Accessing state funded services for children with disabilities: a strategic communication issue?

The quality of the social and academic integration of children with disabilities depends more and more on their parents' ability to ask for and gain access to various services. Confronted with numerous budget cuts, many social agencies are forced to reexamine their role and the array of services they can afford to offer. In this context, parents are faced with increasing paperwork, numerous go-betweens and complex negotiations when requesting services. Empirical studies dealing with utilization of services for persons with disabilities are scarce and focus mainly on socio-demographic variables associated with high or low rates of utilization. Some sholars have suggested that free and universal access to services that are state funded is a myth. In fact, a large number of complex processes could play the role af an ? expectancy cooling down ? process, through which parents who do not have access to services for their child are led to believe that they are responsible for this situation. A threefold research was conducted to shed light on this question: 1) a content analysis of various documents parents have to read and fill out when requesting services; 2) results of a survey conducted with a sample of 133 parents of children with a confirmed medical diagnostic of disability; 3) qualitative analysis of interviews involving 30 parents who had filled out requests for state funded services for their child. Results indicated that the processes involved in asking for services is complex and convoluted. Informations and forms prepared by governmental agencies require high level reading abilities. Parents who were successful in gaining access to appear to have better communication skills than those who were not. Implications of these results for the delivery of services for children with disabilities are discussed.