ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on Israeli children with disabilities who rarely participate in leisure activities. The parents play a crucial role in their children’s participation, and this chapter reflects these parents’ standpoints. This ethnographic research reveals that most of the challenges are environment-based and either physical or social. Dealing with these difficulties often leads to fatigue and giving up, but on the other hand, it also pushes parents to initiate new leisure services for children with disabilities. This chapter contends that the Israeli government policy, in regard to disabled children’s leisure activities, is inconsistent, the legislation on the subject of people with disabilities is incomplete, and its enforcement is loose. Thus, existent leisure options for children with disabilities are not equally distributed, either geographically or economically.