How COVID-19 May Change the World of Services to People With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.

Bradley (2020) wrote a roadmap paper. It asks one big question. How can COVID-19 teach us to build a stronger service system for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities?

The paper is not an experiment. It is a story that links each pandemic problem to a future fix. Telehealth, flexible staffing, and family-led planning sit at the center of the vision.

The author found that the virus broke old habits. When clinics closed, staff still found ways to help. Those emergency fixes can become permanent upgrades.

The paper ends with a call to action. Keep the best crisis moves—like video visits and rapid plan changes—after the pandemic ends.

Rosencrans et al. (2021) give the idea legs. They tracked Dutch adults with IDD who used an unplanned telehealth hotline. Calls jumped during lockdown, proving remote help meets real need.

Ingersoll et al. (2024) and Bentenuto et al. (2021) show the same pattern in Italy. One team kept residential psychological services online. The other saw child behavior worsen when therapy stopped. Both studies extend J’s plea: embed telehealth before the next crisis.

Patton et al. (2020) looks like a twin. Both papers landed in 2020 and map a post-COVID service world. The overlap is so strong that the two pieces act as conceptual replications of each other.

You can treat the paper as a checklist for your own program. Ask: Which pandemic work-arounds helped clients most? Turn those into standard options—permanent telehealth slots, flexible session lengths, and family choice about in-person or screen. Start small: pick one service line this week and write the backup telehealth plan before the next disruption hits.