Parenting and homeschooling during a pandemic has proven difficult for both parents and children across the province.
With no firm plans on what school will look like come September, many are concerned if their lifestyles will need to change to accommodate their children’s schedules while working at the same time.
Parents with children who have autism and other special needs have been struggling throughout the pandemic, with services and therapies suspended during lockdown and having to deal with challenging behaviours without professional support systems in place.
Innisfil resident Lisa Osburn is a mother of five, including a 12-year-old daughter, and four sons ages eight, six and four-year-old twins.
One of her twins, Elliott, has autism and she noticed his skills regress during the lockdown. Pre-COVID, Elliott was attending IBI Behavioural Services in Barrie two days a week and was in junior kindergarten at public school two days a week, with one day at home.
“His schedule drastically changed because school and IBI shut down simultaneously,” Osburn said. “At first, he was OK. The first couple weeks he was fine, we did our own thing, but I started noticing some regression on the skills he had worked so hard to achieve.”
The centre was finally able to reopen five weeks ago and already she has noticed an improvement with his eye contact, vocals and independence.
Elliott was diagnosed with autism in April 2017. In May 2017, to better support her son, Osburn enrolled herself in school for autism behavioural sciences.
“It was an investment we decided to do because we couldn’t wait (for services) and wanted to do everything we could to help our son,” she said.
All therapy is paid for out of pocket. To supplement the $2,200 a month in services, she works two jobs: one as an educational assistant at a high school and one as a part-time nurse in palliative care at Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre in Barrie.
Thankfully, Osburn lives in a multi-generational household, with her parents living in the basement and helping out with child care.
“We’ve always been thankful, but quarantine has definitely shown us the beneficial side of having grandparents around,” she said.
For September, Osburn has withdrawn Elliott from public school and will be sending him to IBI full-time, noting there needs to be consistency in his routine. But she knows not all autism families have those opportunities.
“Because a kid’s routine is so important. And to go week by week or every other day is going to be really difficult for some of these kids,” she said.
Fellow Innisfil mom and friend, Angie Donadio-Hunt has two boys: Miles, 10, and Owen, five. Owen was diagnosed with autism when he was in junior kindergarten.
Staying home with her kids during the pandemic has had its ups and downs, she said. At first, she said the kids were excited about the idea of staying home, but once they started getting into more school assigned work “things started going downhill really quickly.”
Owen was at the IBI Academy two half-days per week prior to the pandemic and only recently started attending again after reopening.
Donadio-Hunt says she did notice Owen regressing steadily while quarantined, and now that he is back in the therapy, is doing better with his programming.
“He is happy to be there to have that bit of normal,” she said.
Donadio-Hunt says transitions and self regulation have always been a struggle for Owen, causing a lot more fights between him and older brother Miles during the pandemic.
“We’ve had broken tablets, smashed toys, we’ve had food thrown everywhere, we’ve had an attempt to break the TV,” she said. “His thing is, he just goes volcanic and has to go off and explode.”
Unlike Osburn, Donadio-Hunt doesn’t have the educational background on how to handle autistic behaviour, and feels like she doesn’t always have control of the situations at home. She worries about Owen’s transition from senior kindergarten to Grade 1 in September, and wishes she could enroll Owen full-time in therapy.
“I am nervous that it’s going to be too much change, that he’s going to have problems adjusting to everything,” she said.
“We’ll see how much the line of communication is open for parents whose kids will need extra (attention),” Donadio-Hunt added. “My question is: How much harder will it be to advocate now?”
Amanda Baysarowcih, director and owner of IBI Behavioural Services in Barrie, says the pandemic has been hard on all children, especially those with autism.
They were allowed to reopen their centre June 15 and have had about half the students return, but her staff have been servicing some children throughout the entire pandemic.
“We had families that almost immediately went into crisis mode, where we had no choice but the best clinical interest of the children to then jump in at that point and provide emergency services,” Baysarowcih said, noting staff were in the home helping children with day-to-day tasks like getting dressed, eating and toileting.
“The biggest thing about kids with autism is they depend on routine and predictability and overnight that was gone from them."
Between the centre’s four locations, they have 13,000-square-feet of space and were able to bring the kids in and spread them out one per room to start and have been upholding that model in their second and third phases of opening.
When school resumes in September, her goal is to keep as many of the children enrolled full-time because they have missed out on three months of intensive treatment and families have been struggling.
“The mental-health crises going on in the home of these parents have been substantial,” she said.
She says it is a two-fold approach of trying to support the kids as well as the parents. Parents are struggling with their own mental health and dealing with issues such as job loss while handling a special-needs child with them full-time.
“We’ve had some severe significant cases in Simcoe County,” she said. “I owe it to my staff because a handful of them stepped in and did what we had to do during this pandemic."
Her staff have also been supporting parents online through Zoom conferences and phone calls, walking them through the behaviours they were experiencing at home.
Baysarowcih says they already work closely with the school boards to develop learning plans for the children. She hopes once September comes they will be able to bank the hours they missed over the pandemic and then transition into school “when clinically appropriate.”
“What we will do is absolutely be working with the schools to ensure our clients have a clear cut transition plan in order to come back while ensuring the safety of the staff and our students reentering that environment,” she said.
Alexanda Adamo, spokesperson for Minister of Education Stephen Lecce, says to support students with special needs — including autism — transition back to school, boards are being asked to:
- Consider changes in the school environment and/or remote learning needs when reviewing and updating IEPs.
- Consider additional planning and transition time for students with special education needs to support a smoother transition to school.
- Providing continued access to assistive technology.
- Provide students with significant special education needs, for whom remote learning may be challenging, the option of attending school every day in modified delivery scenarios.
- Work with partners including public health, children’s treatment centres, and local health integration networks, to develop local protocols for the access of non-school based providers, such as rehabilitation therapists and nursing staff, and supporting remote delivery of these services where in-school delivery is not possible.
All 72 school boards are projected to receive and increase to their grants for student needs for the upcoming school year, which includes $3.2 billion in special-education grants, an increase of approximately $61.9 million from the 2019-20 school year.
There is also a $213-million Supports for Students fund that can be used for any additional critical staffing needs required during the return to school in September, including educational assistants for students needing extra support.
