Providing
Care
for Children with Special Needs
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) provides
child care professionals with an exciting opportunity to serve children
with special needs or disabilities. The ADA is a federal law, enacted
in 1990, that guarantees that children with disabilities can not be
excluded from child care programs simply because of a disability.
Opportunity
When children can learn and play together,
everyone
benefits. A child care program that includes both children with and
without disabilities reflects the larger community in which they live.
Inclusion helps children to learn acceptance, improve socialization,
and understand individual differences. Other benefits for child care
providers include access to a helpful network of professionals,
increased child development knowledge, and potential tax credits or
deductions.
Basic Requirements of the ADA
Most child care providers probably already meet requirements
of the ADA just by considering each child as an individual. Providers
usually talk with parents about any unique needs their child has.
Continuing this practice is the first step toward compliance with the
ADA.
ADA Basic Requirements:
- Child care homes and centers must make reasonable
modifications to
their policies and practices to integrate children with disabilities
into their program unless doing so would constitute a fundamental
alteration of the program. Reasonable modifications means changes that
can be carried out without much difficulty or expense.
- Programs must provide appropriate auxiliary aids and
services
needed for effective communication with children with disabilities,
when doing so would not constitute an undue burden. Auxiliary aids and
services include a range of devices or services that help people
communicate. Undue burden means changes that would result in
significant difficulty or expense to the provider.
- Providers cannot exclude children with disabilities
from
their programs unless their presence would pose a direct threat to the
health or safety of others or require a fundamental alteration of the
program. Direct threat means the child’s condition poses a
significant threat to the health or safety of other children or staff.
Some Commonly Asked Questions
(Adapted from U. S. Department of Justice, Civil
Rights Division and Child Care Law Center)
Q: Does the ADA apply
to child care homes and centers?
A: Yes. Privately and
publicly run child care homes and centers must comply with title III of
the ADA.
Q: How do I
decide whether a child with a disability belongs in my program?
A: Child care
providers cannot just assume that a child’s disabilities are
too severe for the child care program. The program must make an
individualized assessment about whether it can meet the particular
needs of the child without fundamentally altering its program.
Providers should talk to parents or guardians and other professionals
who work with the child. Child care centers are not required to accept
children who would pose a direct threat or whose presence or necessary
care would fundamentally alter the nature of the child care program.
Q:
Are there situations in which care can be refused?
A: These situations
will be very limited. They include situations in which a child poses a
direct threat or where the accommodations needed would not be
reasonable for the program to provide.
Q:
What do I do when another parent makes inquiries about a child with
disabilities?
A: Information about
a child’s disability is confidential and should not be shared
with others unless you have consent from the parents of the child with
the disability.
Q:
Can I charge more for a child with special needs because they require
more individualized attention?
A: When an
accommodation is above and beyond a reasonable accommodation, an
additional fee may be imposed but a legal consultation should be made
with someone knowledgeable with the ADA laws. Programs may not charge
the parents of children with disabilities more for providing reasonable
accommodations.
Q:
How can I care for children with disabilities if I am not trained? If I
work on my own?
A: Many of the
accommodations children need are not complicated and can be easily
learned. Training may be available from the parent, early intervention
specialists, health professionals, and the child care nurse consultant
at Community Child Care Connection (CCCC).
Q:
May I automatically decline to serve a child with disabilities and
simply refer them on to another provider who I think is better able to
serve them?
A: No. A parent may
prefer your care and if it is possible for you to make the reasonable
accommodations necessary to serve that child he or she may not be turned
away.
Q: If a parent
of a child with a disability has conflicts with the provider or the
parent fails to comply with rules applied to all families, may the
family be terminated from the program?
A: Yes, if it can be
documented that the reasons for termination have to do with failure to
comply with rules or standards that are: uniformly applied to all
families, not relevant to any potential required accommodations, and
are not used as pretexts for discrimination.
For more information on ADA contact the child care
nurse consultant for CCCC at 1-800-676-2805.
ADA Resources:
U.S. Department of Justice
1-800-514-0301
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/childq%26a.htm
Child Care Law Center
1-415-495-5498
http://www.childcarelaw.org
The Arc of the United States
1-301-565-3842
http://www.thearc.org
Illinois ADA Project
http://www.ada-il.org
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