Session: Healthy Development: Children, Youth, and Young Adults with Disabilities (Society for Social Work and Research 21st Annual Conference - Ensure Healthy Development for all Youth)

This symposium strives to understand how factors related to the family, community, and policy environments impact future healthy development and transition to adulthood of children with disabilities.  Within supportive environments healthy development is possible, even for children with disabilities, who comprise about 15% of all children in the US.  Disabilities in children challenge the resources of families, communities, and social services systems; these challenges are compounded as youth with disabilities transition to young adulthood and enter a stage in which the formal service system is limited or nonexistent.

The four studies included in this symposium examine children with disabilities within these environments. Although these are applied papers, each study examines an aspect of the social model of disability, which views disability as socially constructed through choices made about design of the physical environment, institutional/program rules, modes of communication, and public policy. 

Using secondary data analysis and controlling for the presence of an adult with disabilities in the household, the first paper examines food insecurity in families of children with disabilities.  Results show that even though households of children with disabilities are more likely to receive food assistance, these households experience food insecurity at elevated rates. Food program benefits alone are likely insufficient to meet the needs of families of children with disabilities.

The next two papers examine barriers and challenges of health care provision for children with disabilities in the context of racial and ethnic health disparities. The second paper uses secondary data to examine the responsiveness of health care providers when Latino parents report their children have developmental delays.  Health care providers for Latino children are significantly more likely to respond negatively, in contrast to their responses for non-Latino, White children.  Through multivariate analyses of primary data, the third paper examines the influence of race and ethnicity on satisfaction and family centeredness of primary health care services in families of children with disabilities, within the context of the patient-centered medical home.  Findings show significant differences by race/ethnicity when services are focused on family needs, rather than the individual medical needs of the child. 

The fourth paper evaluates the impact of the dependent care provision of the Affordable Care Act in reducing uninsurance among young adults with disabilities, finding a significant increase in private insurance coverage among these young adults from pre- to post-implementation of the ACA.  In decoupling health insurance from both employment and the social welfare system, the ACA removes potential barriers to employment and independent living for young adults with disabilities.

The first three papers’ findings imply that the underlying structure of the policy/program or model of care could be altered to reduce the impediments of a disabling condition through application of the social model of disability, particularly changes in program rules (first paper), and in communication mode or style (second and third papers).  The fourth paper provides empirical evidence of the success of a public policy designed to remove socially-constructed barriers to health insurance coverage for young adults with disabilities.