Although levels of disability among adults are relatively stable, the number of children with disabilities is steadily rising. It is increasingly the case that medically fragile children are receiving care in their homes due to early discharges from hospitals and other related service programs. These children and their families have needs that require interventions from many different services, such as health, education, social services, housing, transportation and benefits.
This thesis explores the present state of affairs by considering typical problems and decisions these families face on a day-to-day basis, family coping strategies, and local family resources. I propose a social ecological approach to addressing the special health care needs of children. The social ecology model explains the need for interventions to approach this complex problem on several levelsthe individual, interpersonal, community, and policy. The model examines the inter-relationships between these levels and explains some of the barriers to care on each of the different levels.
The implications for public health educators and researchers are the possible collaboration with community-based institutions to assess, plan, develop, and evaluate interventions within the context of children with special health care needs and their families. Based on my review, I propose strategies for intervention at four different levelsindividual, interpersonal, community, and policy. My assumption is that if each of the proposed strategies is successful at it respective level, then childrens access to
coordinated community-based social and health services would improve.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-04122006-140913 |
| Date | 07 June 2006 |
| Creators | Ssebikindu, Faith N |
| Contributors | Dr. James Butler, Dr. Christopher Keane, Dr. Robin Grubs, Dr. Martha Terry |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04122006-140913/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
Page generated in 0.0021 seconds