Children and COVID-19 Research Library

This paper draws on research with a group of Zimbabwean orphaned young people. It explores their experiences of migrating to South Africa during the COVID-19 period when official borders were closed. It draws attention to the complexities of south–south migration in the era of COVID-19 in a way that situates the orphaned child migrants as having contradictory, fluid identities that are simultaneously victimised, agentic and infinitely more complex than the dominant binary representation of adult/child.

The aim of this study was to find out the protection of children on the move at the East African community border posts during Covid 19 pandemic. A visit to any East African border posts shows that COVID 19 Communication and protection measures are directed toward adults, not children. This is despite the fact that children are not only affected by COVID but are also border post users. More than this, the poor economic climate caused by the Corona pandemic has also led to the rise of children on the move being at risk in several ways. There are numerous challenges that children on the move have had to endure across the EAC borders. It is clearly evident that these challenges have only been exuberated by the covid-19 pandemic. However, despite its many shocks, the pandemic has presented an opportunity for EAC partner states to reassess their strategies and protection mechanism where children on the move are involved. The study recommends that the principle of non-discrimination and inclusion at all stages of the checkpoint should be adopted, as well as adopting effective communication mechanisms and relaying child-friendly information, child participation in the decision-making process to establish the views and needs of the children on the move.

While youth are routinely lauded as “changemakers” in society, they are often unsupported in refugee responses. As the Rohingya mark five years of exodus in Bangladesh, what is the state of youth inclusion across sectors? Do youth and adolescents feel supported, or are they being ignored and left behind?  To assess, information from three data streams was used: (a) desk research of available literature on youth participation and inclusion in humanitarian programming; (b)key informant interviews with practitioners from national and international non-overnment organizations and UN agencies, specifically individuals leading or coordinating sectors and working groups engaged with youth programming; and (c)focus group discussions and key informant interviews with refugee individuals and groups across 11 camps.

Covid-19 infection is an additional burden to the life of the Rohingya children living in cramped camps of Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. BRAC has introduced Humanitarian Play Lab (HPL) for children’s playful learning in the camps since 2017. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the modality was changed from face-face interactions to a telecommunication model. This qualitative research aims to understand caregivers’ and frontline providers' practices and perceptions about children’s well-being during the pandemic. Interviews were conducted with purposively selected parents and frontline providers through telephone. Interviews were transcribed and thematically analysed. The lockdown directly and indirectly affected children’s mental and physical well-being. A shared parenting role was observed in child education and learning. Parents widely accepted tele-communication services for children as it was considered important for continuing children’s wellbeing and learning. This research highlights the relevance and timeliness of utilising telecommunications services by parents for children's psychosocial health and playful learning.

This descriptive study sought to explore how child welfare agencies and community partner organizations experienced and adapted service provision for immigrant children and families during the COVID-19 pandemic. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were completed with 31 child welfare agency practitioners and community partners in 11 states who work with immigrant clients or on immigration related policies within the child welfare sector. Data were coded and analyzed using a thematic analysis approach.

The coronavirus pandemic is forcing societal changes, even along the trajectories of international tourism, educational development, and training systems. Existing research has demonstrated that scholastic attainment, parental educational expectations, and school type have significant impacts on the self-educational expectations of migrant children. Nevertheless, there is still insufficient research on the differences in subject grades, parental educational expectations when it comes to choices regarding specific learning phases, and the impact of school types on specific learning phases. Taking “self-educational expectations = high school degree and below” as the control group, we selected the data of migrant children in grade nine from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS) and employed multinomial logistic regression (MLR) to investigate the factors affecting the self-educational expectations of China’s migrant children.

Digital messaging programs have the potential to be a powerful, low-cost, technological tool to support multiple facets of caregivers' knowledge, and implementation of developmentally appropriate caregiver-child activities among diverse immigrant populations. However, involving caregivers and community stakeholders in the cultural and linguistic tailoring of interventions to optimize utilization and engagement may be critical to ensuring messaging programs' usability and acceptability. The purpose of this mixed-method study was to use the dynamic adaptation process (DAP) within an Exploration, Preparation, Implementation, Sustainment (EPIS) framework to examine the implementation of a digital messaging program, developed at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, aimed at providing Spanish-, English-, and Mandarin-speaking immigrant caregivers with caregiver-child activities that supported children's development and caregivers' knowledge.

COVID-19 has exacerbated the existing crisis that the vulnerable refugee population faces. More than a million Rohingya refugees live in Bangladesh. COVID-19 has affected both males and females. It is critical to understand how this population group is coping during this trying period. They are constituted by 52% women and 55% adolescents. The socioeconomic and physiological repercussions of the pandemic on the Rohingya people are contextualised in this study. The socioeconomic and health impacts of COVID-19 on Rohingya women and adolescents in Bangladesh are investigated. Because of the restrictions imposed, over 63% of Rohingya adolescent females suffered from food scarcity. The vast majority of respondents (87%) stated that they had reduced their meal frequency, resulting in a protein deficiency. Since their arrival in Bangladesh, they have had limited access to medical and educational facilities. The pandemic has further exacerbated the situation. Girls are more vulnerable to sexual and gender-based abuse, early marriage, school dropout, and pregnancy. This research aims to add to existing knowledge on refugees, Rohingya, women, and adolescents

This report shares findings from qualitative research on the impacts of Covid-19 on Cambodian migrant workers in four sites along the Cambodia-Thai border. Government restrictions in Thailand and the border closure in February 2020 led to job losses and reduced working hours, and ultimately to an increase in the rate of return migration. Return migrants were forced to use informal points of entry with the facilitation of informal brokers, facing increased costs and risks and, in the process, becoming undocumented. This report shows an unequal access to health services between documented and undocumented migrants. Even in the context of Covid-19, some migrants continue to travel with young children who support the family, mostly through light agricultural work.

Group well-child care (GWCC) is an alternative to traditional pediatric well-child care designed to increase parental social support and peer learning. This mixed methods study explored the adaptation and implementation of GWCC to a virtual format during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 pandemic) among Spanish-speaking Latino immigrant families. Interviews were conducted with eight providers and 10 mothers from May through September 2020. Qualitative analyses used a priori codes based on an implementation science framework. Quantitative data included demographics, the COVID-19 Impact Scale, and virtual group attendance. Bivariate analyses identified correlates of virtual visit attendance.

Family separation policies’ impacts on children’s education and well-being are critical issues of our time. This paper argues through ethnographic study that although im/migrant parents believed in the promise of a better life for their children as they migrated, COVID-19 and remote schooling contributed to a breakdown in structures of care once they were in the United States. Thus, the experience of remote schooling during 2020 was a difficult task for parents and children who were already dealing with the trauma of detention or separation at the border. Ultimately, we argue that to understand the educational experiences of im/migrant parents and children in the United States, we must consider a multiple disruptions framework. The findings in this article reveal the layered consequences that broader immigration policy has on the everyday educational lives of im/migrant children and their parents.

From the point of apprehension by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the U.S.–Mexican border to their reunification with sponsors in U.S. communities, unaccompanied children (UC) face political, social, and economic conditions, heightening their risk for mental and physical health burdens that may be exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Such risk underscores the importance of social work practice and advocacy for the improved treatment and experiences of UC. This article uses a structural vulnerability conceptual lens to summarize the existing literature regarding UC and argues that UC’s liminal immigration status, economic precarity, and lack of healthcare access place this group at high structural vulnerability during the pandemic. Further, this article identifies and describes three contexts of structural vulnerability of UC that are important points of social work intervention: (1) at the border, where migrant children are denied their legal right to seek protection; (2) in detention and shelter facilities; and (3) during reunification with sponsors. This article concludes with important practice and policy opportunities for social workers to pursue to obtain social justice for an important and highly vulnerable migrant child population.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many crucial services for youth shifted to online delivery. Yet, little is known about the processes of providing online support to newcomer youth from the perspective of the service users. Say Ça! is a community-based organization in Montreal that supports newcomer youth through language tutoring and cultural activities. Photo journals by six newcomer 12–17-year-olds and group interviews with 11 program facilitators explored how the pandemic affected the youth’s experiences participating in Say Ça!. Findings highlight key elements of online learning program delivery essential to the youth’s engagement during the pandemic

COVID-19’s rapid spread poses particular challenges for vulnerable populations, especially migrants and displaced (M&D) children. It is apparent that certain characteristics of displaced populations such as higher risk of contagion, high mobility, and being difficult to reach, present suitable conditions for a rapid outbreak of COVID-19 – at huge risk to M&D children and to the surrounding communities. It is clear that the cost of not prioritising M&D populations is likely to be catastrophic. Save the Children’s Programme Framework explicitly recognises the acute vulnerability of migrant and displaced communities and suggests a number of possible programmatic interventions. This paper, developed by the TWG on Protecting the Rights of M&D Children, the MDI and Geneva Advocacy office, aims to provide further complementary analysis, suggested text for proposal and project design, and technical guidance to SC colleagues.

In collaboration with the media monitoring service Meltwater, CARE analysed the humanitarian crises that received the least media attention in 2021. More than 1.8 million online articles were analysed between 1st January and 30th September 2021. To do this, we identified the countries where at least one million people were affected by conflict or climate-related disasters. The total number of people affected by each crisis is derived from data from ACAPS, Reliefweb and CARE. The result – a list of 40 crises – was subjected to media analysis and ranked by the number of online articles published on the topic. This report summarises the ten crises that received the least attention.