The COVID-19 crisis has important implications for children’s lives. While the pandemic had consequences for everyone regardless of age, and while evidence suggests that young people are the least at risk in terms of health, their lives have been turned upside down by school closures, lockdown measures that were enforced for months at a time, and, for some, by direct experience of the virus.
These experiences, changes and restrictions have profound and lasting implications for the present and future lives of all children and adolescents.
This cross-country and participatory research project highlights the difficulties and challenges that children and young people are facing during the pandemic. It counts on the contributions of local Young Advisory Boards who not only shared their opinions, but recommended the best ways to approach the research, and interpret the findings.
The objectives of the research are to gain in-depth understanding of:
- How children and young people perceive and cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.
- How the health crisis, and government measures in response to it, affected and continue to affect them, and what the key issues are in their perspective.
- Their ideas and proposals regarding government responses to the current situation, and how similar situations could best be handled in the future, to ensure that children’s rights and well-being are protected.
