Help is just a click away: Social Network Sites and Support for Parents of Children with Special Needs

Feeling alone, searching for help, searching for a sense of belonging and identity: parents of children with special needs face various difficulties in their daily lives. But help and support can be extremely hard to obtain for these parents since they are limited by resources, location and time. However, things started to change when the World Wide Web began to connect people together.

We now live in an era when networks of power can be achieved and maintained through virtual connections on the internet, where instant communication can be a form of power. This book hopes to shed light on how the simple act of "clicking" can empower (and, contrariwise, in some cases, disempower) parents to locate help and support. This book also discusses the shifting role of these parents from those seeking help to those who provide help for other parents through the virtual networks they have built on various social networking sites. When examining these issues, this book takes into consideration the Asian concept of Face, in which identity is an image agreed by society.

This book will offer insights for parents, researchers and social workers, as well as for anyone else who hopes to understand what is taking place on the 'net' and how to be involved in the networking process of providing support for people around you. It allows the readers to see how support nowadays can really be just a click away.

Dr I-Jung Grace Lu graduated from the University of Manchester in 2018 with a PhD degree in Education. She has conducted research focusing on inclusive education, parent support for families with children with special needs, and social networking. She is also a member of Enabling Education Network (EENet), a global information sharing and learning network focusing on encouraging and supporting innovation and critical thinking on inclusion, equity and rights in education. She is now an Assistant Research Fellow of Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT). She was also elected as a board member of Asia Pacific Quality Network (APQN). She is involved with several research projects, such as the analytical study on the development of the Taiwan Qualifications Framework (TWQF) and the research on the assessment of learning outcomes and internal quality assurance building in higher education in Japan and Taiwan.