Poor housing adds to strains on disabled children and their families
"If you can get your home right, you can cope. Within 24 hours of being in this house it was like WOW. She was a different child." (Mother of a severely disabled girl after moving to a well-adapted home.)
Unsuitable housing is making life harder for disabled children and compounding the stress placed on parents who care for them, according to a ground breaking study supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
The in-depth study of the impact of housing on children with physical and learning disabilities and their families concludes that children's chances of enjoying normal childhood experiences can be seriously restricted by living in homes that are ill-suited to their needs. Moving about, playing, and participating in family activities can all be inhibited by homes that are too small, poorly designed or badly adapted. Exercise and therapy can be curtailed by lack of space for wheelchairs or walking frames.
Children's families also find themselves under increased physical and mental strain as a result of poor housing. For example, homes that lack a downstairs toilet and have difficult, narrow staircases can contribute to back injuries and other problem for parents who have to maneuver their child up and down the stairs several times a day.
A survey of more than 200 families of disabled children in Yorkshire and North East England found that three out of four reported one or more ways in which their housing was unsuitable. Four out of ten said their home was poor overall, including just under a fifth whose accommodation was overcrowded, cold, or in serious need of repair. A third reported lack of play space, and a quarter had problems with stairs.
Severely disabled children also highlighted the difficulties arising from lack of space in their homes, including restricted mobility and being unable to join in play with brothers, sisters and other children as a result of being stranded in one part of the house. Having to rely on a strong adult to move them around and a lack of privacy were also raised as problems.
Over a third of parents had made changes to their homes and there was a widespread perception that adaptations could make the task of caring easier and give children greater independence. However, it appeared that fragmented and inadequate public funding, as well as a shortage of good information and advice, was holding back families who would have liked to adapt their properties. More than half those interviewed were unaware that financial help for adaptations might be available from local authorities.
Christine Oldman and Bryony Beresford, who carried out the research at the University of York, also found there was little awareness among housing and social services professionals of the impact that unsuitable housing was having on the lives of families with disabled children. Although they saw the need for good collaborative working, their operational policies and procedures did not appear to be sensitive to the expressed needs of children and their families.
