Search

Examines the access to specialty medical care among children with mental retardation, autism or other types of special health care needs in the U.S. Medical referrals;Problems in finding providers with appropriate training; Primary and secondary health coverage.

The increasing ethnic diversity in the U.S. population raises important challenges for community service systems. Little is known about the extent to which service systems meet the needs of different communities of color. This paper examines service utilization and unmet needs of Puerto Rican adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) in comparison to non-Latino white adults with ID to understand better the experiences of midlife and aging families from diverse backgrounds who have entered the service system. In addition, we examine the relationship of maternal support groups to service utilization and unmet service needs. We hypothesize that support groups would be an important resource for Puerto Rican mothers of adults with ID in facilitating greater use of formal services and decreasing the level of unmet service needs for their son or daughter with ID. Findings indicate that Puerto Rican adults with ID in this study had more severe impairments, received a comparable number of services, and had higher unmet service needs than non-Latino white adults with ID. In the multivariate analysis we examined factors that contribute to service utilization and unmet need for each group. We found that maternal support group participation was a significant predictor of greater service utilization and lower unmet need for Puerto Rican adults with ID, but not for non-Latino whites. These findings suggest that offering caregiver support groups may be a culturally relevant way for service systems to reach out to Puerto Rican families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on the differences among mentally retarded (MR) living in an institutional residence, community setting and those staying with their families in the U.S. Most of the family having MR member tend to seek residential institutions for placement. The study found that MR who are institutionalized are the most impaired with respect to mobility, vision, and medical conditions.

This monograph presents the results of a nonexperimental, longitudinal investigation of developmental change in 190 infants and their families after 1 year of early intervention services. The Early Intervention Collaborative Study (EICS), conducted in association with 29 community-based programs in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, was designed to assess correlates of adaptation in young children with disabilities and their families over time, to inform social policy by analyzing the influences of family ecology and formal services on child and family outcomes, and to generate conceptual models to guide further investigation. The study sample (mean age at entry = 10.6 months) includes 54 children with Down syndrome, 77 with motor impairment, and 59 with developmental delays of uncertain etiology. Data were collected during two home visits (within 6 weeks of program entry and 12 months later) and included formal child assessments, observations of mother-child interaction, maternal interviews, and questionnaires completed independently by both parents as well as monthly service data collected from service providers. Child and family functioning varied considerably. Developmental change in the children (psychomotor abilities, adaptive behavior, spontaneous play, and child-mother interaction skills) was influenced to some extent by gestational age and health characteristics, but the strongest predictor of change was the relative severity of the child's psychomotor impairment at study entry. Families demonstrated generally positive and stable adaptation (in terms of the effect of rearing a child with disabilities on the family, parenting stress, and social support), despite persistent challenges with respect to mother-child interaction and differences in reported stress between mothers and fathers. Documentation of services revealed that early intervention is a complex and multidimensional experience that spans multiple public and private systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]