Ensuring a constancy amid uncertainties
Over 57,000 children in Hong Kong with special education needs are going through tough challenges trying to adapt to the environment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Li Bingcun reports.
While much of the world remains locked down amid the pandemic with stores shut and schools closed, life carries on, pretty much like nothing has changed, at more than 20 schools in Hong Kong. More than 300 of the city’s about 5,7000 special needs students continue their lives at live-in schools, much as before COVID-19 came to command the world’s headlines. What has changed, through all this, is that the teachers and caregivers all wear masks.
Principal Fong Sheung-wan of Hong Chi Pinehill No 2 School admitted that, for staff members, it’s a high stress situation but it would be much worse for special needs children, if the security of constancy were taken away from them.
“We know clearly we can’t give in to the stress. The students need our help.” Fong said.
The students still sleep in their dormitories, attend classes and play with their friends during the day. Life goes on, while the rest of Hong Kong’s schools, from kindergarten to secondary school, even some special schools remain closed indefinitely due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Yet those special schools with residential service have remained open for needy children. Fong’s school is one of them.
The city has 60 government-aided schools for children with special education needs (SEN). Most of the students have physical or intellectual impairment.
Fong’s school houses 60 students with severe intellectual disabilities. Since the coronavirus emerged in the city in late January, 30 of them have been brought home and the others retained. Most of those who stayed have particular needs for nursing. Some are unable to speak and some cannot walk in a normal way. They need help with almost everything — dining, showering, using the toilet, even sleeping.
Many have complex medical issues. Some have to be fed through tubes. Many already have weakened natural immunity owing to chronic and unstable health conditions.
SEN students are quite vulnerable, especially to large-scale pandemics, Fong said. That helps explain why work at the school has to carry on in the face of every crisis, from typhoons to SARS in 2003. Compared with previous challenges, this time seems to be particular arduous, considering its lengthy duration.
The risk of infection is high on the campus. Dozens of students live together around the clock in a relatively confined space. They have close contact with staff members who come to help them every day.
The school requires staff members to wear face masks all the time while they are working, and to change the masks frequently. The places where students go to are disinfected each day.
All the students are required to maintain social distancing during group activities. They also have been separated into two groups which take turns doing their regular activities.
Staff members check every student’s temperature six times daily. They’re watched more closely. How much water they drink and even how often they turn over in bed are being monitored.
Staff shortages are a chronic problem at SEN schools, especially at places like Hong Chi Pinehill No 2 School where there are kids with severe intellectual disabilities. The students here need caregivers with refined expertise and a great deal of patience — and now things have gotten tougher.
There are 16 house parents who are responsible for the 30 students. The students most severely afflicted need more than one caregiver. The hours for dining and bathing can become a nightmare. Cleaning staff are sometimes drafted to help.
There’s no stable supply of protective gear. The school had to compete with everyone else in the city for sanitizers, disinfectants and medical alcohol. The panic buying of even toilet paper in early February left the school with just two weeks’ supply.
Face masks remain the most urgent need. Eighty staff members use 150 face masks a day. The school can maintain only a one-month supply.
Collective ordeal
Leung Wing-hung, chairman of the Hong Kong Special Schools
Council, said the situation at Hong Chi Pinehill No 2 School is repeated in local schools. The council is a local organization representing all of the city’s special schools.
According to him, all the dormitory departments of the city’s over 20 special schools with residential service accommodate students amid the pandemic at various degrees. Some set for severe intellectual disability children retained 70 to 80 percent students of their tally, while the rest also maintained 20 to 30 percent.
Leung added besides the shortages of staff and protective gear, which are shared by all special schools, some of them still face extra challenges.
During saner times, most students at residential schools went home on weekends and spent the Spring Festival holiday with their families. Some left the city during this year’s Spring Festival. That means the schools had to implement additional quarantine measures after the holidays.
Some schools were affected by the government’s border control restrictions, which are meant to contain the pandemic. Since Feb 8, everyone entering Hong Kong from the Chinese mainland is required to stay at home under a mandatory, 14-day quarantine. Some students never got back after the holidays because their families live on the mainland, and are forced to remain there.
That presents a special problem. Some of them need medicines that are hard to get on the mainland. Express companies refuse to handle cross-boundary delivery of medicines. The schools have had to depend on parents who need to go to the mainland, or cross-boundary truck drivers, to deliver medicines to students in need, Leung said.
Trials for parents
For schools, it’s a collective ordeal. Families are left with individual trials, on top of everything else that’s going on with the pandemic. Wong Hoi-man is a mother of two autistic sons. One boy, who is 12-year-old, has normal intelligence and studies at a regular school. The other, who is 8, has mild intellectual disability and attends special school. All of the city’s non-tertiary schools suspended classes in late January. The date for classes to reopen has been set back several times.
It’s the same issue for every child who attends school but it is especially troubling for SEN children. They need more time to adapt to changes, Wong said. The situation is most evident in her younger son.
The boy, stuck at home for more than two months, lost his temper and cries a lot. Sometimes, he hits himself.
When his older brother is taking online lessons, the younger child will often shout, or create other disturbances. That makes it harder for the older boy, because if he misses something in a lesson, he has no way of picking up on it later.
Most parents don’t even know how they are supposed to help their kids learn at home. Without any timetable or dedicated learning environment, children have difficulty concentrating.
Wong tries to help her sons by setting up timetables, which she makes them follow. She does what she can, hoping she can teach the boys something by playing games with them. Wong acknowledges that she’s no teacher but she hopes her efforts to adapt toys and even the furniture into learning experiences will offer at least some progress.
She still worries about the possible long-term effects the situation has on the boys’ physical and mental health. She’s also worried they may take a long time to re-adapt when classes resume.
Impact on therapy
Many of the non-emergency medical services that have been stopped during the COVID-19 lockdown are therapeutic services for SEN children.
Leung explained it has to be that way. The therapies involved require close contact between therapists and children. That creates a higher risk of infection for kids.
Yet, he also warned of consequences of suspension of services. These therapies, which involve physical coordination, communication skills and emotional management, are meant to help the young people adapt to their world, in the hope that someday, they can live independently.
Long-time suspension may cause setbacks, meaning even more time will be needed for the students to adapt, Leung cautioned. It’s especially difficult for graduating students, most of whom will be going into the workforce, he pointed out.
Leung said the schools will intensify training after resuming classes. He explained that means inviting therapists to visit more often, and prolonging the treatment. He also hopes parents will do their part and not just rely on therapists and schools.
Parents can help with simple exercises for improving balance and physical strength, Leung added. He has noticed that despite the video guidance given by schools, many parents seem to be bothered.
“They might worry they can’t do it well, or simply feel it’s troublesome to take the time. But, they do have to realize they are the closest ones to their children, whether there’s a pandemic or not,” Leung said.
Nobody can make a reasonable prediction about where this is headed, for the future. The invisible enemy, whose existence wasn’t known by most of the world four months ago, has now claimed 184,000 lives. The virus has infected more than 2.6 million people globally, including over 1,000 in Hong Kong.
Some local medical experts fear the pandemic will not be contained by July in the city, and will prove a seasonal outbreak coming back year after year. For these special needs children and their caregivers, the trial is far from over.