Unpacking Caregiver Resilience: A Qualitative Scoping Review of Parents of Children with Developmental Disabilities

Background/ Purpose: Raising children with developmental disabilities (DD) is highly challenging and involves multiple difficulties across micro-, mezzo-, and macro levels. Much of the existing research has focused primarily on parental stress and deficits. The dominant influence of the medical model of disability often portrays these families negatively while underestimating their strengths, resilience, coping strategies, and capacity to thrive.This study explores the resilience of parents raising children with DD using the Resilience Portfolio Model (RPM), a strength-based framework developed by Grych et al. (2015) and Banyard et al. (2025) to identify protective factors that promote well-being following adversity. Specifically, this study addresses two primary questions: What is known about the resilience of parents of children with DD within the existing literature, and can those resilience factors be categorized under the RPM’s four domains of meaning-making, interpersonal, regulatory, and environmental strengths?

Methods: A qualitative scoping review was conducted following PRISMA-ScR guidelines. Databases via EBSCOhost (n=137) and PubMed were searched for English peer-reviewed qualitative studies published between 2020 and 2025. Articles were included if they examined parental resilience in raising children with DD, used qualitative methods, and explicitly addressed resilience in their title or abstract during screening. Identified resilience factors were synthesized and categorized into the four core domains of the Resilience Portfolio Model.

Results: From an initial pool of 1,333 articles, ten studies met the inclusion criteria. Synthesis confirmed that all four domains of the RPM are applicable to this population. Meaning-making strengths included three sub-themes: 1) parents shared coping through spirituality and religion, 2) commitment, hope, and advocacy, and 3) acceptance. Interpersonal strengths included 1) social and professional support and 2) positive identity and family cohesion. Regulatory strengths encompassed 1) emotional self-management, 2) practical life skills and family routines, 3) future planning, and 4) grey area effort. Finally, the environmental domain highlighted the roles of 1) physical environment and nature, and 2) socioeconomic support and coordinated care. Most studies described resilience as a dynamic and ongoing process.

Conclusions and Implications: Findings support a strength-based foundation for research, policy, and practice that recognizes and promotes the resilience of parents of children with DD alongside their challenges. Moving the field beyond a deficit-focused perspective toward one that acknowledges parental resilience is essential. This study emphasizes the importance of family-centered care that recognizes and supports existing protective factors, such as parental resilience, to inform future prevention and intervention work with families of children with DD.