The impact of disability on the lives of children; cross-sectional data including 8,900 children with disabilities and 898,834 children without disabilities across 30 countries.

BACKGROUND: Children with disabilities are widely believed to be less likely to attend school or access health care, and more vulnerable to poverty. There is currently little large-scale or internationally comparable evidence to support these claims. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of disability on the lives of children sponsored by Plan International across 30 countries. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We conducted a cross-sectional survey including 907,734 children aged 0-17 participating in the Plan International Sponsorship Programme across 30 countries in 2012. Parents/guardians were interviewed using standardised questionnaires including information on: age, sex, health, education, poverty, and water and sanitation facilities. Disability was assessed through a single question and information was collected on type of impairment. The dataset included 8,900 children with reported disabilities across 30 countries. The prevalence of disability ranged from 0.4%-3.0% and was higher in boys than girls in 22 of the 30 countries assessed - generally in the range of 1.3-1.4 fold higher. Children with disabilities were much less likely to attend formal education in comparison to children without disabilities in each of the 30 countries, with age-sex adjusted odds ratios exceeding 10 for nearly half of the countries. This relationship varied by impairment type. Among those attending school, children with disabilities were at a lower level of schooling for their age compared to children without disabilities. Children with disabilities were more likely to report experiencing a serious illness in the last 12 months, except in Niger. There was no clear relationship between disability and poverty. CONCLUSIONS: Children with disabilities are at risk of not fulfilling their educational potential and are more vulnerable to serious illness. This exclusion is likely to have a long-term deleterious impact on their lives unless services are adapted to promote their inclusion

Capturing adolescent realities in the global data revolution

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development\u27s call to leave no one behind has brought a renewed focus on vulnerable populations historically overlooked by researchers and policy makers. Key to this inclusive mission is generating data which is high quality, accessible, timely, reliable and disaggregated by income, sex, age, race, ethnicity, migration status, disability and geographic location. Halfway to the endpoint of the Agenda 2030, tracking of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) has revealed substantial gaps in data on adolescence, despite increasing recognition that the ages of 10–19 years are a crucial life stage for accelerating progress against poverty, inequity, and discrimination. We outline challenges in generating robust adolescent-specific SDG data and identify approaches that can deliver the age-disaggregated and sex-disaggregated data that are crucial to tailoring policies and interventions to improve adolescent wellbeing across domains

Age and sex-adjusted odds ratio (95% Confidence Interval) for the association between disability and school level among Plan’s sponsored children aged 5 years and above attending formal education: Comparator children in secondary education or above.

<p>Age and sex-adjusted odds ratio (95% Confidence Interval) for the association between disability and school level among Plan’s sponsored children aged 5 years and above attending formal education: Comparator children in secondary education or above.</p

Association between disability and serious illness in the last 12 months among Plan’s sponsored children.

1<p>OR: odds ratio.</p>2<p>CI: Confidence interval.</p><p>Association between disability and serious illness in the last 12 months among Plan’s sponsored children.</p

Age and sex-adjusted odds ratio (95% Confidence Interval) for the association between disability and formal education attendance among Plan’s sponsored children aged 5 years and above: comparator children without disabilities.

1<p>OR: Age and sex-adjusted odds ratio in comparison to children without disabilities.</p>2<p>CI: Confidence interval.</p><p>Age and sex-adjusted odds ratio (95% Confidence Interval) for the association between disability and formal education attendance among Plan’s sponsored children aged 5 years and above: comparator children without disabilities.</p

Socio-demographic characteristics of children in the Plan Sponsorship programme.

1<p>SD: standard deviation.</p><p>Socio-demographic characteristics of children in the Plan Sponsorship programme.</p

Prevalence of disabilities among Plan’s sponsored children, by country and sex.

1<p>CI: Confidence interval.</p>2<p>OR: Odds ratio.</p><p>Prevalence of disabilities among Plan’s sponsored children, by country and sex.</p