Financial well-being of young children with disabilities and their families.
Young children with disabilities are significantly more likely to live in poverty than their peers without disabilities. Exposure to poverty creates additional risk of adverse outcomes for these vulnerable children. In this article, the following key circumstances contributing to this increased risk of impoverishment are analyzed: elevated costs of raising children with disabilities, low levels of public income transfer benefits, difficulty balancing parental employment and caregiving responsibilities, unavailable or high-cost child care, and inadequate leave time to permit parents to meet their children's episodic care needs. The implications of these issues for social work practice and advocacy needs are discussed.
Parish
Susan L
SL
School of Social Work, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3550, USA. parish@email.unc.edu
Cloud
Jennifer M
JM
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D017281:Cost of Illness; D019988:Children with Disabilities; D005190:Family; D006801:Humans; D011203:Poverty; D012947:Social Work; D014481:United States