The experience of children with disabilities and their families during the COVID-19 pandemic: what lessons can we learn?

Abstract

COVID-19 has had serious, negative impacts on children's health and development. But the impacts have not been felt equally. Disabled children and their families have been hit particularly hard. In this paper we summarize UK legislation to limit the spread of the virus and describe how services to disabled children changed as a result. We discuss the long-term deleterious impacts of changes in service provision on the health and wellbeing of disabled children and the parent carers supporting them. We close with lessons learned for resetting services to support the ongoing recovery of children and their families and recommendations for delivering services better in future emergencies to ensure that disabled children's health and wellbeing is maintained.