Programs to Educationally Support Multicultural Families' Children with Disabilities in Korea Through an International Comparison of Multicultural Educational Policies
Authors:   Asia-Europe Perspective Association, Kim Hyang-Ji 
Published: June 2018

Recently, the real state of korean society is that several types of multi-racial and multi-cultural family increase. Thus, active multi education is implemented in order to support these families. However, when there is disability children in multi-cultural family, difficulties that not only the family but the children go through are raised as a serious problem, and educational support for this problem has been emerged as a main interest of the korean society.
Before long, multi-cultural society will come undoubtedly in S. Korea and preparations for this are now proceeding. However, it is true that it's hard to find proper interest and considerations to support growing children with disabilities of multicultural families. It can be said that for the support for the children with disabilities of multicultural families, the trends of the measures of educational support can be found in the context of supporting general children of multicultural families.
The current study made a comparison of characteristics of historical and social views with which multicultural policies have been conducted focused on cases of America, Australia, Germany and Japan. And it aims to propose programs of educational support for multicultural families' disabled children of our country through a study on multicultural educational policy and educational support policy in relation to children with disabilities of the leading countries. For the present study, we mainly made use of literature review including precedent studies related to multiculture, statistical data, policy reports etc.
Suggestions resulted from findings of the study are as follows: First, the early intervention is required through the early detection of multicultural families' children with disabilities. Each country's multi-cultural policy and educational support for children with disabilities have prepared strategies to support for their early adaptation. For this, persons in charge of the responsible public institution focused on the local multi-cultural center should be assigned as case managers, and information and counseling services should be provided actively to multicultural families' parents so that their children with a possibility of developmental delay can be identified and intervened at an early stage, and relevant educational institutions should be promoted so that they can be connected to them. Second, stability of multicultural families has a considerable effect on education of the children with disabilities. As seen in each country's educational policies of multicultural families' children, it is essential to support the children with disabilities's families for an educational effect on them. It is necessary to support funds for the purpose of economic stability of multicultural families and education of the children with disabilities. Third, systematic and integrated general support systems are required to support multicultural families' children with disabilities. It is essential to ensure that multicultural families' children with disabilities can be supported effectively in the aspects of counseling, medical care, welfare, and education. Local special education support centers will be able to play a key role. Fourth, each nation is conducting a variety of multi-cultural understanding education for migrants' social integration. It can be seen that for counseling between special education teachers and parents, and cooperation between integrated class teachers and special education teachers in order to educationally support multicultural families' children with disabilities, multicultural understanding education for them should be conducted essentially.