After the COVID‑19 pandemic, thousands more kindergarteners faced developmental challenges |
Children with special needs often experience a range of early developmental challenges that can affect their readiness for learning and their participation in school.
This population includes children with a wide range of neurodevelopmental conditions (like autism and ADHD) as well as physical or sensory conditions and impairments.
Overall, children with special needs are more likely to experience challenges in one or more areas of their development compared to other children their age. For example, about 80 per cent of kindergarten children with identified special needs do not yet have the skills needed to fully benefit from classroom learning, compared to 27 per cent of children without special needs.
In Canada, children with special health needs are more likely to live in lower-income neighbourhoods and to experience poorer developmental outcomes.
The COVID-19 pandemic, declared in March 2020, changed many aspects of everyday life for young children across Canada. Although all children were affected, those with special needs were often impacted more deeply.
Public health measures disrupted many of the resources and supports they and their families relied on, such as health-care visits, child care and early education programs. In some cases, these supports stopped altogether.
Many pandemic policies did not fully consider the needs of vulnerable groups, including children with special needs. As a result, these children and their families were more likely to experience negative impacts during this pandemic, highlighting gaps in support and services that may have affected their development.
Our team at the Offord Centre for Child Studies at McMaster University produced a report that provided a comprehensive description of the status of inequities in early childhood development in Canada for children with special needs, both before and after the onset of the pandemic. The Public Health Agency of Canada commissioned the report.
We used population-level........