Stats Can releases report on children with disabilities and participation

February 3, 2010

Statistics Canada has released a study looking at which factors influence the social engagement of children with disabilities aged 5-14. 

The report – titled Social Participation of Children with Disabilities – draws on the child component of the 2006 Participation and Activity Limitation survey and examines the habits of 3,100 children who lived with their parents at the time of the research.

The ultimate goal was to determine how active children are and how society can adapt to help activities become realistic for more children. 

You can read the study in full here or see a summary of points below.   

Key findings:

• Over half of school-age children with disabilities have both physical and non-physical disabilities.
• The majority of children with disabilities take part in some sort of extracurricular social activity.
• A child with both physical and non-physical disabilities is significantly less likely to take part in organized sports. Only 59 per cent of these children were participants, compared with 70 per cent of children with physical limitations only.
• Children with both physical and non-physical limitations were less likely to be engaged in non-sport activities like taking lessons or belonging to clubs or community grops – situations which may demand more sophisticated social skills. They were also less likely to have virtual networks with their peers. 
• The severity of a child’s condition is not associated with their odds of participation in sports or non-sports activities once other factors (including type of disability) is controlled for. The exception is peer networks – compared to a child with a mild degree of disability, those with a very severe disability had less than half the odds of being online or on the phone with friends and other peers. 
• In general, children’s social competencies are not associated with social engagement. 
• Family support is strongly related to participation in organized sports and non-sport activities. 
• Family income and urban residence are strongly linked to sports participation.

The study concludes that greater efforts are being made to accommodate children with disabilities in many extracurricular activities, but as many as 25-50 per cent of them never participate.

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