ABSTRACT
Grandparents are traditionally providers of support to parents of young children. During the past decade the grandparent role within families of children with disabilities has received increasing attention. This increase can be attributed to the development of a family systems approach to disability research and early intervention (Bailey and Simeonsson 1988). Adapted from Bronfenbrenner's model of social ecology (Bronfenbrenner 1979), family systems theory has been viewed as a useful method of investigating the effect of a child with a disability on the family unit (Seligman and Darling 1989, Turnbull and Turnbull 1990).
