COVID-19 and the big changes for children and young people since June 2020

Two weeks ago we announced the beginning of STAGE 2 of APiC’s COVID-19 Project with Children and Young People in Scotland. Supported by  the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland (CYPCS), ScotYouthandCOVID2  has recalled the Young Consultants who participated in our original project during April/May 2020.

APiC’s self-funded study in April/May 2020 was a participant- led project and report that was one of the only truly participatory projects held with children and young people at that time. It set out the important changes and challenges young Scots were experiencing, including proposed solutions. It involved teams from Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and (Rural) Stirlingshire and Falkirk, each with 4-6 boys and girls, aged 10-16 years. Leith Community Crops in Pots, the Children’s Parliament Imagining Aberdeen programme, Denny High School, Northfield Academy and Manor Park Primary School helped us with the recruitment.

 

Workshop 1

Monday 15th March 2021 we held the first of our 6 new workshops with our Young Consultants. We reflected on their experiences since last June, and the aim was to work out whether the Big 5 Changes they identified in the first wave of the study were still relevant. These were:

  1. Remote schooling
  2. My freedom to go outdoors and travel
  3. How I spend my free time
  4. My face-to-face interaction with friends and family
  5. The Covid-19 related rules

We also wanted to know if anything new had emerged since. All teams self-facilitated their workshop activity, using collaborative online tools. Through this, they discussed whether/how each of these 5 Big Changes had affected them in four broad time periods:

  • The Summer Holidays
  • The Autumn Term, where they went back to the school buildings
  • The Christmas Holidays
  • The Spring Term 2021 where they returned to remote schooling

They also noted any new Big Changes that had emerged in the meantime.

 

Young People’s Experiences

The Young Consultants relayed a huge amount of insight and depth in just one workshop, and we will be collectively unpicking more about these experiences in future. It’s clear that the 5 Big Changes remain and the challenges they cause have intensified over the last year, becoming significantly harder to cope with since the start of 2021.

The additional, new changes reported by our Young Consultants are:

  1. School holidays becoming less restful
  2. The stress of Covid-19 tests in school, and vaccination programmes and priorities
  3. Increasing strains on friendships
  4. Confusion and uncertainty caused by ever-changing rules and unpredictable schedules

The small changes that could make a big difference, reported by our Young Consultants in the original #ScotYouthandCovid project have largely not come to fruition, especially around remote learning. Indeed, many viewed the Winter lockdown as a bleaker rerun of the first lockdown, which had learned nothing from the impacts of the first.

After a year of disruption, our Young Consultants reported huge concerns for the wellbeing of themselves, their peers, and significant anxieties about what the consequences of the pandemic would mean for their future. This was summarised as a feeling that a year of their lives having been stolen, or lost. 

The hope is that this time round, the views of the Young Consultants are taken onboard by those who can make a difference, and that a genuine dialogue with policymakers and partners on effective responses may be possible. This aligns with the incorporation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which was passed as law by the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday.

 

What’s Next?

Next week we will give more details of the challenges our Young Consultants have been experiencing. We will be posting frequent updates from the Young Consultants over the course of the project so follow us on Twitter for updates.