Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on disabled children and adults across the Equality and Human Rights Commission life domains: a Rapid Evidence Map
The background to this is that it was thought that during the COVID-19 pandemic that disabled adults and children were disadvantaged and suffered disproportionately across education, working & living standards, health, justice and personal security and participation. It was decided to review studies in a “rapid evidence map” and this work examined studies from the first wave of the pandemic in 2020. When this review was being done 68 studies were looked at.
When looking at health the things that were most frequently mentioned were mental health, access to health care, and health outcomes.
There was limited evidence found for the education domain in comparison to the others that were looked at.
This review was looked at in respect to those in Wales. The review looked at surveys rather than individual or focus group interviews.
The review found limited evidence and looked at studies that were about people in general who were disabled instead of those who had specific impairments. So, it is possible that people with specific impairments were not considered, and it is acknowledged that this is a weakness of this review.
The review found limited evidence that the needs of those who were disabled were compromised during at least the first wave of COVID-19. Unfortunately, even despite the fact this review was concentrating on the needs of people in Wales, only 2 of the studies concerned those who were disabled in Wales.
There was a lack of evidence about the justice and personal security domains and limited evidence about the education domain.
Another weakness that is acknowledged about this review is that because it looked mainly at studies in the first wave that were done rapidly, that the studies had not had the chance to be “peer reviewed” (a process where those who are experts in the subject look at the papers from a study and its results and comment on the paper before it is published; the authors of the paper then get a chance to re write their papers taking account of the comments received).
This review was done rapidly to inform policy decisions but the weaknesses about the review that have been acknowledged need to be borne in mind. It concentrated on where there was most evidence – health and access to health, in a more detailed “rapid review”.
This rapid review included 19 UK studies, 18 of which were peer reviewed. Ten were quantitative which means they involved statistics and numbers. Five were qualitative that involved talking to people in interviews, and 4 were mixed methods that involved different research methods.
Eight included adults with 5 involving people with impairments and 7 with children. All these included children with specific impairments and 4 included both adults and children. Three of these studies were with people with learning difficulties and 3 studies considered disabled people as a whole group. None of these studies concentrated on people in Wales specifically.
There were comparisons made in 7 studies to either pre-pandemic times or other disabled people. It cannot be assumed that the studies in this review considered all issues to do with those from other cultures or backgrounds.
There were concerns identified about issues that disabled people had accessing services. There were reports of those who were disabled finding it twice as hard as those who were not disabled to access services during the first wave of the pandemic. Reports of remote services were mixed and there were reports that lack of face-to-face appointments and the use of face masks made it very hard for those with hearing loss.
During the first wave of the pandemic those whose were disabled were no more likely to have COVID-19 but were more likely to be hospitalised when they did have it and when in hospital were more like to need respiratory interventions or be admitted to intensive care. The average stay when in hospital was on average three and a half days longer than for other people.
Mortality rates were higher for those who were disabled and there was inequality in access to mental health care. Many of these studies were from the first wave of the pandemic and a few were from the second wave. There is a definite need for more research to be done and for work to be done on how services recover from the pandemic.
REM00025