This study compared health care utilization of children with special health care needs in 2005/06 and 2009/10. Methods Using data from the National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs, this study compared the health care utilization of children with special health care needs in 2005/06 (n = 40,723) and 2009/10 (n = 40,242). Descriptive statistics characterize the sample during the 2005/06 and 2009/10 surveys. Logistic regression models examined the unmet needs for specific health care and support services, delayed care, coordinated care, and medical home. Results Compared to 2005/06, in 2009/10 children with special health care needs had greater unmet dental and therapy needs and less care coordination of health services as well as access to medical home services. Conclusions These findings indicate that additional measures are needed to improve the health care access of children with special health care needs.

In recent years, legal scholars and practitioners as well as policymakers have focused unprecedented attention on the rights of parents with disabilities, particularly intellectual disabilities, and their children. At the same time, social scientists have developed a breadth of literature on the needs and experiences of these families. Nonetheless, a clear divide remains between the fields, resulting in ongoing discrimination and the unnecessary separation of many families headed by a parent with an intellectual disability. Hence, the overarching goal of this article is to explore how legal scholarship, advocacy, and policymaking can be better informed by social science. This Article begins with a brief historical perspective on how the rights of parents with intellectual disabilities have evolved over time. Analyzing the language in state dependency statutes and judicial decisions, this Article demonstrates the implicit and explicit bias that exists and the need for informed policies and adjudication. Next, the Article examines how the law can learn from social science by highlighting findings from current social science research concerning these families. Finally, the Article offers concluding thoughts about how decision-making in dependency cases as well as public policy can and should benefit from social science research.

Understanding the needs and experiences of parents with intellectual disability (ID) and their children is critical to ensuring that policies can effectively support these families. This research analyzed data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine the health outcomes of U.S. children whose mothers have (n = 263) and do not have ID (n = 1,298). Compared to mothers without ID, mothers with ID experienced worse outcomes related to socioeconomic status, limited support networks, and poor self-reported health. However, after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, mother's intellectual disability was not associated with a child having fair or poor health, asthma, or being overweight or obese.

Despite important gains in human rights, persons with disabilities — and in particular women and girls with disabilities — continue to experience significant inequalities in the areas of sexual, reproductive, and parenting rights. Persons with disabilities are sterilized at alarming rates; have decreased access to reproductive health care services and information; and experience denial of parenthood. Precipitating these inequities are substantial and instantiated stereotypes of persons with disabilities as either asexual or unable to engage in sexual or reproductive activities, and as incapable of performing parental duties. The article begins with an overview of sexual, reproductive, and parenting rights regarding persons with disabilities. Because most formal adjudications of these related rights have centered on the issue of sterilization, the article analyzes commonly presented rationales used to justify these procedures over time and across jurisdictions. Next, the article examines the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the attendant obligations of States Parties regarding rights to personal integrity, access to reproductive health care services and information, parenting, and the exercise of legal capacity. Finally, the article highlights fundamental and complex issues requiring future research and consideration.