How effectively do institutions for the handicapped work with clients' families? Survey and evaluation of pro-grams in the Regensburg (Germany) area.

Working with families of handicapped people is a normal component of activities at institutions for the handi-capped. Still dominant in this context is the attitude that institutions are the suppliers of information and parents (or less commonly, siblings) are the consumers. Institutions complain of a stagnation in their parent education programs and are disappointed by this lack of response. The authors conducted a survey in the Regensburg area about current family education programs and ad-ministrators' perceptions as to the need for such programs. The results were twofold: (1) The traditio-nally-run programs fulfill to some extent the needs of older parents; (2) however, they do not address the need of younger parents for self-initiated activities. The de-velopment of new concepts of family education requires a differentiation and specialization of methods according to the target audience (i.e., seminars for nonhandicapped siblings).