Impacts of the COVID Pandemic on Kids with Disabilities

Photo by Kelly Sikkema

Donna S. Lero and Sharon Hope Irwin have published the results of their research project on the short and longer-term impacts of the COVID pandemic on children with disabilities in child care settings.

The publication, Inclusion quality in the time of COVID: The impact of the pandemic on children with disabilities in child care in Canada, shares the results of a research project, funded by Employment and Social Development Canada, addressing the short and longer-term impacts of the pandemic on children with disabilities and the child care centres that have included them throughout the early years of the CWELCC initiative.

The main goals of the project were:

·      to learn how the COVID-19 Pandemic affected young children with disabilities

·      to understand how changes in policies, practices, needs and resources affected centres’ inclusion capacity and inclusion quality since the pandemic began

·      to recommend changes that are required now and, in the future, to strengthen inclusion capacity and inclusion quality in Canada’s early learning and child care centres.

The research report is available online through childcarecanada.org on their site at https://childcarecanada.org/documents/research-policy-practice/26/02/inclusion-quality-time-covid-impact-pandemic-children with the following summary of key findings and recommendations from the report:

Key findings

·      Centres received no specific guidance on inclusion during or following the pandemic. Directors and educators did their best, but were dealing with distress, disruption, masking, a focus on cleaning, and social distancing. Children, parents and staff required additional support but Inclusion support staff were reduced and interventionists and therapists stopped coming to centres. Children with disabilities became invisible. To date, many children are on long waiting lists for assessments that are often required to receive funding to hire support staff and that would guide educators to address children’s individual needs.

·      80% of directors said children with disabilities were negatively affected or more negatively affected than other children – a consequence of the multiple impacts of social isolation, stressful days with difficult communication with others in the centre, and lack of appropriate supports and therapeutic assistance. The most common impacts were impacts on social 2 interactions with other children, emotional dysregulation and behavioral issues, and speech and language delays.

·      In late 2024/early 2025, directors stated that they had to be very careful about accepting new children with disabilities in their centre. 30% had ether declined to accept children with disabilities or limited the number they enrolled. Despite their strong commitment to inclusion, directors described the “disability calculus” they had to engage in balancing their desire to accept a child and provide the positive experiences that would be so beneficial against their staff’s capacities, the additional financial and staffing support they would require from government that they might not get, whether they would have support from therapists and inclusion consultants, and the additional needs that many children in the centre were exhibiting as longer-term impacts of COVID experiences.

·      Directors described current (post-COVID) challenges to providing high quality care for all children, and specifically for children with additional support needs. Required supports to maintain high quality programs for all children focus on:

o   Child care workforce improvements (wages, benefits, working conditions and respect)

o   Funding to support additional training and mentoring

o   Reduced child-to-staff ratios in inclusive centres and those serving vulnerable communities.

Recommendations to sustain and enhance inclusion quality include

·      Additional government funding to provide enhanced inclusion training and professional development for ECEs

·      Funding to hire additional staff with inclusion-specific skills as well as additional time off the floor for staff to plan and to collaborate with others

·      Additional funding for equipment, materials and accessibility improvements

·      More coherent and improved policies and procedures for accessing inclusion support, and better access to therapists and consultants

Directors cautioned that expansion without commensurate funding and supports for inclusion will put centres where inclusion is already under threat at greater risk. They identified this issue as critical to address now.

A review of the publication by Child Care Now, notes, “When the pandemic struck in March 2020, child care centres faced unprecedented disruptions – closures, reduced staffing, changing public health directives, and heightened health concerns among families and educators. Lero and Irwin show that while child care centres remained open to support essential workers, many faced pressures that strained their capacity to provide high-quality, inclusive care.” And quotes the authors of the study, “The data in this book supports the conclusion that the needs of children with disabilities – individually and as a specific group – largely became invisible at this time.” The reviewer stresses that the book “provides critical insights to inform future policy, research, and practice in inclusive early learning environments”.