Children and COVID-19 Research Library

My New Normal is a small qualitative study in Nepal and Zambia, that explores the impact on children’s lives under COVID-19 restrictions, particularly school closures. The study was commissioned and supported by Save the Children Sponsorship programs and led by Key Aid Consulting. It employs a range of methods, such as PhotoVoice, empathy mapping, emoji charts, and daily routine analyses, to give children a voice and opportunity to tell their story. The results have been used to support national advocacy campaigns, and have been disseminated in accessible ways back to the participating children and communities.

Globally, over 1.5 billion children have had their schools closed due to COVID-19 since early 2020.1 For the first time in history, an entire generation of children have had their education disrupted. In Cambodia, more than 3 million children have been out of school for over most of the past year, with two major waves of schools closures since March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.2 The loss, on average, of nearly 10% of children’s expected total lifetime schooling will not only have caused significant learning losses, but has put many children at risk of dropping out of school entirely.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted food supply chains and economic systems worldwide. With countries facing disrupted livelihoods, restricted movements, disrupted markets, border closures and rising food prices, this study aimed to understand how these disruptions may have impacted cost and affordability of the diet. The pilot aimed to leverage existing price data to adapt the HEA and CotD methodologies for real-time monitoring of the cost and affordability of a nutritious diet changes over time in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. This brief presents key learnings for policy makers and technical learnings for practitioners.

Documented good practices, programmatic interventions and alternative approaches that has been implemented in response to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on child marriage in the Middle East and North Africa region is presented in this study. Furthermore, key recommendations for strengthening child marriage prevention programming during the COVID-19 pandemic are presented.

The goal of this research was to utilize behavioural interventions to promote the covering of coughs and sneezes, so as to reduce COVID-19 transmission. The survey covered a wide variety of questions, including daily activities, health and safety choices, perceptions on precautionary measures, and the impact that COVID has had on their lives.  There were two major objectives for this online experiment: 1) To determine the impact of different message framing on respondents’ intentions to cover coughs and sneezes and 2) To understand how COVID-related risks affect daily activities and the precautions being taken to minimize risk.

This report investigates the situation facing unaccompanied minors during Covid-19 in Samos. Drawing from desk research, interviews with unaccompanied minors and staff working with them, the report findings underline the further deterioration of an already acute and protracted situation. The children are trapped in dismal reception conditions without appropriate and adequate services. The access to medical care and psychological rehabilitation is grossly insufficient and unaccompanied children face acute safety risks due to being treated as adults, in clear contravention of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In consequence, these conditions and the lack of protection has bred a mental health crisis on the island.

COVID-19 has had an unprecedented impact on the functioning and programming of the humanitarian sector. Despite challenges, the pandemic may present opportunities to fast track a shift towards a locally-led response by reinforcing the commitment of aid organisations to implementing responses “as local as possible and as international as necessary” (IASC 2016: 3). This report explores if and how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted access to and use of learning opportunities for those engaged in the humanitarian sector in the framework of localisation and related capacity strengthening initiatives.

Family Care First (FCF) and Responsive and Effective Child Welfare Systems Transformation (REACT), facilitated by Save the Children, is a multi-donor supported network of organizations working together to support children to live in safe, nurturing family-based care. FCF|REACT works collaboratively with the government, local and international NGOs, academic institutions and UN agencies, to promote and strengthen family-based care. With approximately 60 member organizations, some of whom are funded, FCF|REACT is working to prevent children from being separated from their families and increase the number of children that are safely and successfully integrated into family care. A key element of FCF|REACT is integrating learnings from good practice research into interventions. Given the lack of previous studies covering gender intersectionality for vulnerable children in Cambodia, FCF|REACT is trying to understand the effects of gender, identity, and institutional practices on the well-being of children in alternative care.

COVID-19 poses a serious threat to a country’s development, particularly in the education sector. In partnership with CARE International, and as part of Cambodia’s GPE-funded COVID-19 Accelerating Funding Response and Recovery programme, UNICEF has awarded SCI with implementing the Communication for Education and Improved School Governance. The purpose of the project is to support the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport in the process of reopening schools and, in particular, reach the most vulnerable families and their children. To support the above project, this study was proposed and conducted. This study had two objectives: 1) to map the risk of drop-out at the district and province levels, and 2) to examine the determinants of drop-out risk. To meet the objectives of the study, data from joint COVID-19 rapid education assessment were employed. In this study, only student and caregiver data were used. To map school drop-out risk at the district and province levels, school drop-out risk was aggregated to the district and province levels using weighted averages. The study employed both descriptive and inferential statistics.

COVID-19 was at the center of the 2020 United Nations High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF). The pandemic not only forced to move the meeting to virtual but was part of almost every debate. Besides the information provided by the 2020 voluntary national review (VNR) reports on the pandemic and its first impacts on the sustainable development goals (SDGs), the UN system, the private sector, civil society, and academia produced studies of the actual situations and figured out future scenarios.

At least 1.2 million children across Lebanon have had their education disrupted for more than one year, with many having last attended school in October 2019, following protests and civil unrest. This is impacting Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian children alike. With the country slipping deeper into an economic crisis, a safe and systematic school reopening in Lebanon is difficult to imagine. Even before this, children across the country already had lower than average literacy and numeracy rates in the Middle East region. This brief by Save the Children calls for global attention and action on the unfolding education crisis in Lebanon.  It draws from national and global data sources, sectoral recommendations, and the experiences of children in the country.

On 16 March 2020, the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) took the decision to close all education institutions, including public and private schools, as a preventative measure against the spread of COVID-19. These school closures have resulted in disruptions to learning in all of Cambodia’s estimated 13,482 schools, from pre-school through to upper secondary schools, with an estimated 3.2 million students effected. In response, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS), together with development partners (and other stakeholders, made significant efforts to provide continuous distance learning to children across all education levels. To assist with continuous quality improvement of distance education services during this difficult time, MoEYS and the Education Sector Working Group (ESWG) decided to undertake a comprehensive, coordinated assessment of the sector to gain evidence to help identify the best approaches to inform the further development of COVID-19 response and recovery efforts; to support the development of evidence-based response policies and practices, and to inform a holistic national response and recovery plan.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated an existing learning crisis in Sierra Leone, and has disrupted the learning of over 2.4 million children across the country. The most marginalised and deprived children, including girls, children from poor households, and children from rural areas, already had limited access to good quality education prior to the pandemic, and are now at an increased risk of being left behind, and not returning to school at all. Save the Children are calling on the Government of Sierra Leone to commit to realising the right to quality education for all children by ensuring that all children are able to return to school safely, and that long-term, systemic issues with the education system damaging the quality of learning are acted on to ensure that all children are able to access good quality education.

This briefing calls for a global response and the global, equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines in order to make real progress on ending the pandemic and minimizing its impact on children. It makes the case for why this is a matter of rights, equity, public health, and economics and must be addressed as a matter of urgency. It sets out key areas of action for governments, donors, and other key stakeholders.

A generation of children in America are experiencing multiple hardships brought on by the coronavirus. Many millions more children are now hungry, missing out on school, and worried about their family’s economic future. For children who were struggling before COVID-19, things have gotten worse.