Magister Artium (Social Work) - MA(SW) / Prevention and early-intervention programmes that promote and assist parents in acquiring the skills and knowledge required to parent children effectively, with or without behavioural issues are a crucial to childcare. The Children’s Act, Act 38 of 2005, as well as the South African Constitution declare that the needs of a child are important; therefore, when the parents are equipped with adequate knowledge and skills, prevention of a family breakdown could be achieved. This current research study, therefore, involves an exploration of the experiences of parents, who had participated in parental intervention strategies, in the form of positive parenting skills training.

Purpose: In the absence of a gold standard, this study illustrates the process involved in the cross-cultural translation and adaptation of the FOCUS© and its shortened version, FOCUS-34© (the Parent Form and Instruction Sheet, as well as the Clinician Form and Instruction Sheet), while also determining the social validity and clinical applicability of the translated measure. The target language used as example was Afrikaans, one of the 11 official languages of South Africa. Method: A two-phase cross-cultural translation model was employed in which Phase 1 (comprising a six-step blind back-translation procedure) was sequentially followed by Phase 2 (social validation and clinical applicability of the measure, using focus groups with stakeholders). Result: The extensive process followed in Phase 1 resulted in a clear and appropriate translation acceptable to both stakeholder groups (parents and speech-language pathologists). Both groups questioned the meaning of certain concepts, explored cultural differences and requested the extension of some items. Parents also shared their emotional reactions towards assessment, while therapists focussed on editorial changes to the measures. Conclusion: A framework is proposed for cross-cultural translation and adaptation of assessment measures with suitability in the speech-language pathology discipline.

THE ABSTRACT This thesis deals with the life of children with communicative disability during their education at primary school. It defines communicative disability, etiology, forms and treatment of speech disorders, and further characterizes three specific forms of communicative disability - developmental dysphasia, balbuties and tumultus sermonis. The thesis also presents the specifics of the developmental stage of younger school age, considering the development of children with communicative disability, and tries to clarify what are currently possible ways of educating children with speech disorders. At the same time it outlines the influence of the family environment on the child with communicative disability, its current possibilities and transformations. It uses information mainly from publications dealing with speech therapy and publications dealing with the development and education of children, primarily the children with speech disorders. Moreover it discovers how parents perceive their child with communicative disability in the context of education at primary schools. It examines what type of education parents chose for their child and what are the reasons, and also how the child feels in a class group or a group of peers according to his parents. It is searching for what parents believe is the...