After-School Care Arrangements for Children with Disabilities: Equitable Access?

Background/Purpose: After-school care is a fundamental support for working parents and may be especially salient for families raising a child with a disability, given the likelihood of increased costs and care needs associated with some health conditions. Despite this, families raising a child with a disability may face additional barriers to accessing appropriate, quality after-school care. Though policy mechanisms (i.e. IDEA, Medicaid HCBS) exist to ensure equitable access and increase affordability, little evidence about after-school care use for these families exists. By exploring recent, nationally-representative data, this study aims to provide evidence of the current state of care use for families raising a child with a disability, and the extent to which supports are adequately meeting families’ needs and ensuring equitable access to care.

 

Methods:I use data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011 (ECLS-K: 2011). The ECLS-K is a nationally-representative, longitudinal study; available data follow students from Kindergarten through fourth grade. Detailed data on care arrangements are included. Crucially, the ECLS-K also includes data on the child’s disability status; approximately 10% of the ECLS-K sample reporting having a disability of some kind. I first conduct descriptive analyses to examine the relationship between the key independent variable—parent-report of child’s disability status—and the key dependent variable— a three-category measure of after-school care use (no regular non-parental care; formal, center- or school-based care; or informal care, provided by a friend, relative or other in-home provider). I include analyses by key subgroups such as income and diagnosis. I then use multinomial logistic regression and panel data methods, including child fixed-effects and lagged dependent variables, to further investigate differences in care arrangements between children with and without a disability. I include covariates for income, race, family structure, and parental employment.

Results:

Descriptive results indicate that though type of care arrangements does not vary by disability status in the first wave, there is variation in later waves; children with disabilities are more likely to be in any nonparental care overall, more likely to use informal care, and less likely to attend center- or school-based care (p<.001). Some differences in after-school care use by disability status hold in multivariate analyses; a child who has an identified disability in kindergarten, second grade, or fourth grade is more likely to be in any non-parental care in fourth grade than peers without an identified disability.

Conclusions/Implications:This study underscores the unique needs faced by families raising children with disabilities in balancing heightened care and employment responsibilities. Notably, initial findings suggest these families may rely on after-school care for a greater number of years, which highlights the important role of social work in ensuring these families have equitable access to necessary supports as long as necessary. Additionally, findings suggest a comparatively larger proportion of children with disabilities are in non-parental after-school care overall, which emphasizes a central role for social work in ensuring the quality of available care supports for these vulnerable families.