Paper Title
Early-Intervention (EI) Programs: Challenges, Effectiveness and Expectations, from the Perspective of Parents of Children with Disabilities

Abstract
A disability is an event that happens to the entire family. Having a child with disability, the responsibilities of a parent increase multi-folds, ranging from specialized care and supervision of the child to maintaining a positive and high morale within the house environment. Challenges may also arise in the context of personal, social and financial areas. However, intervention programs such as Early Intervention (EI) programs have been in the limelight, which helped reduce the challenges faced by the parents. Therefore, the research paper discusses the challenges faced by parents of children with disabilities in context to such EI programs with a viewpoint to help enhance the current situation. The EI programs have proved to be promising, and the paper attempts to understand how these programs can be improved to better address the needs of the primary caregivers of the children, i.e the parents. A qualitative study was conducted, based on an interpretivist paradigm. A total of eight individuals participated in the study. Data collection was done with the help of semi structured interviews. Following interest areas were identified: Challenges; Review of the current EI center; Factors impacting the experience of the EI; and Suggestions for Improvement. The areas were further broken down into personal and universal context. Further suggestions and implications for the same have also been discussed. Keywords - Parents of children with disabilities, challenges, EI programs, suggestions