The Project
There are significant challenges to ensuring health care access for children and families with special needs, here in our rural, medically underserved state. Families often struggle throughout the process of accessing care– from getting the right diagnosis, to finding specialty care, to accessing community resources for even the most basic of health services.
Because of the nature of developmental disabilities, the nature of the “assistance” required varies from child to child and from family to family. It also varies from community to community. This confounds efforts to organize and articulate challenges to the system– because for many, these challenges depend on the health care needs and location within the state.
This project takes the first step in a journey to working with stakeholders– parents, caregivers, providers, and advocates—to better understand, give voice to, and prioritize the challenges families have within their respective communities around the state to accessing health care. Our goal is to, with your help, improve our health care system for kids with developmental disabilities.
Our objectives are to:
- Raise Awareness
- Assess Challenges
- Initiate a Public Dialogue
- Compile and share recommendations for improving the system for affected families
What’s New
New to the project? Learn the basics from our student support staffer, Elliana Bohan.
Elliana has created a downloadable pamphlet to read/share/inform on the Including All Kids project.
The results to the WV Family Survey: Travel and Accessibility survey are up! Seventy-three respondents completed survey #3 in the series. All results, including write-in responses, are listed on the webpage.
Our 2021 project report is out! Many thanks to all of those who volunteered their time and expertise to this project. Give it a read, share on social media, or download it from our Issuu site.
Results from our second survey, WV Family Survey: Perceptions, are posted on our website. Many thanks to the parents and caregivers who shared their thoughts with us.
We held our Policy Roundtable on October 21. Health care providers, policymakers, community stakeholders, and parents joined us for a conversation about the challenges to accessing comprehensive health care for kids with developmental disabilities here in West Virginia and potential policy solutions to improve the system.
Read the compiled responses for survey one of the project, The Health Care System I. You can find an infographic here or check out the responses more in-depth on this webpage.
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The Including All Kids project is funded by a grant from the West Virginia Developmental Disabilities Council. We thank them for their support.
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