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POVERTY AND DISABILITY: TWO STRIKES AGAINST?

March 12, 2000

NEW YORK -- Coping with a disability is challenging for anyone, but when disability is paired with poverty, researchers say finding needed services and eventually succeeding as adults becomes significantly more difficult. The connection between disability and poverty is clear, researchers say. It is a "chicken and egg" question to which they have now concluded the answer is "yes." People in poverty have a higher incidence of disability, and people with disabilities are more likely to live in poverty. With this understanding, members of the education, health and human services and juvenile justice fields met in New York last month to find ways to work together to tackle both problems at once.

The Conference on Poverty and Disability was sponsored by the President's Committee on Mental Retardation, the Reaching Up Foundation and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Child Support Enforcement. The conference sounded a familiar theme among people involved in providing services for students with disabilities: Support agencies and advocacy groups must work together and pool funds from multiple sources, many argue, to make any significant long-term progress toward improving the school experience of children with special needs. When children in poverty are inserted into the equation, both the challenges and the resources multiply, conference organizers noted.

CREATIVE USE OF FUNDS FOR CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES CAN EXTEND TO WELFARE MONEY March 12, 2000

"Whether or not they were congenitally delivered on the date of birth or whether, due to conditions, there was the erosion of the potential for the development of health," said Reverend James Forbes, of New York City's ecumenical Riverside Church, "We understand that there is a relationship between poverty and disability. We understand that unless these issues are dealt with effectively soon enough, there is a point beyond which reversability seems practically impossible."

Despite this "sense of urgency," though, Forbes argued in his keynote address that people providing services must first stop and recognize their own disabilities to become more able to serve others. "I pray for the gift of enablement," the reverend said, noting no one is without flaws. "You can only pray that prayer if you understand that you have a disability." Such an understanding brings the gift of resiliency when a person is having a bad day, Forbes told the crowd of educators and social workers. "You will bounce back and back. Actually when you hit the bottom, there is an elasticity to it. You'll come back up. Is that not only true for you but also true for those whom we serve?"

FORBES TURNS TO ORIGINAL VERSE TO INSPIRE POVERTY AND DISABILITY CROWD March 12, 2000

Teamwork and a feeling of commonality between the service providers and those being served is essential, Forbes argued. "Each of the persons we serve has a song inside of himself or herself, or at least a part of the song of creation," he said. "Without their sound, something essential to the symphony of humanity is missed."

Forbes' address, meant to inspire conference attendees to work harder and cooperate more, were balanced by sobering statistics from researchers in various areas of poverty and disability. According to Lawrence Aber, director of the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University, 40 percent of America's children live a paycheck or two away from the poverty line. He also confirmed that blacks and Hispanics have the highest poverty rates, generally three times as high as white non-Hispanics. And while poverty remains highest in urban and rural areas, it is rising at a faster rate in suburbs. "Even if we were a nation of just white kids and just in the suburbs," Aber said, "we'd still have the highest poverty rate in the industriallized world."

In addition, the disability rate among households below the poverty line has been going up from 1983 to 1996, while disability rates have remained relatively flat for households at or above the poverty line, according to Glenn Fujiura, a professor in the University of Illinois-Chicago's Department of Disability and Human Development.

The intuitive links between poverty and the existence of disabilities in children are fairly clear, Aber said, adding they are now backed up by substantial research as well. Besides the obvious higher incidence of malnourishment and exposure to environmental toxins, poverty contributes to two other key factors for developmental and other disabilities: parental stress and lower stimulation in the home and in out-of-home care settings. Parental stress can lead to increased sensitivity by the child to the parent's moods or even rejection by the parents, which directly affect the child's social and emotional development. Meanwhile, the home environment and the treatment of the child by out-of-home care, which is often necessary for families living in poverty, shape a child's early learning experiences, which have a direct impact on readiness for school and academic achievement, Aber said.

Despite these apparently logical sequences, Aber said, the biggest barrier educators and social workers have to overcome in reaching out to society for more funding and support is society's attitude toward poverty. Aber quoted research showing that the general public does not consider poverty the most important issue facing today's children. Respondents in a recent survey placed it third, behind "neglect by or unavailability of the parents" and "lack of daycare."8