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The high cost of special needs care
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The State of Care Index
Parents of children with special needs will pay 45 percent more per hour of child care than other families.
According to Care.com's State of Care Index, care for children with special needs costs $10 per hour versus a national average of $7 an hour for other young children.
These averages factor in the costs associated with both in-home and center-based child care.
Moreover, children with special needs spend an average of 26 hours weekly in the care of someone other than a parent—five hours less than children without special needs. This means parents themselves must balance their schedules to fill the gap, providing extra attention and care to their children with special needs, while taking more time away from their own careers and activities.
“As a working mom, I know the pressures families face when trying to balance their careers with their lives at home,” said Lirio Marcelo. “One of the reasons Care.com founded the State of Care Index is to shed light on the enormous, yet necessary, burden child care can be on working families and how that affects their employment and work performance.”
The search for child care has a heavy impact on all parents’ careers. Nearly half (49 percent) of parents who changed their care arrangement in the past year confessed to doing research for child care options or conducting interviews with potential caregivers during their work hours. The State of Care Index also shows families are concerned their caregiving responsibilities have hurt their work performance, with over half (51 percent) of parents who changed their child care options reporting a negative job impact.
More articles by Seattle Special Needs Issues Examiner:
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Dads supporting dads; fathers of kids with special needs meet in Tacoma
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