In January 2022, we resumed workshops for STAGE 3 of APiC’s COVID-19 Project with Children and Young People. Supported by the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland (CYPCS), #ScotYouthandCOVID3 has recalled the Young Consultants who participated in our original two stages of the project.
The study is participant-led, involving teams from Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and (Rural) Stirlingshire and Falkirk, each with 4-6 boys and girls, aged 10-16 in the first round, and now ages 12-18.
We ended #ScotYouthandCOVID2 with a set of 34 Asks to Scottish Government to improve children and young people’s experiences now and in the future. Our Young Consultants also devised a strategy to create a Manifesto for Children and Young People’s Rights in Recovery that supports the needs of as many across Scotland as possible.
In this next stage, we are fulfilling the Young Consultants’ strategy from #ScotYouthandCOVID2. This includes holding more workshops with our original Young Consultants, as well as primary school children, and other groups that have thus far not had enough opportunity to be heard in the pandemic.
#ScotYouthandCOVID3: Primary School Children’s Workshop
In this week’s blog, we report on one of these additional conversations, with primary school children. Some of these Younger Young Consultants are siblings of our original Young Consultants and their friends (Glasgow and Edinburgh), while others we have recruited afresh from primary schools in the same areas as our original teams (Rural Stirlingshire and Aberdeen). Unfortunately, we were not able to secure any participants from Rural Falkirk.
Our group of 14 Younger Young Consultants comprise 4 boys and 10 girls, between the ages of 8 and 11. At the beginning of the pandemic, in March 2020, they would have been ages 6-9.
A Timeline of the Pandemic
Monday 4th April, we convened a workshop activity on online platform Mural, alongside an online conversation held over Zoom. The workshop task was to fill us in on what life has been like across the last two years. This took the form of two timelines (sketched out below), one covering March 2020-21 and the other covering March 2021-22. Young Consultants were then invited to add in experiences based on:
- What’s been good/easy
- What’s been bad/hard
- Things I would change (or would have changed)
Working in four place-based teams, where most Young Consultants knew one another, they filled out the timelines to reflect their experiences. We then brought everyone together at the end to share their findings and discuss shared priorities and Asks to add to our Manifesto.
This task raised a wide range of insights, and there was clear consensus amongst the Young Consultants around their Asks for a better Scotland – now and in the future. In the remainder of this blog, we report on these key themes and finish with their Asks.
What Was Good or Easy?
Young Consultants told us about how Lockdowns had brought some benefits in terms of spending more time with siblings and parents/carers. They could also engage with learning more flexibly – not having to get up so early, get dressed and walk to school, and they could take breaks and have snacks when they wanted. For many, this was (at least at first) a good experience.
Young Consultants also told us about how the summers of the pandemic brought some relief. The weather was good, they could be outside more. As restrictions eased, they found they were visiting more places and continuing to get quality time with their friends and families.
Finally, Young Consultants also filled us in on some of the things that helped them cope during the boring or hard times. This includes findings ways amongst friends to support each other in schoolwork, inventing new and fun games, and getting quality time with their pets.
What Was Bad or Hard?
The pandemic has been a difficult time for primary schoolchildren. Not being able to see family who were elderly, and sick was incredibly tough. Some have experienced bereavement, and never got the chance to say goodbye. They also found it tough to hear about deaths and illness all the time, without being able to do anything about it or fully understand what was going on.
Dealing with the difficulties of the pandemic was made harder by not being able to get out and about, especially in the first lockdown, and losing contact with friends they rely on for support. For example, one Young Consultant had only just got a mobile phone in March 2020, and they didn’t have their friends’ phone numbers at all during the first lockdown.
Young Consultants also missed out on after school activities and clubs such as swimming and gymnastics, where they can usually let off steam and relax. Some talked about being disappointed that when they returned to them, they had lost some of the skill and confidence they previously had.
Remote schooling was another key theme that brought up difficulties. Many found their internet connections to be glitchy – especially when needing to share if with siblings also trying to log on to school, and/or parents trying to work from home. It was more difficult to stay engaged, fair easier to get distracted, and things were much more confusing online. The lack of ability to work in groups – something they were very used to doing – made everything much harder. Indeed, some Young Consultants felt that it was unfair only some parents/carers got furloughed from work and so had much more time help with schoolwork.
What Primary School Children Would Change
Our Young Consultants had a lot of ideas about things they would have changed at the time, or would change now. You can see below a Mural board of all the key changes they proposed.
Their resulting needs and additional information, to incorporate into the Manifesto for Children and Young People’s Rights in Recovery, are as follows:
- We need our leaders to lead by example, put our wellbeing first, and communicate in clear ways that everyone can understand.
Young Consultants were clear that they felt politicians having parties when they were against the law to be very upsetting. They would have loved to have had parties, but instead they had to stay at home and miss out on a lot of experiences most children and young people used to take for granted.
If a pandemic or similar situation happens again, the rules could allow for socially-distanced, outdoor meetups sooner so that everyone can have a bit more fun to help them cope. There also needs to be more effort from political leaders to make their statements and rules more consistent and easier for children to understand. Finally, they need to keep looking for a cure for COVID-19.
- We need teaching and learning to be prioritised – in any future pandemics, but also from now on.
Young Consultants felt strongly that everyone in Scotland needs to have a high quality and reliable internet connection, as not having one meant that they lost out on their right to education during the pandemic. They also couldn’t keep up properly with friends and family.
Remote learning also needs to be improved, learning from what has and hasn’t worked during the pandemic, and maybe there are some things that can stay remote in school to help people learn more flexibly in future. They also felt that there needs to be greater equality in parent and carers’ ability to support children’s learning if it has to be at home. For example, all parents/carers could have the right to be furloughed.
When schools do return, there also needs to be more thought put into the transition back. For many this was very overwhelming, and they could have been eased in more with some shorter weeks or half days at the start.
- Everyone needs to have access to play and leisure opportunities to help them recover.
This is an extension of need already communicated by our original Young Consultants, Long Covid Kids, and Families Outisde. The primary school children felt that we need to think really hard about how to include everyone, and there are opportunities to find more things that adults and children can do together. This might be open sessions at community centres for ALL ages, where they might do casual arts and crafts activities or bingo. They also felt it was too difficult to get a free bus pass at the moment, and the process should be much simpler, so every child gets what they’re entitled to.
What’s Next?
We will be convening workshops with one more seldom heard group over the next month, before reconvening with our original Young Consultants to discuss our findings. If you are interested in finding out more about this project, or getting on the mailing list to receive a link to our Scotland-wide survey later in the year, please get in touch with Dr Jenny Wood at jenny.wood@aplaceinchildhood.org.
We will be posting further updates on this project as we go, so follow us on Twitter for updates. We will also be writing a report at the end of the project, to chronicle our journey to the Children and Young People’s Manifesto for Rights in Recovery.
Read about wave one and wave two of #ScotYouthandCOVID here.
Find out about other APiC projects.