The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Children and Adolescents with Disabilities: Education, Development, and Well-being of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Families

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound and sudden impact on many areas of life for families of students with disabilities. Some of these changes include but are not limited to: adaptations to new family schedules, remote learning, and parents and caregivers working full time from home. These changes have also affected educational processes in formal and informal learning environments. Such changes have placed an additional burden on families, including families of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Given these challenges, it is worthwhile to investigate how the pandemic has affected culturally and linguistically diverse families of students with disabilities. This research topic will examine how the pandemic affected families with existing services, IEP programs and services that were changed, terminated, or modified, and accessing new services for either themselves or their students with disabilities.

Parents and caregivers of students with (versus without) disabilities have higher levels of stress. In fact, extant literature suggests that the global pandemic has exacerbated the well-being of families of children with disabilities. Prior to the pandemic, parental well-being was associated with student’s receipt of services and parental advocacy responsibility. In addition, research on culturally and linguistically diverse families noted an increased negative impact on academic achievement among this population. the aim of this research topic is to examine how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected service receipt for students with disabilities or its impact on well-being of caregivers among culturally and linguistically diverse families.

This Research Topic aims to contribute to our understanding of culturally and linguistically diverse families by examining changes during the COVID-19 pandemic associated with service receipt for students with disabilities. In addition, this research topic identifies how the changes due to COVID-19 have affected the well-being of families care for a student with a disability.

Contributions are not restricted to specific age groups, disciplines, learning settings, cultural regions, or methodological approaches. Interested authors should submit an abstract (no more than 250 words) describing their proposed manuscript. Editors will review and invite selected authors to submit full manuscripts for possible inclusion in this article collection.