caregiving the Cerebral Palsy child with swallowing difficulties the burden becomes more because hunger is a basic need and feeding is very crucial for every human being. Feeding a CP child with SD is more tough as sometimes their muscle tone and posture does not allow them to maintain their posture, they may have choking, drooling, aspiration in mealtime. So, this mealtime becomes stressful for both caregiver and the child. The main porpuse of the study was to explore the impact on caregivers life who have CP child with SD. To find out the impact on their daily life activities, their worry about the child, their difficulties in feeding the child. Quantitative research method was chosen by the investigator and used cross – sectional survey to meet the study aim as an effective way to collect data. The study was conducted by using Feeding/ Swallowing Impact Survey (FS/IS) tool among 150 participants with different types of caregivers at CRP, Savar. In context of Bangladesh, females are the caregivers of their CP child. Data analysis revealed that the participants had difficulties at different components according to the FS/IS tool. Most of the participant had barriers in daily life activities, depression and difficulty in feeding Professionals working with feeding and swallowing: Speech and Language Therapists need to remain alert to the caregivers as well as their CP patients with SD because their life quality will be improved by increasing the life quality of their caregivers.