Children and COVID-19 Research Library

COVID-19 has disrupted many of the preventive service sectors designed to promote infant mental health. The purpose of this study is to examine provider and supervisor transition strategies as well as maternal-child outcomes during the transition from in-person to virtual early childhood home visitation services in Los Angeles County. Los Angeles County is one of the largest home visitation sectors in the U.S. and disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Transitioning from in-person to virtual home visitation was an important step in ensuring the continuity of infant mental health services. Home visitors reported relative ease in transitioning to virtual services themselves but noted that families encountered greater difficulty. The most helpful strategies to support this transition included training, ongoing reflective supervision, and provision of technology. Family level analysis revealed that positive screening rates for anxiety and depression decreased during the pandemic as did referrals for most support services.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting lockdown have had a far-reaching impact across all levels of society. In Spain, severe restrictions were placed on people’s mobility, and leaving the home was only possible under special circumstances. This study analyzes the impact of lockdown on the family context of foster and non-foster families, focusing particularly on their levels of cohesion, adaptability, and perceived stress. It also examines a series of variables that may have influenced foster families’ perceptions of their family context during lockdown. Data were gathered through an online survey that was completed by 347 individuals corresponding to 100 foster families and 247 non-foster families from different regions of Spain. Analyses were descriptive and exploratory in nature.

COVID-19 has increased economic hardship for many families, including custodial grandparent-headed families. This studied aimed to examine latent classes of material hardship among custodial grandparent-headed families, to assess predictors associated with identified classes, and to investigate associations with grandchildren’s physical and mental health outcomes during COVID-19. A cross-sectional survey was administered via Qualtrics Panels in June 2020. The sample comprised of 362 grandparents. Latent class analysis and multinomial and binary logistic regression were conducted. Three latent classes of material hardship were identified: Class 1 low overall hardship with high medical hardship, class 2 moderate overall hardship with high utility hardship, and class 3 severe overall hardship. Factors, including race, household income, labor force status, years of care, and financial assistance status, were associated with class membership. Class 2 was significantly associated with grandchildren’s physical health.

This report details children and young people's responses to a global survey for the Day of General Discussion 2021 on Children's Rights and Alternative Care. A total of 1,188 children and young people aged between 5-25-years old took part in the survey to share their views, experiences and ideas. This report will help inform the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child Day of General Discussion on 16-17 September.

This study aims to identify the hidden orphans and to reinforce existing monitoring systems. Orphanhood is a public health issue, and it primarily evidences existing geopolitical tensions. Thus, this study emphasises the strong naturalisation of social inequalities and the extreme vulnerability of children and adolescents impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 continues to tear families apart, leaving the children of deceased parents with even fewer options than before the pandemic. In Brazil, one child is orphaned by COVID-19 every 5 min. This is an alarming estimate, especially in the most vulnerable and underprivileged regions of the country, such as the North and Northeast. Current evidence emphasises that at every three million deaths due to the pandemic, more than 1.5 million children lose their mothers, fathers or primary caregivers (usually grandparents). This may be very traumatic for children. In this context, Brazil is the second country in the world with the highest number of COVID-19 deaths, reducing caregiving options among family members.

This study examined whether certain demographic characteristics, caregiver strain, and coping behaviors were associated with the mental health outcomes of family caregivers of children with disabilities in Bolivia during the COVID‐19 pandemic. A mixed‐methods convergent study design was used with virtual interviews to quantitatively assess caregivers' demographic characteristics, caregiver strain, coping behaviors, and mental health outcomes, as well as qualitatively assess how the pandemic affected their family. Approximately 32%–71% of caregivers experienced poor mental health outcomes (stress, anxiety, and depression), especially among those experiencing poor health,high caregiver strain, and those using maladaptive coping strategies.

mes, aswell as qualitatively assess how the pandemic affected theirfamily. Approximately 32%–71% of caregivers experiencedpoor mental health outcomes (stress, anxiety, and depres-sion), especially among those experiencing poor health,high caregiver strain, and those using maladaptive copingstrategies.

Prior research links adaptive humor styles (affiliative and self-enhancing) with enhanced psychological well-being and maladaptive humor styles (aggressive and self-defeating) with worse psychological well-being, primarily through humor styles’ influence on individuals’ social interactions and efforts to positively reframe stressors. The present study examined the unique relation of each humor style with psychological well-being with a focus on understanding mechanisms of adjustment under highly stressful conditions. Ninety-nine parents of children with disabilities were surveyed at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States in March 2020, and 79 parents completed follow-up surveys in July 2020. As predicted, at T1, self-enhancing humor was associated with less psychological distress and greater family satisfaction, self-defeating humor was associated with greater distress, and aggressive humor was associated with lower family satisfaction. Moreover, affiliative humor predicted decreased psychological distress over time, whereas self-defeating humor predicted increased psychological distress and decreased family satisfaction over time. Relations were largely mediated by caregiver positive reappraisal, family efforts to reframe daily disability-related challenges, and negative social interactions. Future research should further examine the influence of caregiver humor styles on family dynamics, family reframing norms, and caregiving efficacy.

This research study evaluates the impact of the COVID-19 emergency on Save the Children’s use of feedback from adults and children in Bangladesh. It examines the impact of Covid-19 and the ways in which approaches to feedback inform Save the Children’s decision-making at a time of particular global challenge. The report’s findings are intended to serve as a useful, rapidly-realised tool for organisational learning and to support Save the Children as it continues to serve displaced populations in Bangladesh and globally.

The dual challenges of the climate crisis and COVID-19 pandemic compound on each other and are disproportionately impacting children in East Asia and Pacific. This calls for ambitious climate actions that help advance climate justice for current and future generations of children and support a green and inclusive recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. As stated by the UN Secretary-General António Guterres, the pandemic recovery is “a profound opportunity” to steer the world on “a path that tackles climate change, protects the environment, reverses biodiversity loss and ensures the long-term health and security of humankind”. Unless inclusive climate-smart solutions are prioritized in the recovery phase, there is a high risk of emissions rebounding and governments locking themselves in to a carbon-intense future, leaping from the COVID-19 frying pan into the climate fire. This working paper provides an economic analysis of climate and COVID-19 recovery policy measures in East Asia and the Pacific region and makes an investment case for accelerating ambitious and inclusive climate actions through national climate policies and COVID-19 recovery measures in East Asia and the Pacific and beyond.

Family and friends are often the first and/or only support options used by young people (12–25 years) struggling with mental health issues. The overarching aim of this literature review is to map current practice in online interventions specifically targeting family and friends of young people with mental health issues, especially relevant in light of the current worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. A rapid scoping literature review was conducted searching health and psychology databases for online interventions targeting family and friends supporting a young person (12–25 years) struggling with a mental health issue. The search strategy was comprehensive and expert librarian endorsed. The final synthesis comprised 13 articles.

The COVID-19 pandemic occurred at a time when families of prisoners were gaining visibility in both academia and policy. Research exploring the experiences of families of prison residents has tended to focus on intimate partners and children, despite parents of those in prison being more likely than partners or children to maintain contact. The small body of work focusing on parents has identified their continued care for their children and highlights the burden of providing this care. With the ethics of care posing an ideological expectation on women to provide familial care, the care for adult children in custody is likely to fall to mothers. However, with restricted prison regimes, the pandemic has significantly impeded mothers’ ability to provide this ‘care’. Adopting a qualitative methodology, this paper explores the accounts of mothers to adult children in custody during the pandemic across two UK prison systems, England and Wales, and Scotland; exploring the negotiation of mothering in the context of imprisonment and the pandemic and highlighting important lessons for policy and practice.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of childcare to national economies in general and women's economic participation in particular, spurring renewed interest in childcare policy in many countries that have implemented lockdowns. This paper adopts a circle of care framework to analyzes how COVID-19 has affected paid childcare, unpaid childcare and other paid work, and the relationship between these sectors. Analysis is grounded in the lived experiences of parents and childcare educators, documented through 16 semi-structured interviews during the initial lockdown (March–June 2020) in British Columbia, Canada. Experiences from educators suggest their safety was not prioritized, and that their contributions were undervalued and went unrecognized. Mothers, who provided the majority of unpaid care, not only lost income due to care demands, but struggled to access necessities, with some reporting increased personal insecurity. Those attempting to work from home also experienced feelings of guilt and distress as they tried to manage the triple burden. Similarities of experiences across the circle of care suggest the COVID-19 childcare policy response in BC Canada downloaded care responsibilities on to women without corresponding recognition or support, causing women to absorb the costs of care work, with potential long-term negative effects on women's careers and well-being, as well as on the resilience of the circle of care.

This article captures mothers’ experiences of the work–family balance and division of household labor during the initial COVID-19 lockdown. Interviews were conducted with twenty-five academics and twenty professionals in other fields. Mothers who split childcare with their partners had a more positive experience of the work–family balance during lockdown, compared with mothers who did the majority of the childcare. The present study adds a new wrinkle into the literature on flexibility and work–family balance: the perception of flexibility and its impact on the division of labor. Academic mothers, who had always had highly “flexible” jobs, were less likely to split childcare with their partners pre-pandemic and thus less likely to have positive experiences of work–family balance during the Spring 2020 lockdown. I argue that perceived flexibility of a partner’s job affected allocation of childcare during the initial stages of the pandemic, a moment that wreaked significant harm on women’s careers.

This paper presents a review of select evidence generated by UNICEF on the impact of COVID-19 on child protection. It takes stock of UNICEF’s contributions to the global COVID-19 child protection knowledge base and presents what has been learned so far from this evidence base on the impacts of COVID-19 on child protection and the response measures put in place since the pandemic. This review offers a starting point for UNICEF to further build its evidence base with external partners for continued evidence generation – so that it can be used to address child protection issues and lessons in the context of COVID-19.