In the United States today, there are over 2.6 million school-age children with disabilities. Nearly all of them live with their parents and attend regular school. Despite the huge growth in knowledge about the educational experiences of school-age children with disabilities, little is known about these children's child care experiences before the school day starts or after it ends. Possibly, out-of-school childcare for schoolchildren with disabilities is unnecessary because parents schedule work hours around the school day. Or perhaps these children might not use out-of-school childcare because there are not enough programs to meet their special needs or because parents would incur further out-of-pocket expenses for care. In any case, the care and supervision of school-age children with disabilities before or after school while their parents work is still greatly unknown. With R03 funding, this gap in our knowledge about out-of-school childcare use among school-age children with disabilities can be appreciably decreased. By analyzing data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), I propose to investigate out-of-school childcare utilization among school-age children with disabilities. Within a two-year period, the research will show for a nationally representative sample of school-age children with disabilities, the types of child care chosen, if secondary forms of care are used, the hours in primary and secondary child care, the out-of-pocket costs of care, and the associated work patterns of parents. Using both bivariate and multivariate techniques, this research aims to compare these features of childcare utilization for school-age children with disabilities with the same features for their non-disabled peers. This small, self-contained research project will contribute to a data product useful to researchers interested in the demography of childhood disability; will characterize the nature and quality of data on childhood disabilities in the SIPP; will contribute to the literature on child care for children with disabilities; will contribute to understanding how parents manage work responsibilities while raising children with disabilities; and will inform child care policy in relation to the Americans with Disabilities Act.
