Ebony Holliday, PhD, assistant director of Community Programs at Kennedy Krieger Institute’s Center for Autism Services, Science and Innovation (CASSI), talks about how income, socio-economic status, race, ethnicity, and community can really impact how autistic students can access the services and interventions they need in and beyond school.
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Transcript
So one of the good things is that there are more programs and services to support autistic individuals and children and their families. And so I think we’re doing a good job with making sure that we have those programs available. Of course, it it’s different depending on different environments. So maybe in rural environments we find that sometimes there are less things that are available there. So there is an access issue that we find in rural communities. Similar, there might be also difficulties that we find in maybe urban environments as well, where there might not be as much access or there might be limited access from that. So depending on the community, access can look different depending on where a child or a family or an individual grows up. That can sometimes determine their access to quality services to different types of school environments. And so that’s something to really keep an eye on and to think about how can we target that?
How can we make sure that access is there for everyone? And even people who do have that proximal access to services. So maybe they are in a metro area where there is an autism center that is nearby. Sometimes there are still barriers that are there. Maybe there is, they have access within maybe 15 or 20 minutes, but maybe it’s five buses to get there. So maybe they know where it’s at, but maybe the transportation is a barrier. Maybe there’s other children at home that they’re not able to take to the appointment with them. So we can have people that have access to services and supports, but because of other barriers or other challenges. And that might be things that are also compounded by race and ethnicity or community or income. Those types of things can also play a role in what access looks like. Maybe certain families just don’t have as much knowledge on navigating the system.
How do I sign up to get different types of benefits that might help me then go to this appointment? And so all of that is an interplay on how people can access services and the likelihood that they will access services. There may be jobs that they can’t miss, so it might be easier, for example, a middle or upper class family, a parent or caregiver to take off work for an appointment for maybe to take that evaluation. Whereas for somebody else, that may not be possible. And so maybe for that family, they might have to miss an appointment or maybe they have to keep pushing back appointments. So there are many ways that income, that social economic status, that community can really impact the way in which people could access services.