Abstract

Disability is an umbrella term for impairments, activity, limitation and participation restrictions which are caused by an interaction between the health condition of an individual and the contextual factors reflected in the socio-economic environment of the day. Parents of children with disabilities equated education with increased employment prospects for their child, leading to a better quality of life than they had. According to census 2011, Kerala has a population of 33,406,061 of which 7, 61,843 suffer from of disability. It is estimated that nearly 2.29% of the population are disabled. The problems of the handicapped deserve special priority and attention. However despite the governmental effort to ensure them opportunities of education and thereby providing them opportunity to develop, special educational field has not been fully developed. At present, there are only 308 schools in Kerala to create to the educational needs of 18000 children with special needs and of these schools, only 162 are recognized by the Government. There are no government schools in some district. In the case of Alappuzha, most of the special schools belong to private orgnizations. This leads to limited access to education for those children who are from economically backward families. Another issue arises in the form of lack of resources and facilities in the mentally challenged and their dependence on the funding from private beneficiaries due to insufficiency of Government funding .All these factors have an impact on the expenditure decisions of the families of these children. The present study analyses the expenditure pattern of the families of disabled children.