2011 The Palm Beach County Family Study (Full Report)

Overall, mothers reported seeking help at higher rates in year 5 compared to prior years. Most of thetrends help-seeking for specific concerns, however, fluctuated up and down and showed no clear patternsover time. The exceptions were trends in help-seeking for childcare, employment, reading/writing skills,dental care, and children’s language and communication, which tended to increase over time. In contrast,trends in help-seeking for family planning and parenting information tended to decrease over time.Mothers Perceptions of Reasons Services Not ReceivedWhen mothers reported they did not receive help they sought, we asked them why. As shown in Table 56,many of the reasons were related to program or provider limitations. Most often, mothers said they weretold they were not eligible for help when they applied for services because they did not meet the incomethreshold, did not live in the service area, or for some other reason. In some cases, mothers were eligiblefor help at the time they applied, but the service was not available, and they were put on a waiting list.This explanation was often given to mothers who did not receive a childcare subsidy. In other cases,mothers were told that services were no longer available (for example, as was the case with Section 8housing vouchers), or that the agency would not provide a service for some other reason.Another type of reason why mothers did not receive services was that they had started or completed anenrollment process and were waiting for services and, thus, were reasonably assured of obtaining theservice in the future. These included mothers who had submitted their applications and were waiting for aresponse and mothers who had an appointment scheduled. Another small group of mothers said they hadcontacted a service provider but had not received a response.A third category of reason includes characteristics of individual mothers that interfered with theirparticipation in services for which they might have been eligible, including a lack of follow-through orpersistence, losing paperwork or not having the necessary paperwork, and having accessibility issues,such as a lack of childcare or transportation, or difficulty scheduling an appointment. Some of thesereasons, of course, overlapped with program and provider factors, such as eligibility requirements andoffice hours.As discussed in the third study report (Spielberger et al., 2009), analysis of three waves of qualitative datasuggest that a number of other factors affect service use. Mothers frequently reported reasons related toprovider characteristics that adversely affected their receipt of services. For example, a mother whosechild was covered under Medicaid his first year lost coverage when she reapplied because she was toldher income from a new job was too high. Medicaid referred her to KidCare, but KidCare staff referred herback to Medicaid. After several months of being bounced back and forth between the two programs, sheChapin Hall at the University of Chicago 101