Examining Barriers and Outcomes Associated with Respite Care Reimbursement Services for Families with Children

• Ariel Grier, Psychology, University of Delaware

• Franssy Zablah, Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Delaware

Respite services offer temporary relief to caregivers of people with disabilities. Prior research suggests that these services may reduce caregiver stress (Chan et al., 2000). However, many families participating in respite programs do not utilize services, with common barriers including upfront costs and lack of transportation (Graaf et al., 2022). The current study sought to understand the impact of respite services on caregiver stress and family functioning and explore barriers to usage in a local community sample. Families enrolled (N=25) in a respite care reimbursement program completed five, monthly self-report questionnaires about parental stress, parenting practices, and service utilization. Descriptive analyses indicated that limited time (20.83%), high upfront costs (14.58%), and unavailable providers (12.50%) were the most commonly listed barriers (k = 96). We used a multiple linear regression to test whether using respite services significantly impacted parental stress, parenting practices, and family functioning over time. Results showed that participants who used respite services reported significantly more parental stress over time than non-users (p < .05), yet there were no differences regarding their parenting practices (p > .05) or family functioning (p > .05). In sum, the current sample reported barriers at rates different from those in other samples (Graaf et al., 2022). Further, the increase in parenting stress over time for respite users may be due, in part, to selection bias, whereby the less stressed participants are less likely to use the available resources. Finally, we suspect that the nonsignificant findings in parenting practices and family relationships may be due to participants’ scores on both measures resembling individuals from a non-clinical group in the normative sample (Sanders et al., 2014). Together, these findings can better inform respite care services, in terms of expected outcomes as well as common barriers for non-utilization. Implications and policy recommendations will be discussed. 

Keywords: respite care services; barriers; parental stress; parent and family adjustment