Chairperson
Dr. Jan Blacher
University of California at Riverside
Report on First Year Activities, Families Research SIRG

The SIRG on Families Research was formed, informally, at the August 2000 meeting of IASSID in Seattle. Jan Blacher was the appointed Chair at that time; since then, Chris Hatton has been appointed secretary. We have 42 members on our roster. The first meeting of the SIRG was held at the Gatlinburg Conference on Research and Theory in Intellectual Disabilities in Charleston, South Carolina. There were approximately 20 people present at that meeting.

Report on First Year Activities, Families Research SIRG

Overview

To date, we have become an "organized" group, with the following designated activities completed or in various stages of planning:

(1) Three of our Families Research SIRG members will be editing a "special issue" of JIDR (the official journal of IASSID), focusing on research on families from an international perspective. (See enclosed flyer). The Editors of the "special issue" are Jan Blacher, Gwynnyth Llewellyn and Chris Hatton.

(2) Two of the SIRG members are organizing symposia on families research for the European IASSID meeting in Dublin, June 2002 (Chris Hatton and Jan Blacher). Jan Blacher was also invited to serve as a Plenary Speaker at the Dublin conference.

The members of this new SIRG expressed interest in developing a significant program of research on families for the 2004 meeting in France; an agenda for this will be set following the Dublin, 2002, meeting. We aim to have significant international involvement in the planning.

Aims & Visions

A primary aim for this SIRG is to promote more awareness and participation in "Family Research and Intellectual Disability." We are pursuing this by producing a Special Issue of JIDR on the topic (and, to date, we have been overwhelmed with the quality of submissions to the issue, 2-1-02), having a Plenary Speaker at the European IASSID in Dublin in June, 2002, and maintaining contact with SIRG members. Our vision is to have a significant number of papers (and hopefully, at least one Plenary Session) on Families research at the 2004 meeting in Montpelier.

The IASSID SIRG on Families is devoted to the study of families whose lives have been touched by persons with an intellectual disability. Members come together from around the world and enjoy the sharing and collaboration of their ideas and research. Member interests are broad and include intellectual disability issues such as maladaptive behavior, placement services, and cultural differences to name a few.

If you are interested in joining the SIRG on Families, please e-mail your contact information to darlenef@citrus.ucr.edu and we will gladly add your name to our member directory.

Another very interesting web site for those interested in the family SIRG is www.familienprojekt.net

Contact Address: Dr. Jan Blacher,
Professor School of Education
University of California
Riverside, CA 92521
Phone 1 (909) 787-3875 and 1 (909) 787-3849
Fax: 1 (909) 787-3942
Email: janb@ucrac1.ucr.edu (Jan Blacher)