Covid deepens disabled child needs
Cheryl Ward, chief executive, Family Fund
Tuesday, April 27, 2021
Research highlights impact of pandemic on disabled children, and charity chief sets out how to tackle problems.
Many families raising disabled or seriously ill children were facing financial difficulties even before the pandemic, with their wellbeing and emotional resilience tested on a daily basis. But our report The impact of Covid-19 - A year in the life of families raising disabled and seriously ill young children highlights the extent to which the pandemic has deepened these problems (see graphics).
Collective effort
To alleviate the pressures highlighted by our research, and shorten the long road to recovery facing many families raising disabled children and young people, a collective effort is necessary. The public sector, at both national and local levels, has a key role to play, but so too do the private and voluntary sectors. All need to come together to provide support that extends and builds upon the interim policies of the past year to make sure no family is left behind.
Maintaining financial support for those who are struggling is vital to avoid a crisis in child poverty and the knock-on effect on children and young people’s health and opportunities. This means retaining the uplift to key benefits for longer than currently planned.
We would like to see retention of the universal credit uplift to at least March 2022 – and preferably beyond – and provision of an equivalent supplement to those claiming carer’s allowance, who have also faced additional costs, alongside an increase in the care support they have had to provide.
Families report the inability to pay household bills as a significant cost and cause of debt, so further extension of relief schemes and repayment holidays for utilities and council tax bills would greatly help, again at least until March 2022.
Many of those we support at Family Fund are not aware of what help is already available to them. Local networks of information and signposting, such as local offers, need to work on engaging all those raising disabled children and young people to ensure that they know about currently available support that can make a difference. Provision of this information also needs to be consistently incorporated into families’ interactions with the public sector, as this currently varies hugely between local authorities.
Returning formal support
The services that families raising disabled children and young people depended upon most prior to the pandemic must be prioritised for return to “normal” capacity, with a particular focus on educational psychologists, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, and child and adolescent mental health services. The needs of these children also must be factored in when tackling the backlog of appointments and medical treatments that has built up over the last year.
Many families are in need of a break, so restoring respite and short break services as soon as possible is crucial. This may also require additional funding targeted at days out and short breaks, so that all families raising disabled or seriously ill children can get the respite they need.
Fund innovation
As part of the Disabled Children’s Partnership (DCP), we have been advocating for significant policy developments to deliver system-level change as well as service-level transformation for families raising disabled or seriously ill children.
A key point of this work is the importance of early intervention at a local level. Figures from the Early Intervention Foundation estimate that late intervention for children experiencing a range of emotional, social, and health difficulties costs the government £17bn per year.
This is why the DCP has proposed the creation of an Early Intervention and Family Resilience Innovation fund. This would support projects that transform disabled children’s health and social care by fixing problems at the earliest point. The fund would initially support a vanguard of innovative service providers but with the infrastructure to scale up successful projects, leading to immediate savings, as well as long-term economic and social return.
The government has provided vital lifelines to millions of families across the UK to help them weather the last 12 months. It is vital now that, at all levels of society, we come together to ensure the post-pandemic world is one that offers the opportunities, aspirations and quality of life to disabled children that they did not have before.
- A free webinar for professionals is being held on Tuesday 4 May from 10.30-11.30am summarising the report findings and including an interactive session on recovery and recommendations. To attend email comms@familyfund.org.uk