**1. Crisis Brings Innovative Strategies**

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is causing a global crisis, not only because of the rapid spread of the virus but also the impact of public health strategies currently in place, aiming to stop human-to-human transmission. The social distancing measures that many countries have implemented have caused huge disruptions to daily routines. Children with or without disabilities are no longer playing outside, as playgrounds are currently closed in most countries and lockdown restricts outings. Families are no longer getting together, celebrating, or sharing key milestones with extended family members, and children are not seeing their grandparents, cousins, or uncles and aunts. Almost 90% of children are not attending schools around the world; that is, 1.5 billon children are not receiving regular education [1]. For children with disabilities and their families, social distancing measures mean a lack of access to the resources they usually have through schools and habilitation or rehabilitation services [2,3]. This shows the need for a change in service provision to ensure continuity of care for children with disabilities.

During a crisis, like the COVID-19 pandemic, it is essential to prioritize inclusion, collaboration, diversity, and equity. Most important, in our opinion, for the habilitation and rehabilitation of children with disabilities, the COVID-19 crisis may facilitate the global adoption of innovative strategies in remote service provision. Some examples of

**Citation:** Schiariti, V.; McWilliam, R.A. Crisis Brings Innovative Strategies: Collaborative Empathic Teleintervention for Children with Disabilities during the COVID-19 Lockdown. *Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health* **2021**, *18*, 1749. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/ijerph18041749

Academic Editor: William Douglas Evans Received: 10 January 2021 Accepted: 7 February 2021 Published: 11 February 2021

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changes that can be accelerated during and after the COVID-19 pandemic—at a global level—are as follows: setting collaborative and meaningful goals; focusing on abilities; empowering families; emphasizing children's rights to express their feelings and opinions; fostering emotional and nurturing connections among professionals and families; changing attitudes towards disability; and improving distance service provision by applying early intervention principles beyond the age of five years.

While the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread across the globe, children with or without disabilities continue to grow and develop. Children's development is a dynamic process by which the child moves progressively from dependency on everyday functioning towards maturity and independence. In this dynamic process, the child's functioning depends on continuous interactions with the family or other caregivers. These interactions frame the acquisition of various skills, showing the importance of seeing the child in the context of the family [4]. For children with disabilities who need habilitation and rehabilitation, service delivery models that base their interventions on the children's natural contexts to support them in their daily routines and functioning are essential.
