Parents or Patchwork: The Daily Child Care Arrangement Patterns of Young Children with Disabilities

• In Event: Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Topic - Social Policy

Abstract

Families who have young children with disabilities often have difficulty accessing childcare that meets all of the needs of working parents (Henly & Adams, 2018; Knoche et al. 2006; Ward, Morris, Oldham, Atkins, Herrick, & Morris, 2006; Weglarz-Ward & Santos, 2018; Weglarz-Ward, Santos, & Timmer, 2018). Many young children with disabilities attend special education services in addition to childcare, and families often have little choice in how their special education services are provided (Klein & Sheehan, 1987; HHS & ED, 2015; ED, 2016). When the provision of these services conflicts with a family’s childcare needs, families must coordinate a patchwork of care arrangements, built around their special education services. These children may have multiple non-parental care providers and experience multiple transitions between these settings each day. Research from the childcare field suggests that experiencing multiple concurrent arrangements may negatively impact development (Krafft, Davis & Tout, 2017; Morrissey, 2009; Pilarz, 2018; Tran & Weinraub, 2006). However, the extant literature has not examined the arrangement patterns of young children who have disabilities in order to establish whether they experience a patchwork of daily arrangements more often than typically developing children.
This study aims to fill this gap by examining the daily arrangement patterns of young children with disabilities in comparison to young typically developing children. To do so, a secondary analysis of NSECE (2012) data was conducted. Variables from the NSECE household survey and calendar data files were used to characterize daily arrangement patterns. These variables included the total number of non-parental care providers identified in the household roster (HHC_NPC_TOTPROV_ROS), and the average number of daily transitions experienced during weekdays (a variable created by the author using the calendar data file). The sample for analysis included 9,001 children under 6 years of age, not yet in kindergarten, who were not missing information on whether they had a disability.
Using these variables, a latent profile analysis was conducted with a follow up multinomial logistic regression in a multi-step process using the Mplus R3Step procedure. First, a latent profile analysis was employed to uncover latent groups of arrangement patterns. Then, the best fitting model was re-run with the inclusion of the R3Step procedure, using disability (as measured in the NSECE household survey) as the predictor of class membership. All analyses were weighted using normalized NSECE child level analytic sampling weights.
The results of the latent profile analysis suggest five distinct arrangement patterns (see Figure 1 for class means, Figure 2 for examples from each class). The follow-up multinomial logistic regression found that children with disabilities were more likely to be in classes with a higher average number of daily transitions and a higher average number of providers. Child age, race, and use of public pre-K also emerged as predictors of class membership in subsequently repeated R3Step procedures. Implications for researchers and policymakers will be discussed.

Authors

• Danielle Riser, University of Delaware
  Presenting Author

• Rena Hallam, University of Delaware
  Non-Presenting Author