Sharing threads this week from our medical complexity study.

Having a disabled child should not be a pathway to poverty, but too often it is. Our survey showed that 49% of families saw a decrease in household income during the pandemic. 1/

Full report: https://spice.nursing.ubc.ca/outreach/ 

Before the pandemic, when kids were in school & had access to daycare, 38 (about 25%) of respondents were not employed. After the pandemic, this increased to 52 (about 33% of sample). For comparison, in September 2020, the unemployment for the general pop’n in BC was 10.7%. 2/

Before the pandemic, 15 parents were accessing food security programs; after the pandemic, this increased to 26 parents. The survey was conducted in August, where are these numbers at now? 3/

One of our key recommendations is to make the federal caregiver pay benefit permanent & to expand it to include those who were unemployed or under-employed pre-pandemic d/t caregiving. Many families are missing out on this benefit because this was the case before COVID-19. /FIN