Table 3.

Novel Barriers to Resource Connection During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Theme	Representative Quotations
1. Increased cost of food and increased stress associated with grocery shopping	“Food right now, after COVID-19, is extremely expensive. Eggs went up in price, milk went up in price, fruits and stuff. Things that my kids wanted to eat. I noticed that it’s much more expensive… and because the schools were closed, the daycares were closed, I had to spend even more money on food because I had to make sure my kids would have something to eat. When you don’t have food for yourself, for your kids, you cannot think about anything else.” “There was so much stress all the way around. Every time we’d go grocery shopping, it wasn’t only how much more it was costing us to grocery shop, because the prices on everything went up for quite a bit there, but it was also the fear of going to the store and not knowing, you know, people weren’t following all the recommendations for the longest time. People didn’t want to wear masks…So we worried a lot.”
2. Administrative delays associated with accessing government programs	“During the whole Corona situation, my food stamp card took a really long time to come, and I didn’t have any food in the refrigerator for a while because of that. It still ain’t get here yet, and it’s been three months. I haven’t gotten anything since April.” “I’m a cook, so my restaurant got shut down and then my job got shut down. I wasn’t working, so I wasn’t getting paid…I would borrow food constantly, just to make sure I have food. Because even though the coronavirus was happening, and I wasn’t working, when I went to go file for food stamps, the government still said I made too much money. Because I didn’t lose my job, it’s just that my job wasn’t open because of the coronavirus, and so I had to file for unemployment first. And then when I filed for unemployment, I tried to file for food stamps again, but the government was still telling me that I was making too much money, even though I wasn’t even working.”
3. Loss of in-home and school-based services for children with medical complexity	“My baby needs in person physical therapy and in person occupational therapy, and right now we’re doing everything online, you know, and unfortunately she would do much better with hands on therapy, but you know, it’s up to me to do it all at home. I wish the risk wasn’t there so we could get her everything she needs…the extra hands-on stuff would be huge for her.” “My son has special needs, and before, I used to drop [him] at school, and then at least I’d have time to go shopping, or time to just breathe, or go back to sleep if I had worked the same day. And now that he’s not in school, it’s constant. Constantly waking up at 6 in the morning and not going to sleep until 11 o’clock at night. And even when you do get a break then it’s like oh, it’s already time to do this for him. There’s always something going on.”