School of Rehabilitation Therapy, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Department of Political Science, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
PLoS One. 2020 Jul 2;15(7):e0235439. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0235439. eCollection 2020.
While access to support for individuals with disabilities has attracted international attention, children with disabilities and their families continue to face a range of barriers that limit their timely access to the needed support, including health service. This is even worse for children with disabilities living in resource poor settings like Bangladesh. The objective of this study was to determine the extent to which families of children with disabilities have knowledge about and access to government support for their children with disabilities in Bangladesh. We employed a cross-sectional study among 393 families of children with disabilities who sought services from the Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Paralysed for their children with disabilities in Bangladesh. We used chi-square test to measure the association between categorical variables and, Mann-Whitney U-test to compare mean across different sub-groups. Overall, family members of children with disabilities have limited knowledge about and access to government support. We found a significant association between knowledge and access to government support (p<0.001). Family members with children with disabilities aged younger than six years had less access to government support (p<0.001). We thus concluded with an urgent call on government agencies and service providers to provide relevant and timely information to families of children with disabilities to enable them to access the needed support.
虽然为残疾人提供支持已经引起了国际关注，但残疾儿童及其家庭仍然面临着一系列障碍，限制了他们及时获得所需支持的机会，包括获得医疗服务的机会。对于生活在孟加拉国等资源匮乏环境中的残疾儿童来说，情况更是如此。本研究旨在确定残疾儿童的家庭对孟加拉国政府为其残疾儿童提供支持的了解程度和获得程度。我们在孟加拉国为残疾儿童提供服务的瘫痪康复中心，对 393 名残疾儿童的家庭进行了横断面研究。我们使用卡方检验来衡量分类变量之间的关联，使用曼-惠特尼 U 检验来比较不同亚组之间的平均值。总体而言，残疾儿童的家庭成员对政府支持的了解程度有限，获得政府支持的机会也有限。我们发现知识和获得政府支持之间存在显著关联（p<0.001）。残疾儿童年龄在 6 岁以下的家庭成员获得政府支持的机会较少（p<0.001）。因此，我们紧急呼吁政府机构和服务提供者向残疾儿童的家庭提供相关和及时的信息，使他们能够获得所需的支持。
