ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses two perspectives on the relationship between parents and professionals. Robert Dolton offers a parent's view and John Visser outlines ways in which professionals can and should respond to recent legislation. Parents of a child with severe learning difficulties find it necessary not only to acquire the knowledge, skill and emotional equilibrium to provide appropriate parenting, but also to undergo a process of induction into socially-constructed responses to disability. Barbara Furneaux commented that, There are two main areas in which parents can and should be involved as partners: in intervention and in assessment. The anxieties of many parents are quickly displaced by an ability to 'cope' and they try to become as 'normal' a family as possible. Professionals must be encouraged to consider effective ways of communicating with parents and of ensuring that the implementation of the legislation depends upon partnership and mutual understanding.
