Physicians at McMaster Children’s Hospital are calling for the return to in-person learning in Ontario as soon as possible to avoid further negative impacts on kids’ health and well-being.
Hospital officials say the number of children being admitted after a suicide attempt has tripled since this time last year, and referrals to the hospital’s eating disorders program have increased by 90 per cent since last spring.
“The longer that students remain out of the classroom, the worrisome health trends we are seeing will increase exponentially and potentially cause irreparable damage to an entire generation,” writes Bruce Squires, president of McMaster Children’s Hospital.
“Even a few weeks in the classroom will provide the much-needed mental health, educational, and social benefits our children desperately need at the end of this disrupted school year.”
Dr. Jeffrey Pernica, head of pediatric infectious disease at the children’s hospital and associate professor at McMaster University, said the impact of kids being out of school goes beyond hospitalizations.
“Nobody is talking about the number of kids who are not going to graduate high school, who are not going to get employment, who are going to have issues with eating disorders for the rest of their lives,” said Pernica. “Nobody is thinking about what this generation is going to be like in 20 years.
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“And I think what is becoming clear now is that we have this opportunity to get them back in school for another month and mitigate some of the damage that has been done.”
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Experts have said that online learning has been extremely challenging for some children, pointing to more absences, a lack of engagement, losing out on socialization, and increased risks for vulnerable youth.
Pernica said students from lower-income and marginalized families face more barriers when learning from home, which has caused those children to fall further behind in school.
“I shudder to think of what is going to be the end result of all this because there are going to be a massive number of resources that are required to catch these people up, to say nothing of the tens of thousands of children across Canada who are just lost to school.”
Ontario’s chief medical officer of health has said he’d like to see students return to their classrooms before the province starts reopening in mid-June.
Dr. David Williams said health units across the province have expressed support for the reopening of schools, adding that the province may also pursue a regional approach to allow some school boards to return to in-person learning sooner than others.
A decision is expected “soon”.
Pernica said he’s hopeful the province will move forward with a return to in-person learning, even if that includes a regional approach.
“If there is a reasonable possibility to salvage 10 per cent of the school year with in-person learning, we should absolutely do that,” Pernica said.
“We should absolutely do that for all those kids who have been doing nothing at home for the past little while, for those kids whose mental and emotional health depend on it, for those kids who are just seeking to have a bit of normality.”
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