ABSTRACT
This book has been concerned with the financial costs of caring for severely disabled children at home and with the effect of these costs on families' living standards. Of the many ways in which severe disablement in a child affects their lives, its effect on the family's standard of living is unlikely to be the one which parents themselves identify as most important. Unless they are experiencing a financial crisis, the disabled child's health and well-being, physical burdens of care and worries about the future are all likely to take precedence. Nevertheless, as parents themselves recognized, money is an important factor in enabling them to cope more easily and to live well. When there are continual money worries the physical and emotional stresses of caring for a very disabled child become even more difficult to manage. When small pleasures that are routine for friends and acquaintances become unattainable luxuries the daily grind can at times seem overwhelmingly bleak,
