Thousands of young children lost parents to Covid but help is scarce

Thousands of young children lost parents to Covid. Where’s help for them? More than 46,000 children in the U.S. have lost a parent to Covid-19. Finding support for them remains a challenge. NBC News

Five months after her husband died of Covid-19, Valerie Villegas can see how grief has wounded her children.

Nicholas, the baby, who was 1 and almost weaned when his father died, now wants to nurse at all hours and calls every tall, dark-haired man “Dada,” the only word he knows. Robert, 3, regularly collapses into furious tantrums, stopped using the big-boy potty and frets about sick people giving him germs. Ayden, 5, recently announced it’s his job to “be strong” and protect his mom and brothers. ...

... in a nation where researchers calculate that more than 46,000 children have lost one or both parents to Covid-19 since February 2020, Villegas and other survivors say finding basic services for their bereaved kids — counseling, peer support groups, financial assistance — has been difficult, if not impossible.

“They say it’s out there,” Villegas said. “But trying to get it has been a nightmare.”

Interviews with nearly two dozen researchers, therapists and other experts on loss and grief, as well as families whose loved ones died of Covid-19, reveal the extent to which access to grief groups and therapists grew scarce during the pandemic. Providers scrambled to switch from in-person to virtual visits and waiting lists swelled, often leaving bereft children and their surviving parents to cope on their own.

“Losing a parent is devastating to a child,” said Alyssa Label, a San Diego therapist and program manager with SmartCare Behavioral Health Consultation Services. “Losing a parent during a pandemic is a special form of torture.”

Children can receive survivor benefits when a parent dies if that parent worked long enough in a job that required payment of Social Security taxes. During the pandemic, the number of minor children of deceased workers who received new benefits has surged, reaching nearly 200,000 in 2020, up from an average of 180,000 in the previous three years. Social Security Administration officials don’t track cause of death, but the latest figures marked the most awards granted since 1994. Covid deaths “undoubtedly” fueled that spike, according to the SSA’s Office of the Chief Actuary.

And the number of children eligible for those benefits is surely higher. Only about half of the 2 million children in the U.S. who have lost a parent as of 2014 received the Social Security benefits to which they were entitled, according to a 2019 analysis by David Weaver of the Congressional Budget Office. ...

In a country that showered philanthropic and government aid on the 3,000 children who lost parents to the 9/11 terror attacks, there’s been no organized effort to identify, track or support the tens of thousands of kids left bereaved by Covid-19.

“I’m not aware of any group working on this,” said Joyal Mulheron, the founder of Evermore, a nonprofit foundation that focuses on public policy related to bereavement. “Because the scale of the problem is so huge, the scale of the solution needs to match it.” ...

Failing to address the growing cohort of bereaved children, whether in a single family or in the U.S. at large, could have long-lasting effects, researchers said. Loss of a parent in childhood has been linked to higher risks of substance use, mental health problems, poor performance in school, lower college attendance, lower employment and early death. ...