2011 The Palm Beach County Family Study (Full Report)

With respect to other services, although only 11 percent of mothers reported use of mental health orsubstance abuse services, this is a significant increase relative to use in the first few years. (Becausemothers might have been reluctant to admit using mental health services, this might represent both anincrease in service use and an increase in mothers’ willingness to share this information with ourinterviewer.) Finally, less than 10 percent of the mothers recalled receiving help with parentinginformation, legal issues, transportation, finding employment, translation services, and clothing forchildren. Just 8 percent of the mothers with limited English proficiency reported receiving help translatingthings into English. The percentages of mothers reporting help in these areas have either been relativelystable over time, or show no clear pattern, except for some decline in the percentage reporting help withparenting information and transportation.Child Development ServicesIn the fifth year, 68 percent of the sample reported that they received help from a program, agency, orprofessional for some aspect of their children’s health or development; this represents an increasecompared to previous years. As shown in Table 52, more than half received help with a concern abouttheir children’s physical health or illness. Sixteen percent received help with a child’s speech or otherlanguage problem, and smaller percentages received help in the other areas, including problems withpaying attention, physical development, and learning new things. In general, these percentages werestable over time, or showed no clear patterns. Of the mothers with children older than 5 years, 28 percentsaid they received help for concerns related to academic progress, and 22 percent reported receiving helpfor concerns related to their children’s homework.Service Use by TGAAs shown in Table C- 22, a larger percentage of mothers living in the Glades TGA group than thoseliving in the non-Glades TGAs or outside the TGAs reported that they received services in five or moreareas, and this is consistent with reports in previous years. In terms of specific areas of service use,mothers living in the Glades were significantly more likely than those living outside the TGAs to receivehelp with getting enough food. They were also significantly more likely than the other two groups ofmothers to receive help with childcare. Also, mothers in the non-Glades TGAs were significantly lesslikely than mothers outside the TGAs to receive help with legal services and domestic violence.These differences in service use might reflect some of the characteristics that differentiate the threesamples, as well as variations in the availability of services in these communities. It may be more difficultfor the larger percentage of foreign-born mothers who do not speak English as their primary language inthe non-Glades TGAs to get information about available services or to find services in their ownChapin Hall at the University of Chicago 96