Children and COVID-19 Research Library

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic and its resulting economic crisis, UNICEF in the Republic of Moldova commissioned research to assess the impact of the reduced flow of remittances on families with children in the areas of health, education, nutrition and other child related social services, and to drive the development of an equity-focused and gender-sensitive midterm mitigation plan. The report revealed that worryingly, 15 per cent of households with children have even had to cut down on meals, especially expensive categories of food such as meat, fish, fruit and vegetables.

Public health measures necessary to  counteract the  coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have resulted in dramatic changes in the physical and social environments within which children grow and develop. As our understanding of the pathways for viral exposure and associated health outcomes in children evolves, it is critical to consider how changes in the social, cultural, economic, and physical environments resulting from the pandemic could affect the development of children. This review article considers the environments and settings that create the backdrop for children’s health in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic, including current threats to child development that stem from: A) change in exposures to environmental contaminants such as heavy metals, pesticides, disinfectants, air pollution and the built environment; B) changes in food environments resulting from adverse economic repercussion of the pandemic and limited reach of existing safety nets; C) limited access to children’s educational and developmental resources; D) changes in the social environments at the  individual and household levels, and their interplay with family stressors and mental health; E)  social injustice and racism. The environmental changes due to COVID-19 are overlaid onto existing environmental and social disparities. This results in  disproportionate effects among children in  low-income settings and among populations experiencing the effects of structural racism.

This study elucidates the responses of shelters and their adaptations to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the effects on their services to victims of violence, as well as how shelter managers assess the situation for victims, including changes in the rates and character of the violence observed by the shelters. A web-based survey was distributed twice to all Norwegian shelters (N = 46): first during the lockdown in spring 2020 and second during the relaxation of infection control measures in summer 2020. The shelters in Norway remained open during the COVID-19 pandemic. The majority saw a reduction in the number of requests during the lockdown, while the rates returned to normal when the strictest infection control measures were lifted. They expressed concern about the decline in requests during the lockdown as well as the well-being of some groups, such as victims from ethnic minority backgrounds, children, and victims with additional challenges.

A year after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, this research takes stock of an increasingly diverse set of new studies linking violence against women and children (VAW/C) to COVID-19 and associated pandemic response measures. This fourth round up focuses exclusively on research in low- and middle-income countries (LICs and MICs) published since December 2020 to highlight dynamics in settings that previously had fewer studies. As in previous round ups, this research only include studies that have sufficient information on indicator definition and analysis methods. In total, 26 new studies from LICs and MICs are summarized, with the majority focused on identifying trends (15 studies), while others present analysis of risk factors or dynamics (an additional ten studies), and one represents an impact analysis of prevention programming.

Consequences of COVID-19 pandemic responses have included exacerbated poverty, food insecurity and state and domestic violence. Such effects may be particularly pronounced amongst adolescents and young people living in contexts of precarity and constraint, including in South Africa. However, there are evidence gaps on the lived experiences of this group. Telephonic semi-structured interviews with adolescents and young people in two South African provinces (n = 12, ages 18–25) were conducted in April 2020 to explore and document their experiences, challenges and coping strategies during strict COVID-19 lockdown.

There is widespread concern that the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the incidence of child maltreatment. However, reports in the scientific literature documenting rates of child maltreatment during this period are scarce. This study was designed to explore whether the incidence of child maltreatment among patients presenting to a pediatric emergency department has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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.

A year after - as the world still grapples with COVID-19, children and families' lives are being turned upside down with devastating impacts on children and their rights. From health systems are being overwhelmed, economies are sliding down, and children have had their education disrupted by school closures, these conditions affect children from around the world including children from the world’s poorest countries in Asia. To mark the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Save The Children Asia Team presents ‘Under the Same Sky: How a year of Covid-19 affected Asia-Pacific children’.​ This brief focuses on how children’s daily lives have changed, comparing how they spent a day before the pandemic and during it across the Asia region. It also reviews the impacts & changes to the lives of children in the past 1 year. Reflects on the impact of school closures, home isolation/quarantine, and community lockdown on children's wellbeing and education & health. It includes policy asks on the need for strengthening social protection systems for the most marginalized and vulnerable children in a post-pandemic world.

This viewpoint offers a commentary on the status of Nepalese children of migrant workers in the brick kilns of the construction industry and the potential impacts of COVID-19 on their lives. The paper identifies a temporal cycle of movement in the life of a child from a migrant working family with the variances that need to be taken into consideration by stakeholders to tackle child labour, and to reduce risks to children of migrant workers posed by the current pandemic. It draws on the education and emergencies literature to examine ‘lessons learned’ and considers key questions to ask in the time of COVID-19, especially in the education sector, to mitigate further entrenchment of exclusion of this group of children in Nepal.

Violence against children impacts more than one billion children and costs world economies US $7 trillion annually. In 2015, the world’s leaders listed violence against children as one of the top priorities in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, thus acknowledging its serious impact on the health, education and long-term well-being of children and societies. Since then, an increasing number of countries have committed to accelerate progress in ending violence against children. However, progress has been slow and further undermined by the outbreak of COVID-19. Lack of political will and investment in child protection by national governments and donors are considered some of the critical obstacles to achieving results. However, without adequate mechanisms to monitor budget allocations at national or international levels, the quantity and effectiveness of investments are often difficult to determine. This report offers a rare glimpse into the state of donor investment to end violence against children and offers key findings and reccomendations for how to improve the situation in the future.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted families in a variety of ways with much being written on the potential impact of sheltering in place and quarantining on intimate partner violence and parent-to-child abuse. One area that has received scant attention is that of physical and emotional sibling violence. While physical and emotional sibling violence is a predominant form of family violence, discussion of violence between siblings in the time of COVID-19 has not received the attention it warrants. This article examines the potential for family stress to place siblings at risk for engaging in physical and emotional sibling violence and how this is exacerbated in the time of COVID-19. Also discussed is the the connection between physical and emotional sibling violence and other forms of family violence including intimate partner violence and parent-to-child abuse and neglect which underwrites the need to place physical and emotional sibling violence on the radar of practitioners, policy makers, and researchers. Finally, implications for practice, policy, and research on physical and emotional sibling violence in the context of COVID-19 are discussed.

The COVID-19 pandemic has globally affected the practice of child and adolescent psychiatry, as well as the daily lives of early-career child and adolescent psychiatrists. There have been changes in continuity of care (eg, postponed, cancelled, or online consultations, and few functioning inpatient units, with others becoming COVID-19 units) and the usual work frame (eg, facemasks, physical distancing, and not offering toys). Work shifted to creating standard operating procedures for care with safety precautions; disseminating advice and information about mental health; offering mental health support to frontline workers; and helping with duties outside of child and adolescent psychiatry. As early-career clinicians in child and adolescent psychiatry, we feared potential problems, such as increased risk of child abuse, domestic violence; behavioural crisis or suicide in adolescents who rely mostly on peer support and their social life; diagnostic delays (eg, for neurodevelopmental disorders); and parental burn-out (as the only caregivers). The fear of infection reduced emergency visits, but probably made these at-risk families inaccessible to clinicians.