STATISTICS

According to the National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities:

•  Each year in Georgia nearly 5,000 children are born with physical, mental and social disabilities.

•  About 500,000 people in America have some form of Cerebral palsy.   Each year 8,000 infants and nearly 1,500 preschool-age children are diagnosed with Cerebral palsy.

•  More than one million of the students served in the public schools' special education programs in the 1999-2000 school year were categorized as having a speech or language impairment.

•  Approximately 4,000 children with Down syndrome are born in the U.S. each year, or about 1 in every 800-1,000 live births.

•  Autism and PPD (Pervasive Developmental Disorder) occur in approximately 5-15 per 10,000 births.   These disorders are four times more common in boys than in girls.

•  As many as 3 out of every 100 people in the country have mental retardation (The Arc, 2001).   Over 614,000 children ages 6-21 have some level of mental retardation and need special education in school ( Twenty-third Annual Report to Congress, U.S. Department of Education, 2001).

•  2.6% of children in the country under the age of 2 have a developmental disability.