COVID-19 mandates required residential youth care providers to quickly adapt services while adhering to state and local mandates which included school closures and limiting face-to-face encounters, impacting family visitation, stress, and potential disruption to reunification efforts. Indeed, services and activities traditionally conducted or performed in person required swift action to ensure delivery. The uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted programmatic shortcomings in residential youth care that range from staffing deficits to outdated policies on meetings and daily operations.

The current study explored challenges and opportunities experienced by residential care providers during the COVID-19 pandemic and ways providers responded to challenges. Data for the study were drawn from a larger study of residential group homes utilizing the Quality Standards Assessment (QSA). The current study sample was limited to participants who completed the QSA between January 2020-December 2021 and provided open-ended comments about experiences during COVID-19. The study sample included 30 state licensing specialists, 29 program directors, and 14 direct care specialists across 38 residential programs. A qualitative content analysis was used to classify open-ended text into four categories.

The categories reflected by the open-ended questions all relate to the distress and disturbance caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Comments reflected that the COVID-19 pandemic presented significant challenges to residential care providers, including impacts in family and community engagement, programmatic procedures, education, and residential care workforce and hiring practices. Responses to challenges included creating activities on-campus, conducting family visits virtually, shifting to on-campus schooling, and conducting re-licensing inspections virtually.

Residential youth programs adapted to challenges, while some gaps remained. Issues with school and being isolated from family and community were experienced among youth within residential care during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a highly vulnerable population, this challenge may present great risks – particularly with disrupting family connections and exacerbating educational delays. An important observation was the demonstration of how programs adapted to challenges to meet youths’ needs and maintain normalcy.