2011 The Palm Beach County Family Study (Full Report)

In interpreting these results, it should be noted that the denominator or the number of mothers who did notreceive help varied by item (see Table 51) because only those mothers who did not get help in a particularservice area were asked if they had concerns in that area.Table 54. Service Needs: Concerns of Mothers Who Did Not Receive Services over Time aService Area% Mothers bYear 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5Healthcare for mother or children 42 75 87 64 45Dental care 36 40 28 24 39Childcare (including subsidy) 29 30 38 39 27Paying rent or bills 32 23 30 28 25Getting enough food 32 14 32 24 24Translating things into English — c 25 39 30 24Housing or emergency shelter 23 28 27 24 15Employment 15 11 14 19 19Transportation 19 15 15 12 11Legal issues 11 10 11 15 12Clothes for children 17 12 10 11 6Child’s homework issues (children > 5) 10 11 11 2 4Parenting information 10 4 3 3 7Child’s language and communication 3 7 6 6 4Family planning or birth control — 10 5 5 5Child’s anger problems 1 5 6 5 6Mother’s reading or writing skills — 7 5 5 5Child’s attention problems 3 5 5 3 5Child’s academic progress (children > 5) — — 10 5 6Mental health or substance abuse 1 1 1 6 10Child’s social problems 1 3 3 4 3Child’s learning problems 3 1 1 2 4Child’s eating problems 2 2 2 2 4Child’s sadness, depression, shyness, orwithdrawal2 2 4 1 3Child’s school attendance (children > 5) 5 1 3 1 2Child’s physical development 1 2 1 1 3Domestic violence — — — 3 2a Data were weighted to adjust for oversampling of mothers from the Glades and mothers screened “at risk.”bPercentage of mothers who did not receive help and who said area was a concern.cItems were not included in these surveys.Next, in Table 55, we present the percentages of mothers with concerns in each service area who soughthelp for their concerns. These results suggest that mothers seek help at different rates depending on thearea of service need. That is, mothers with concerns were more likely to seek help in the areas ofhealthcare (98%), childcare (80%), and getting enough food (65%) than in other areas. They were nextChapin Hall at the University of Chicago 99