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The purpose of this presentation is to present how parents with disabled children view and understand the existence of their disabled children through the lens of special education professionals and also how professionals experienced and are affected from this understanding. After a lot of discussions and also after the completion of a questionnaire it had been discovered that parents of disabled children seemed to be a great issue for the professionals who work with their disabled children in case of Cyprus. Thus the Ministry of Education and Culture decided to organize a program which its aim will be to evaluate the difficulties that the professionals faced and secondly it will provide them with the right skills in order to make them able and ready to come across those difficulties. This program consisted of two meetings during the school year 2005-2006 and six meetings during 2006-2007. Parents of disabled children seemed to be a big issue to professionals, since their behaviour sometimes caused lot of difficulties in the everyday life of a school. The group of professionals was made of 22 "special" education teachers who work in the Ministry of Education and Culture. The group was closed for everyone else apart from the two educational psychologists who were responsible for the program and the representative of the Special Education Department. All the information that was mentioned in those groups could not be shared or discussed anywhere else apart from the specific group. It was decided from the organizing team as well that those meetings must be held in places other than school places, since this will provide the participants the chance to talk freely in a much different environment than their everyday environment at work. The analysis on the results is based on qualitative methods, since the group of professionals acts as a focus group.

This Report traces the development of Labour Law and the implications for Industrial Relations, as well as social and employment policy more generally, in the two small Mediterranean countries of Cyprus and Malta during the period 1995–2005. This period was particularly important for the two countries as it coincided with their efforts for accession to the European Union (EU) and the process of harmonisation with the Acquis Communautaire. Since their independence in 1960 and 1964 respectively for Cyprus and Malta, successive Governments in each country – working with the social partners – had sought to steer a policy of social cohesion to underpin their development efforts. Whilst these strategies were successful in fostering a long period of economic growth and peaceful labour relations, a major outcome was the existence of relatively inflexible labour markets. Liberalisation and globalisation of international markets, coupled with the pressure exerted by the accession process, which required the implementation of the Acquis Communautaire necessitated a series of changes with far reaching implications in social and economic affairs. Naturally the framework of Labour Law – and labour practices thereof – came under increasing pressure to adapt and reform. The Executive Summary describes the main aims and objectives of the Report on the evolution of Labour Law in Cyprus and Malta in the period 1995-2005, and provides an outline of the component chapters. Specifically the Report is divided into three chapters. The first and second chapters consist of the individual Reports on Cyprus and Malta respectively. These constitute the main body of the Report and investigate the evolution of Labour Law in the two countries separately and the implications for Industrial Relations, employment and social policy. The third chapter provides a concluding overview of the two countries' experiences and an evaluation of the state of implementation of the Acquis Communautaire in the fields examined. ; peer-reviewed