Social protection responses to the COVID-19 crisis for persons with disabilities: synthesis paper

This paper elaborates on some key findings of an in-depth analysis of the social protection response to the COVID-19 crisis for people with disability, including:

- Countries with existing disability benefits in place have been better positioned to provide support for persons with disabilities.

- Adequacy of disability benefits was a major issue before and during the crisis.

- The generally low coverage of pre-existing disability benefits limited the reach of the social protection response.

- Few countries were able to significantly expand the coverage of disability benefits (horizontal expansion).

- The lack of care and support services for children and adults with disabilities in many countries pre-crisis severely limited capacity of social protection system to tackle issues of disruption of family and community support informal systems due to COVID-/19.