Coronavirus: effects on children online

Executive Summary

"Covid-19 has affected the lives of billions of people across the world, with unprecedented peacetime restrictions imposed. The reaction has been an extraordinary digital migration; a migration online to maintain some form of normality in terms of social, economic, entertainment and learning.

The increased use of digital infrastructure and services is clear to see right across the sector and resulted in a challenge for providers to meet the heighten demand and maintain access to their services. As Margrethe Vestager, the European Union’s digital chief pointed out “we have had a full-scale crash test of everything digital”.

When it comes to online technology, children are usually early adopters and sadly face threats and harms online. As the global pandemic and associated digital migration intensified, organisations started to highlight the increased risk of harm to children.

The predictions of threats and harms have highlighted a broad range of impacts on children, spanning child sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse material online through the impact of the restrictions and school closures on childrens health and wellbeing.


Whilst helpful to focus the mind and support preventative measures, appreciating the realisation of predictions is important. Whilst still a matter of weeks into the global pandemic, evidence of impact on children has started to emerge, published by organisations and youth groups as they share their experience and data. This is helpful in understanding the emerging impact on children online and compiled in this report"

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Kooth sees Significantly Higher Increases in Suicidal Thoughts, Anxiety and Depression among BAME Young People, Compared to White Counterparts

""XenZone, the UK’s largest digital mental health provider, has today released new data from its Kooth service showing the major mental health impacts of Covid-19 on children and young people (CYP) from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds.

Suicidal thoughts, self harm and anxiety all saw significantly higher increases than were seen among white CYP.

For depression, the data shows a 9.2% increase for BAME CYP, contrasting sharply with a 16.2% fall among their white counterparts.

Suicidal thoughts among BAME CYP increased by 26.6% on the same period last year; self harm has seen a 29.5% increase; anxiety/stress is up by 11%. Among white CYP, increases in these presenting issues are being seen, but at significantly lower levels (18.1%, 24.9% and 3% respectively).

According to counsellor and therapeutic content writer at XenZone, Aisha Gordon-Hiles, it is vital that barriers to understanding are minimised to ensure that those from different backgrounds feel understood:

“Many BAME children and young people feel barriers to cultural understanding are reduced when speaking to a practitioner from their community. They also feel they can talk about issues of race and culture freely, without fears of judgement and or racism in response.

“In addition to this, having BAME role models in the field of mental health is particularly important for CYP from BAME communities. This is because disclosures of mental health and wellbeing issues are less culturally appropriate in a lot of these communities.”"

Link to article
Link to Infographic

"DigiSafe: your new step-by-step guide to digital safeguarding"

"Since April 2020 charities across the UK have been rushing to migrate their face-to-face services online. They've applied their safeguarding knowledge to a new context with enthusiasm and commitment. But best practice guidance has been dispersed and sometimes hard to find. Until now."

"Launched today, DigiSafe is a step-by-step digital safeguarding guide. It's written for charities designing new digital services or taking existing ones online."

“A guide that helps charities continue to deliver safe and effective services while breaking new ground in both content and style.” - Charné Tromp, DigiSafe Lead at CAST.

Link

SOCIAL ANXIETY | How I’m preventing lockdown triggering a relapse

Webinar: Supporting children, young people and their families during the...

Remote support toolkit Evidence-based practices for supporting young people's mental health and wellbeing remotely during Covid-19

The toolkit pulls together best practice learning on how to support young people’s mental health and wellbeing remotely in a safe and accessible way. It's been designed to make it easy for you to find the information you need to provide engaging online services at your organisation, whether you have a remote offer that you're looking to strengthen, or are embarking on offering remote support for the first time. Explore the toolkit by selecting a section below, or click here to get started.

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Supporting care-experienced children and young people during the Covid-19 crisis and its aftermath

02 June 2020

"This advice is intended for foster and kinship carers, adoptive parents, and professionals who work with care-experienced children in schools, residential care homes and other settings across the United Kingdom. Terminology is slightly different in the different nations of the UK, and where possible we have tried to reflect this. We have used the term ‘care-experienced’ for all looked after and adopted children and those in kinship or residential care. This guidance has a focus on thinking about care-experienced children and young people particularly in relation to education during the Covid-19 pandemic."


"The Covid-19 pandemic has made us all think about how we work together to support the most vulnerable children in our society. Care-experienced children and young people are some of the most vulnerable and are therefore very much at the forefront of our minds. This period of social isolation, partial school closure, and reduction in social care and therapeutic services has highlighted the vital role schools play in maintaining the health and wellbeing of children as well as providing them with an education. Some schools are closed to students, and only a handful of children are attending, and there is an additional burden on foster and kinship carers, adoptive parents and professionals who support care-experienced children in a range of settings. This paper outlines some of the key challenges care-experienced children, young people and those close to them may want to think about at this time, and then provides advice and resources that may help."


Link to Guidance