Children and COVID-19 Research Library

During the COVID-19 pandemic, children with neurodevelopmental disabilities could not attend their usual rehabilitation therapies, with a consequent reduced support of developmental process and risk of worsening of their clinical conditions.

This paper reports a study with families of children with disabilities in Uganda during the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020, known as COVID-19. Families of children with disabilities in Uganda are well informed about COVID-19 and try to follow prevention measures. Families of children with disabilities have difficulties meeting daily basic needs as they were unable to work and had no income during the COVID-19 related lock down. The COVID-19 response affects access to health and rehabilitation services for children with disabilities in Uganda. Parents of children with disabilities struggle with home education and learning due to lack of access to accessible learning materials and learning support in Uganda. The COVID-19 response affects the peer support networks and social support for parents of children with disabilities in Uganda. Children with disabilities and their families should be involved and considered in the development and implementation of the COVID-19 response.

This study assessed the mental health of parents (N = 1450, Mage = 40.76) of special needs children during the COVID-19 pandemic. An online survey comprising items on demographic data; two self-designed questionnaires (children’s behavioral problems/psychological demand of parents during COVID-19); and four standardized questionnaires, including the General Health Questionnaire, Perceived Social Support, Parenting Stress Index, and Neuroticism Extraversion Openness Five Factor Inventory were conducted. The results showed that there were significant differences among parents of children with different challenges.

The COVID-19 crisis has revealed and deepened existing language and media gaps for deaf children. There was already an ongoing crisis for deaf children in the US: language deprivation. Language deprivation is caused by a lack of access to natural language during the critical period for language development, generally age 0–5 years. The COVID-19 pandemic is now intersecting with and amplifying language gaps for deaf children in the US. For kids whose school has moved online, the majority living with non-signing families are spending more time isolated at home. In virtual schooling, deaf children are using tools not built for them.

Individualized funding schemes are designed to offer people with disability greater choice and control over the services they receive. This research reports on a survey of over 700 families to explore how Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) supported children and young people and their families to learn remotely during COVID‐19. NDIS funding to support education during the first COVID‐19 lockdown period forms an important case study of the flexibility of individualized funding schemes.

Over 80% of the children in the world have had their education impacted by COVID-19. For children with disabilities who receive special education services, access to in-person education and other resources at school is particularly important. The American Academy of Pediatrics advocates for students to attend school in person, without specifics for how children with disabilities can safely return to school. To appropriately plan and accommodate children with disabilities we must prioritize safety, allow for adherence to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and preserve essential school staff. The less cumbersome default of confining students with disabilities to home is not acceptable. This article provides an outline describing why Individual Education Plans and 504 plans are important, how they are related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and recommendations for measures to help with safe return to school for children with disabilities.

This report is about the difficulties children with disabilities face in accessing education in the world’s poorest countries. The exclusion of learners with disabilities from education is due to many reasons, including inaccessible school facilities, a lack of assistive technologies, poor health, prejudice, discrimination and stigma. The interconnected and complex nature of achieving inclusive, quality education for all therefore requires stakeholders to break with siloed approaches and to work collaboratively across economic, social, cultural and protection sectors and domains.

With the COVID pandemic, the delivery of rehabilitation services has been greatly affected across lifespan, especially towards children with disabilities. The significant physical and mental health stressors of prolonged home confinement coupled with discontinuation of rehabilitation services can lead to several long-term concerns among children with disabilities. In light of the current events, our approach towards rehabilitation needs to be re-evaluated and revamped. The point of view highlights the potential ways in which we could continue to provide physical therapy services for children with disabilities. Use of family-centered and home-based models of care can be considered to reach out to children with disabilities using telerehabilitation and digital physical therapy by adopting a modified framework of care. The implications of the point of view may help aid clinician’s world-over to continue providing rehabilitation services to children with disabilities.

This issue paper describes the collective actions to usher children with disabilities in the new normal post-COVID-19 period in the Philippines. These actions focus on assistive technologies to augment information and communication, critical services to sustain medical and developmental needs, adaptive learning methods to continue education, and other social services to improve access and mobility. Set within a single national context, this issue paper provides a view as regards the shared initiatives to improve the conditions of children with disabilities in a developing country amid the pandemic.

This paper investigates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on deaf adults, children, and their families in Ghana, focusing on issues of inclusion. It asks what it takes to ‘make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’ (United Nations Strategic Development Goal 11) for deaf people in the context of the global pandemic in a low-resource context. The exceptional challenge to inclusion posed by COVID-19 is examined in terms of issues for deaf children and their families, and from the point of view of deaf adults in advocacy and support organisations.

The escalating pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has posed a multitude of challenges for pediatric neurologists. These range from managing children with COVID-19 presenting with neurological involvement to diagnosing COVID-19 in children presenting with isolated neurological manifestations and providing a continuum of care to children with pre-existing or newly diagnosed neurological disorders during this difficult time.

Raising a child with a mental disability puts a significant amount of social, financial, and psychological strain on the entire family. Parents are especially susceptible as they are the primary and only constant caregivers. The difficulty of the task demands that aspects of caretaking be delegated to external agencies to reach an optimal compensation between personal well-being of the parents and nurturement of the child. Amid the haste policies created for country-wide lockdowns, many governments have ignored this vulnerable subset of the popula-tion.

The pandemic caused by the global spread of the coronavirus Covid-19 is harming social, educational and health well-being of children, with the most vulnerable being hit the hardest. Children are being impacted directly, through school, extra-curricular and childcare facilities closures, social distancing and confinement, which puts a heavy burden on their educational, cognitive and emotional development, with the risk of increasing their anxiety and stress levels. Children are also being impacted indirectly, through the reduction of household incomes, which reduces their material and social well-being, impairs access to social and healthcare, while also exposing the hardest hit to risks malnutrition. It is critical to understand that the negative impact of the Covid-19 crisis may be particularly strong for some groups of children including those living in poverty, children with disabilities, children deprived of parental care, children in detention and so on. Furthermore, negative impacts of this scale may extend well beyond the short term spreading childhood poverty across many childhood years or beyond.