Children and COVID-19 Research Library

This document provides interim guidance for child protection and health actors in the context of quarantine and isolation measures to mitigate related child protection risks, minimize family separation and promote family unity and social cohesion. Actions require multi-sector collaboration and contextualization, taking into account national laws and guidelines related to child protection and health, and the public health measures for COVID-19 control that are in place in the country

COVID-19 and its direct and indirect economic impacts particularly affect rural populations, leading to an increase in hunger and poverty. To cope with this situation, rural households may likely resort to using child labour among other negative coping strategies, facilitated by the closure of schools in response to the spread of the virus. The prevalence of child labour remains high in agricultural sub-sectors. Because social protection coverage remains limited and cash payments and other types of support to subsistence farmers, forest communities, fisherfolk and artisanal fishers are often scarce or irregular, FAO encourages the expansion of social protection to rural areas as an effective strategy for eliminating child labour. This information note aims at outlining what are child labour and social protection, how social protection can significantly contribute to eliminating child labour in agriculture, and what are FAO’s planned efforts to leverage on social protection interventions to generate knowledge and increase impact at country level on child labour elimination. 

In May, Save the Children conducted a survey with 87 beneficiaries of projects that have been implemented in partnership with CESESMA, FUNARTE, Los Pipitos, MILAVF, and the City Hall of Cua. The survey was aimed at parents of children and adolescents to gain better knowledge of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results set the foundation for this document and will support the definition and adaptation of current and future Save the Children interventions.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic brings new worries about the welfare of children, particularly those of families living in poverty and impacted other risk factors. These children will struggle more during the pandemic because of financial pressures and stress placed on parents, as well as their limited access to services and systems of support. In this commentary, we explain how current circumstances reinforce the need for systemic change within statutory child welfare systems and the benefits that would accrue by implementing a continuum of services that combine universal supports with early intervention strategies. We also focus on promising approaches consistent with goals for public health prevention and draw out ideas related workforce development and cross-sector collaboration.

In this article, we explore the pandemic’s impact on child protective services in Estonia and survey a representative sample of child protection workers (n = 81), asking three open-ended questions designed to explore child protection practice. These questions concern the impact on organisational design, the workers’ ability to conduct a diagnosis of a child’s care context, and what knowledge they could draw upon, as well as the decision itself.The overall findings indicate that the organisational design left practice unprepared; there was a general lack of ability to act upon referrals and also to conduct investigations to evaluate care contexts. Furthermore, there is a general lack of knowledge of how to deal with protective practices and conduct decision-making during crisis situations.

The risk of child maltreatment is heightened during the pandemic due to multiple COVID-19 related stressors, such as physical and mental health concerns, economic stress, challenges in homeschooling, marital conflicts and intimate personal violence, and intensified child–parent relationships. Both parental internal (e.g., parenting styles) and external resources (e.g., social support), and parental perceptions toward stressors will affect how parents cope with these stressors, which may exacerbate or mitigate the risk of child maltreatment. Guided by family stress theory, this article identifies COVID-19 related stressors at the family level, and further elaborates on how these stressors are associated with child maltreatment via parents’ resources, perceptions, and coping strategies. Implications for future practice and research are discussed.

This paper is focused on answering the following questions: How are poor families surviving in this era of COVID-19? What is life for children from poor families? What has become of their reality? To understand the realities of poor families and children during COVID-19, specifically in Ghana, this paper aims to analyze how COVID-19 has affected children from poor families in Ghana and how welfare institutions can work to provide rapid help to such families.

This report is an overview of the gendered impact of COVID-19 on the livelihoods, income and employment of women, men, girls, and boys in different countries affected by humanitarian crises. Children can be victims of economic violence during the pandemic. If they are involved in child labor, subjected to child marriage, and/or are withdrawn from school as their parents try to get some economic relief and further income through any of these measures, children’s livelihood chances and long-term economic prospects are deeply impacted, limiting their access to decent jobs and wages and endangering their mental and physical fitness for work for years to come.

This thematic report provides global analysis on the gendered impact of the pandemic in key areas of humanitarian programming such as livelihood, income and employment or health and protection. Children who are exposed to the secondary impacts of the pandemic, such as reduced household income or closed schools, and who live in areas with reduced oversight mechanisms may face increased likelihood of child marriage, forced labor, or female genital mutilation.

This briefing has three specific aims: 1) to assess the latest developments in government expenditure and revenue trends in low and lower-middle income countries, to understand how the protracted crisis is impacting; 2) to review latest available information about government budgetary allocations to education, health and social protection; 3) to provide recommendations for governments, international agencies and the private sector.

The Initiative for Child Rights in the Global Compacts is a multi-stakeholder partnership bringing together over 30 UN, civil society and philanthropic organizations around a shared agenda: to ensure that children’s rights are at the heart of the two global compacts on migration and on refugees in practice and to create a continuum of care, protection and support for all migrant and refugee children.

The health, social, political and economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are disproportionately affecting girls and women by exacerbating existing systemic gender inequalities at all levels, with potential implications for the incidence of child marriage. This brief describes how the UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to End Child Marriage has adapted its interventions to ensure we continue to reach and protect girls at risk of child marriage and already married girls during the pandemic.