Examining the Impact of COVID-19 on Education and Service Access for Diverse Families of Young Children With and Without Developmental Delays

Abstract

The rapid transition to virtual learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented challenges that significantly impacted caregivers of young children, particularly those with developmental delays and children from non-English speaking households (Valicenti-McDermott et al., 2022). The current study aims to describe caregivers’ concerns regarding the COVID-19 pandemic in general and specific educational concerns following school closures, and to determine whether their concerns varied as a function of whether the child had a developmental delay or the parent's ethnicity. Results revealed that caregivers of children with DD endorsed a greater number of general and education-specific COVID-19 concerns compared to caregivers of TD children, and non-Latinx caregivers of children with DD reported more general COVID-19 concerns compared to Latinx caregivers of children with DD. With respect to education-specific concerns, caregivers of children with DD reported a greater impact from the loss and/or delay of services and reported feeling significantly less capable of conducting educational activities in the home compared to caregivers of TD children. However, almost all caregivers in the study endorsed some level of stress from remote instruction. These findings suggest there is a specific need for attention to caregiver mental health and an examination of long-term educational outcomes resulting from extended school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic.