Impact of COVID-19 on Occupational Therapy Service Delivery in Public Schools

Merrick Hall Room 204

The COVID-19 pandemic had a major effect across the US, but the impact on the school system was a major focus within the media. Due to federal legislation, public schools are required to provide accommodations to children with disabilities in order to make them successful in schools. There is a lack of research on the effect COVID-19 had on related services which these students are provided. To bring more understanding to this aspect of the public school system, this study investigated the impact COVID-19 had on the delivery of occupational therapy services provided to children with disabilities in Ohio public schools from the 2019-2020 to the 2021-2022 school years. This study had thirteen occupational therapists participate, with eleven included in the data analysis. Interviews were conducted using the semi-structured interview format. These interviews were recorded and then transcribed. After the transcription was completed, the interviews were analyzed for word frequency. The most frequent words said were parents and school. The word parent was said 246 times within the eleven interviews and the word school was said 316 times. Based on the frequency of all the words chosen for analysis, four themes emerged. These four themes were: home life, service delivery, social and/or emotional mindset, and school performance. As discussed in these interviews, the occupational therapists felt COVID-19 resulted in better understanding of the home life of the children they work with, an increase in the amount of evaluation referrals, and IEP and evaluation team meetings moving online. The main limitation for this study was the small sample size because it limited the overall breadth of the study. Further long term research should be conducted in order to determine the effect the increase evaluation referrals has had on the special education system.