School closure and disruption of therapies have severely affected children with special needs

The coronavirus pandemic mandated closure of schools and insistence on on-line teaching have created unique challenging concerns for caregivers of children with special needs (CWSN) due to inappropriateness of on-line education which is not in tune with individualized educational and health care needs of such children.

Lack of access to therapies and specific assistive devices coupled with uniform on-line session defying the norms of individualized education curricula reveal an ill burden and adverse effects of the COVID-19 on development of CWSN.

The CWSN, who invariably require individual attention and individualized education programmes on one-on-one basis from teachers, are finding it hard to cope up with the new mode of teaching as well as they are missing out on therapy sessions.

Some preliminary studies in the last four months have shown that the impact of lockdown restrictions have been severe on CWSN; though in some mild cases, some initial euphoria effect of on-line teaching was observed which withered away within one month since special educators are not trained in on-line teaching.

The inset sketch note shows the summary of the ill-effects of on-line teaching on CWSN as based on some preliminary studies reported in media and on the net.