Children with Special Needs (CWSN) in the Pandemic mediated Socio-Psychological Emergency

Navigating Social Emotional Wellbeing Challenges

Abstract

‘Emergency’ and ‘Regular’ are contrasting in nature in the sense of frequency of occurrence, but human civilization is going through a new discourse of experiences where emergencies are becoming regular phenomena, either natural or man-made. People have witnessed and suffered a different degree of social disaster leading to injury to emotional wellbeing. In the time when normalcy remains being seized off in an emergency, children who belong to the CWSN category with differential ability are becoming marginal among the vulnerable group. In recent pre-COVID years, challenges of emotional wellbeing of children is being acknowledged as global development issues. The wellbeing of Children with Special Needs (CWSN) was fragile enough even before the pandemic episode, and that has not been addressed for long. Social Emotional Wellbeing might be considered as a condition that is sustainable in nature empowers the individual to evolve and thrive and is thus correlated to the kind of accomplishment at personal and interpersonal space, allowing a person to adopt pro-social behaviours, which enable them to maintain positive relationships in the social ecosystem. Contemporary research suggests that the current level of challenges of emotional wellbeing in CWSN children is extremely acute. A narrative review technique has been employed in the present study to explore how the CWSN children have navigated during an emergency. The present researcher searched, identified and selected articles and policy advocacies which focused on the social issues of CWSN. The findings reveal that the nature of complexity of such a pandemic on social emotional wellbeing is extreme and unique for CWSN. It is high time to engage in formulation of new relevant policy and framework for capacity building of other stakeholders to ensure socio-emotional immunity to the children with special needs.