Generation Pandemic

In the final episode of the Generation Pandemic podcast, host Catherine McDonald talks to the two principal investigators behind the Interdisciplinary Child Well-Being Network. Dr Kat Chzhen is the Network's Irish principal investigator and is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Scoiology at Trinity College Dublin. Dr Julia Mikolai focuses on the UK and is a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Geography and Sustainable Development at the University of St Andrews.  They discuss the point at which they realised the Network needed to exist and what their plans are moving forward. They also look at where they think we are in terms of recovery from the pandemic and what gaps in the evidence need to be addressed.    Transcript Catherine McDonald  0:09  Hello and welcome to Generation Pandemic, a podcast from the Interdisciplinary Child Wellbeing Network looking at the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on children in the UK and Ireland. I'm Catherine McDonald, and today I'm in conversation with the two Principal Investigators behind the network. Dr. Kat Chzhen is the Irish Principal Investigator and is an assistant professor at the Department of Sociology at Trinity College, Dublin. Dr. Julia Mikolai, is the network's Principal Investigator for the UK, and is a senior research fellow at the School of Geography and Sustainable Development at the University of St. Andrews. So hello Cat. Hello, Julia. Kat Chzhen  0:48  Hi! Julia Mikolai  0:49  Hi Catherine. Catherine McDonald  0:50  So congratulations on the completion of your network's first podcast series. Kat Chzhen  0:55  Thank you so much, Catherine, it's been an amazing experience, a lot of it, you know, thanks to you, and Research Podcasts. But of course, all the contributors, I personally am so impressed with how many people were eager to take part and how many episodes had you know more than even the few contributors, but three or four. And it was also great to have contributors who are not academics or practitioners. But you know, say mothers with children such as Laura and others, and I am extremely thankful to them. So for me, that's been the highlights the diversity of contributors, and just how smoothly it all went. And then how exciting the episodes are to listen to. Catherine McDonald  1:36  And Julia, what have you thought as the episodes have been published? Julia Mikolai  1:39  Yeah, I have completely agree with Kat, I think we have heard some really heart wrenching stories from parents and teachers. And that has really allowed us to get a better grasp of people's lived experiences of the pandemic, not only what we know, from research and our colleagues and amazing contributors, but also perhaps those voices that we hear a little bit less often as researchers who might work with a secondary data. So I hope that everybody really enjoyed the series, or enjoyed it as much as we did. Catherine McDonald  2:09  Yes, you make a really good point there, Julia. These are stories that actually as a society as a whole we possibly don't hear enough of, and they're really important stories to be told, aren't they? Julia Mikolai  2:20  Oh, absolutely. And I think that perhaps especially certain groups of society don't hear many of these stories. So I got the impression during the pandemic, that many people weren't actually aware of the scope of socioeconomic inequalities that we have here in the UK, and also in other countries. And obviously, the pandemic has kind of reaped these up. And there has been a lot more talk, at least that was my impression among the general public as well about these inequalities. Kat Chzhen  2:48  But there could be so much more of that, sorry to interject. And partly, it's because the pandemic, at least in the beginning, had this feature where everybody stayed at home and focused on their own family. It's almost like everybody lived in a castle with a moat. And it was so difficult to interact with others. And so of course, living in those bubbles, those who are better off, probably had very little idea about how difficult it was for those who are less well off, especially when even those who are you know, socially economically better off those who have more money and those who kept their jobs and just worked from home. They also had immense struggles working from home, especially if they have children. So everybody was just so caught up in their own problems and the unexpected nature of the challenges the pandemic brought about that I think a lot of us just didn't think enough about the struggles of those who really, really had it very tough. And that is why I'm so happy with this podcast, because finally we did hear different voices. And we need to do more of that so that everybody really understands that there are significant social inequalities. And they may even be getting worse because of the pandemic and now also the cost of living crisis and all of the other challenges, including climate change and the war, of course. Catherine McDonald  4:14  Absolutely. So before we move on to talk more about your network, I'd like to ask you both about your individual areas of research and what you focus on. So Julia, can I start with you? Julia Mikolai  4:26  Yeah. So my research has always been centred around socio economic inequalities in demography behaviour. So just to give you some examples, during my doctoral research, I have focused on inequalities in the link between romantic relationships and childbearing across Europe, and this also included the UK. So for example, trying to understand who are the people who do not marry but still have children, and do they marry later after having children or not? And then as a postdoctoral researcher, I have analysed the residential and housing consequences of separation and divorce, obviously there are also huge inequalities in this. And currently I work on a project that explores the inter linkages between employment, housing and family trajectories of immigrants and their descendants across several European countries. So these projects are all focused on the experiences of adults. But not long before establishing the network. My research interests have shifted to also include the consequences of demographic change and inequalities for the lives of children. Catherine McDonald  5:26  Wow, that sounds so wide ranging, and Kat, what about you? Kat Chzhen  5:30  So like Julia, I have been working on socio economic inequalities for a long time. But I have focused on children in particular, probably for a bit longer. Because until I came to Trinity College, Dublin, about three years ago, I spent more than six years at UNICEF. So it's the United Nations Children's Fund, but I was at the Research Centre in Florence in Italy. And I was working specifically on projects having to deal with either child poverty or child wellbeing quite often in a cross country comparative perspective. So for example, it can be really useful to show that among otherwise quite similar countries, such as you know, those in the European Union, you can have very different gaps, say, by family income, in, for example, children's education, or you can have very different rates of child poverty. And that shows that these things are not inevitable - child poverty is certainly not inevitable. You know, social gaps in children's education or life satisfaction are not inevitable, but they're policy amenable because if Norway can have low rates of child poverty than Ireland could too. All the takes is to you know, refocus various policies to some extent. So that was that kind of work very cross country comparative. And now that I'm an assistant professor in sociology, I try to look more at what drives socio economic gaps and children's outcomes. Why do they come about? What kind of theories are there that help us explain it? And how can we derive specific propositions from those theories and test them with quite high quality data, including data from birth cohort studies. So these are some of the latest things I've been doing working with data from Growing Up In Ireland, for example, a really fascinating birth cohort study that allows us to look at some fundamental questions around why do we have such unfair inequalities in children's outcomes as children grow older? Catherine McDonald  7:47  So you're both the Principal Investigators behind the Interdisciplinary Child Wellbeing Network, and the Network was established in order to study the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on children in the UK and Ireland. Can you tell us about the point at which you realise this network needed to exist? Julia Mikolai  8:05  Yeah, so I usually do regular searches to see what kind of funding opportunities are out there and if any of them might align with my current or future plans. And during one of my regular searches, I discovered that there was a funding opportunity to establish a collaborative network between UK and Ireland based researchers. And given that my interest really was shifting to studying the lives of children, instead of only focusing on adults, I began to search for potential collaborators to work on this topic, but I didn't really know anybody in Ireland. So I just started to look for potential individuals on the internet. And I found out that Kat was based in Ireland. And actually, we have met once before in person at a high level expert meeting in Brussels that focused on lone parents. So then it was quite easy to strike up an email conversation, you know, just referring to our earlier meeting. And this was at the point when the pandemic only just began, I think, we were still working from the office. And we basically had no idea of what was to come. And initially, the network was going to focus on child's wellbeing more broadly, which really ties in very well with Kat's research, expertise and interests. But then as we chatted about the network, or the potential topics to address in this network, we realise that the pande

In the penultimate episode of the Generation Pandemic podcast, we ask two important questions; where are we now in terms of the recovery of our children and young people, and what gaps in the evidence has the pandemic highlighted? Joining host Catherine McDonald are a selection of contributors from across the Generation Pandemic series.    Transcript Catherine McDonald  0:04  Hello, and welcome to Generation Pandemic, a podcast from the Interdisciplinary Child Wellbeing Network looking at the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on children in the UK and Ireland. I'm Catherine McDonald and in this penultimate episode of our series, I've spoken again to a selection of our series contributors, to ask them where they think we are now in terms of our recovery from the pandemic, and what further research we should be engaging in moving forward? Here's Professor Susan Harkness, from the University of Bristol, and Professor Mary Murphy from the National University of Ireland Maynooth with their thoughts on where we are now. Susan Harkness  0:43  So I think as we come out of the pandemic, we really need to be keeping an eye on inequalities, and in particular the inequalities in children's learning. So I think what we're probably going to see as we get better and better data about how children are doing at school, but the broader sort of cognitive outcomes is going to be really important to understand how inequalities between children in terms of these in terms of their education are opening up or not. And I think in terms of policy, we will need to sort of step in if there's evidence that there are particular groups. So I think, you know, clearly some groups, some schools, some areas that have been more affected by COVID, than others. And I think we need them to need to really sort of think seriously about how we try and reduce inequalities between schools, between pupils, between regions. And I think maybe the other thing we need to think about as well is, I think we're gonna have to think about children's mental health and how they've really been affected by the pandemic. And I think once again, I think we've got evidence that there are big negative mental health effects. We know that children in single parent families, mental health has been more negatively affected, and it was already a bit worse pre-pandemic. And in many ways, it's not surprising because clearly, the pandemic has really adversely affected groups such as single parents, their employment has fallen more, it's going to be much more of a struggle, in terms of homeschooling in terms of sort of surviving on a single income over the course of the pandemic. And all these stresses, I think, are going to show up in both in mother's mental health, but also in their children's mental health. And I think we need to be concerned about whether these effects kind of persist in the longer term. And we've seen data, for example, on the Children's Commissioner talking about the increasing number of school absences, and the number of school refusals, I think we really need to be getting a handle on these children that are really, really a new and growing group are really going to be underperforming in terms of their education, I think that's a really, you know, there's a lot of very worrying trends for, for children and their well being and also differences inequalities between them. So not just between rich and poor, but between different types of schools and different areas, for example. So I think there's a lot of a lot of things we need to be concerned about for the future. Mary Murphy  3:00  It's very, very hard to tell, isn't it? Because in a way, we're still in the pandemic, and we're still having to cope with various social protocols around it. But we're also emerging into a new crisis in inflation, but also causing war in Ukraine, I think our policy system that our way of working has to be able to respond to an assumption that we are always going to be chasing our tail to some degree around crisis in the next couple of decades. But I do think that we begin with the impacts of what happened in the pandemic crisis begin to show for example, I'm here with our pet dog, who was the pandemic pet if you like, and is experiencing really genuinely high levels of anxiety, if left alone at all. And if you multiply that out, then to the degree to which families are readjusting to having been at home, as complete units, young children born into that situation, are now having to experience a return to work of parents, new institutionalised forms of care. And this is all difficult for families to manage and to cope with. If I look at my own experiences as an educator in third level, really genuine amongst maybe young people aged 19 to 23 really serious mental health stress and anxiety issues, as they cope with not only the how the second level education ended so abruptly, in terms of not being able to consolidate or even, you know, exit friendship groups, but then their incapacity to develop new networks and friendships and social lives. And that is having an impact that I don't think we understand at all, in terms of their capacity to engage and attend their education. I think more broadly, then we have that issue of younger people returning to school and trying to negotiate expectations about education is now is this blended? Is it online? Is it back fully in person? And we're still grappling with that. And we don't really know what we're doing as educators, I would suggest. I think that the other thing is that it was an assumption, I think, as the care needs became more and more evident during the pandemic, that a lot of the care were assumed to be very elastic in their capacity to stretch out and provide all these kinds of forms of care. And we don't really know what the cost of that burden of care has been on women's lives, as mothers, as sisters, as daughters. And we need to understand that because we need to factor that into the real cost of the pandemic, and understand what we can heap on people's shoulders, as we're now demanding. They take off that place in the productive economy again. So I think, you know, the sense to which we should have a better understanding now, but I don't think we necessarily do of the real value of care that takes place in the informal unpaid economy, that became more obvious during the crisis, but were quickly putting it back in its box to some degree and that would worry me. So I think we do have evidence gaps around a number of things around the impact on mental health, the forms of education that might work for us, the reality of the care burden for women, particularly unpaid and informal care and trying to get a better sense of how much that impacts on the quality of lives of families and women. I think there's a lot that we could talk about in that context. Catherine McDonald  6:04  Next, we hear from Professor Birgitta Rabe, from the Institute for Social and Economic Research, and Dr. Rod Hick from the University of Cardiff. Birgitta Rabe  6:13  Well, I suppose, you know, we are at a point in time where the restrictions have been lifted. Everything's back to normal procedurally - children are going back to school. But there are still large scars remaining for children. Currently, people are sitting exams, young people are sitting exams, their A levels, and this cohort of children has never sat their GCSEs. Their last formal exams they've had was at the end of primary school. And I suspect there will be a lot of fallout from that. So there is not a sense that this is over. And I suppose children will carry that burden for quite some time with them. And our own research has shown that recovery is not instant for mental health problems. And there are many reports now especially how young children are affected by having been away from school for such a long time. So I wouldn't say that we can be overly optimistic, although obviously, it's great for the children to be able to be back at school. Rod Hick  7:16  Life itself, I would say we're well on the way to returning to, you know, a good degree of normality. I mean, schools, our own colleges and universities, we're able to see our families and friends, again, we're able to travel again, so many of the aspects of life that were disrupted, most have resumed to, you know, some level of normality. And in many cases, actually, back to quite a good level of normality. But obviously, in terms of economy, things are more concerning in that we're facing very rapidly into a cost of living crisis. So hence, the storm clouds are gathering once again. And it's a real concern, partly because the economic impact of COVID, at least in terms of its potential impact on unemployment, in the longer term didn't really materialise. That potential risk didn't materialise, as we might have feared. But this new found concern about the cost of living crisis is very real. And I think there are real concerns about the extent to which an inflation shock, which is very much focused on energy prices at the moment sort of filters out into a more wide ranging inflation crisis. And we simply don't know how long this cost of living crisis will go on for. There are both kind of optimistic and relatively pessimistic estimates, and maybe the risk and the concern there is that in the last, or in the financial crisis, rather, one of the dynamics we saw was that some government decisions didn't always support families to the extent that they might have. That was one of the concerns, I think, emerging from that crisis. And I guess that's the particular risk that families face into, you know, not only facing into the winter ahead, but into the next two, three years. Catherine McDonald  9:02  Finally, on the question of where we are in terms of our recovery from the pandemic, here's Dr. Aisling Murray, Senior Research Officer on the Growing Up in Ireland study team, and Dr. Jim Kaufman from the COVID Realities project. Aisling M

In episode 8 of the Generation Pandemic podcast, we're looking through the eyes of a youth worker at the experiences of children and young people during COVID-19.  Joining host Catherine McDonald is Declan Keenan, a youth worker at the Just Ask after-school club in Dublin. Declan explains how the pandemic affected the young people he works with and looks to the action he feels is needed as we move through the recovery.    Transcript Catherine McDonald  0:04  Hello, and welcome to Generation Pandemic, a podcast from the Interdisciplinary Child Wellbeing Network looking at the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on children in the UK and Ireland. I'm Catherine McDonald. And today I'm talking to Declan Keenan, a youth worker at the Just Ask after school club in Dublin, about the lives of the children he works with. I began by asking Declan how he became a youth worker? Declan Keenan  0:32  Well, I fell into youth work quite accidentally in the late 80s. So in Ireland in the late 80s, there was quite an economic depression, there was no work around, so I was unemployed at the time, the company I'd worked with had just gone into liquidation. So I was asked to come down on help out with the youth club. Catherine McDonald  0:51  And how old were you then? Declan Keenan  0:53  I'd been in my early 20s, I suppose around 24 to 20, maybe 22/23, something like that. Catherine McDonald  1:00  And we've not looked back, you've been doing it ever since? Declan Keenan  1:03  Well, yes. As it kind of progressed. And we were looking at some of the issues that were coming in and facing us with the young people and started listening a little bit more to them, I started to realise that I didn't have a lot of answers. And I really was out on my depth. When it came to some of the questions young people were asked me or some of the challenges they had. And I took a big risk and applied to go back to college as a mature student, and study social science, in the hope to find some answers to these questions that were constantly coming at me. Catherine McDonald  1:37  And can you give me an example of what the questions were back then? Declan Keenan  1:41  So we had young people coming in from a quite a damaged community, and they had no controls on themselves, they would just come in, they would be loud, they would be aggressive, they'd be violent towards each other, some of them would be cowering away, they were trying to steal everything, they would try to disrupt everything. When you'd speak to them about it, you know, sometimes then they tell you about just what life was like for them and the estate they lived in and coming in to the kind of youth club setting was as weird for them as anything else was like going to school or anything like that you know, some of the things they were just up to, and it kind of reminded me of my own upbringing, and a lot of the problems and difficulties I had as a child and a lot of the wildness, I suppose I would have been in me as a young person. Catherine McDonald  2:28  And so what did your study sort of bring out in you? And how did they enhance your understanding, and therefore your ability to help these young people? Declan Keenan  2:37  I think, you know, the studies, although they were great and really interesting, I found it was bringing up more questions for me than answers. But obviously, as I was going through the studies, and I was still volunteering with this club, I was maturing, and some of the answers were coming. But they weren't like bolts of light out of the sky. They were just slowly seeping into the way I was thinking into the way I was trying to change how I reacted towards young people or approach them. So I was really learning on the job. Catherine McDonald  3:10  And so fast forward, what is it 20/30 years and you're at the Just Ask, after school club in Dublin. Tell me about that club and how it started and how long you've been there? Declan Keenan  3:22  Okay, so within the same organisation, one day, this young person knocked on the door. And his opening statement was, I am stupid. So we had a conversation around that and how it probably wasn't the case. And what came about in the conversation he said was, he was always in trouble. And he reckoned at the kind of 11 years of age, that that trouble stemmed from school, that he wasn't able to concentrate in school that he never done homework for school. So he was always in trouble with his teachers. And then the notes would come home to his parents, and he'd be in trouble at home. And then he'd be fighting with everybody. And then he bring it out onto the street. And it just seemed like his cycle of negativity was just stemming from just having a negative experience in school. And we had a teacher working with us at the time. We said to him, look, we'll help you. Every Wednesday we have some time we come in and we'll do the homework with you so he said okay, well, can I bring a friend? Started for these two young men every Wednesday just helping them with our homework. And it slowly developed into other children and other parents coming and saying, Hey, you're helping these, can you start helping me? I need to help. And then something we discovered as we were going on one of the workers said I think the kids are hungry. And we just started to have cereal there for them when they came in from school. And then we started to give them noodles and started to give them what are kind of just easy meals, just something easy to get some food into their stomach. And then the Jamie Oliver programme came on about school dinners. Both myself and the other worker had watched it. We kind of both came in the next morning and looked at each other and said, did you see our programme last night? We're probably doing these kids more damage than good. And he said, how about if I cook a dinner for them today? And I went, Okay, let's see how that goes. You know so we cooked a dinner for them. And, you know, the initial thing was urgh there's green stuff and that, like what's that? Like vegetables, and urgh so they ate the meat and they ate the potatoes. But we slowly started to build up just feeding the young people. By the end of the year, our club had gone from 8 young people to about 25, or 26. And the change in their behaviour was just astounding, you know, just to see how calm and relaxed that they where - they weren't fighting each other as much they weren't as unsettled, as distracted. And it was purely down to giving them a hot healthy meal every day. So that's become a staple of the Just Ask programme. At the time, it was just called a homework club. But we then developed it into an after school club. And we kind of said, Look, homework is part of it. But it's not our whole reason of being here together. You know, it's about looking after the needs of the child when they come in after school. Catherine McDonald  6:13  Can you talk me through the sort of challenges that the children and young people you work with, were facing before COVID? Declan Keenan  6:21  It's an inner city community, in the heart of Dublin, a lot of challenges in the community for young people is that it's a community that always has a high proportion of crisis cases going on. So there's always a high proportion of young people, really at the 11th hour in their schooling, when they're in secondary school, with schools threatening to expel them, or them deciding themselves that they're just not going to attend school anymore. They would have an over proportion compared to the society of young people, you know, being either taken into care, or coming into the state, view, you know, of young people who are very at risk. So, you know, schools, youth clubs, everybody would always have about 20% to a quarter of the young people who are in very high risk at that particular time. And should you get some of them crosses the line into a state of stability, there's always someone to take their place. That's the kind of community we were in before COVID. And we were coming out of the last economic recession where services had been slashed, you know, some of the kind of older quality people who had been in the community had lost their jobs, or had just retired and despair. And so we lost a lot of the knowledge base within the community within services, because the service was either just not there anymore, not able to be sustained by funding. Catherine McDonald  7:51  And what sort of services are you referring to there? Declan Keenan  7:54  So it'd be different child and adolescent services, maybe after school services, youth services had been cut, and our budgets and funding so they'd lost youth workers. Schools themselves, struggling for teachers, young people, then are always seeing people coming and going, they're not seeing the stability that they really need. It's a community that relies on services to help them get through day to day. Catherine McDonald  8:19  And what about the home life of the young people that you work with on a daily basis? What kind of things are they experiencing at home? Declan Keenan  8:27  So like I said, there is 20 to 25% of young people who are constantly in crisis, that also means that there's, you know, 75 to 80%, who are not in a crisis element, you know, but still for them, their families are struggling, the inner city community in Dublin, the indigenous people who would be there as well as for want of a better word. They'd have been there for generation after generation. And then we now have, in our small part of the community, we have 39 nationalities, living within that community, living in apartments, and living in quite inadequate housing. So they just kind of built apartments around the flat complexes and put in people from these communities. So it's not like you see in some of the large cities where there's, you know, sections where all the Romanian people live, or all the, you know, in London, the Irish people might have lived in certa

In episode 7 of the Generation Pandemic podcast we focus on how COVID-19 has doubled down on lone parent families. Joining host Catherine McDonald are Professor Susan Harkness from the University of Bristol; Dr Jim Kaufman from the COVID Realities project; Niamh Kelly, Policy Manager at One Family Ireland and Stacey, a lone parent of two children. Following a first hand account from Stacey as to how her family experienced the pandemic, the panel discuss whether it was inevitable that lone parents would experience the pandemic in the way they did and how we ensure they don't experience it in the same way should it happen again.   Transcript Catherine McDonald  0:04  Hello, and welcome to Generation Pandemic, a podcast from the Interdisciplinary Child Wellbeing Network, looking at the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on children in the UK and Ireland. I'm Catherine McDonald, and today we're looking at how the pandemic has affected lone parent families. Joining me are Professor Susan Harkness from the University of Bristol, Dr. Jim Kaufman from the COVID Realities project and Niamh Kelly, Policy Manager at One Family Ireland. We're going to start though by hearing from Stacey, a lone parent of two children, who begins by talking us through her experiences of parenting during the pandemic. Stacey  0:44  At first, I guess it was exciting because I was furloughed. It was a break that I wouldn't have normally had. I was at home with their kids, summer was coming, it was it was getting warmer, and it all felt a bit new. And just like a bit of a rest, didn't expect it to go on that long either. So it didn't matter. But then as time sort of went on, and it become harder to shop, and then you couldn't go out. And there was no childcare. And you were stuck in the house with the children who were bored and sad and missing their friends at school and it become harder and harder to manage everything. And it was lonely, really lonely. And there hasn't been a time where I felt so on my own for so long. Catherine McDonald  1:29  And I guess what a lot of us felt whatever our home situation is that there was no definition to the day was there? There was no sort of segmentation where people are coming in or going out, or it's bath time or bedtime, or it just all seemed to be one big day. Stacey  1:45  Exactly that there was no routine. And the days just sort of rolled into each other in the end. But it didn't make a difference whether it's the weekend or whether it was a Wednesday, like who knew what day of the week it was because every single day just become the same. And it didn't feel at that point that there was an end in sight for it. Catherine McDonald  2:03  Now, am I right in saying that you've got two children, and they're both primary school age? Stacey  2:09  Yes. So at the start of COVID, they were three and five, I think. Catherine McDonald  2:13  Wow. So actually, you had a preschool child and a primary school child? Stacey  2:17  Yes. Catherine McDonald  2:17  So how did you approach homeschooling? How did that go? Stacey  2:22  It was tough. I had one child that wasn't at school that wanted to get involved with everything the eldest was doing. And I don't understand the work they do at the moment - it is much, much different to when I was at school. So it was a learning curve for me. And it was stressful. Because I still had stuff to do. There was stuff that I still had to get involved in from my job, and trying to juggle the children and schooling and housework and trying to get shopping done on my own with no help no support because we weren't allowed to see anyone. It was hard work. And it was stressful. Catherine McDonald  2:58  And how quickly did that beginning to take its toll? Stacey  3:02  By the end of the year of the first lockdown it felt like I was gonna have a mental breakdown. At some points where I was spending hours and hours with the eldest trying to get her to do her schoolwork. The nights were drawing in it was freezing cold. And it felt like COVID had sort of gone on forever.  Catherine McDonald  3:21  And you mentioned earlier that there was no sort of childcare to rely obviously we'd lost the school provision. We weren't allowed in each other's homes. Can you talk to me a little bit about those extra services and that extra practical help that you usually rely upon that you had to do without during the lockdowns? Stacey  3:40  So being the lone parent, the children used to go to family, at least every other weekend. At school, they'd have breakfast club, and all of that was taken away. And it just become me and them. So I would go for days without speaking to an adult. The only time I might speak to somebody is if I was in the shop on my once a week shopping trip. And I felt like I lost part of my identity during lockdown. Catherine McDonald  4:05  That part of your identity that we get through socialising and being with the people who make us who we are? Stacey  4:11  Yeah, even going to work. The children's dad passed away two years before lockdown happened. So even going to work and seeing people at work that formed a good part of my social life. And all of a sudden that wasn't there anymore. And it become tough. It was lonely and there was no way out of it. Catherine McDonald  4:31  I'm so sorry to hear about your loss. So we've we've talked about the homeschooling. We've talked about those extra services, whether informal via family or more formal sort of via breakfast club at school that you often usually rely on. What about your finances? So you mentioned you were furloughed? Did your finances take a hit? Stacey  4:52  They didn't at first because we weren't going out spending anything or there wasn't the trips but then as time went on, I was losing money that I would have earned at work. And because we were home, we were using more gas, electric things were costing more. And where there was reports of everyone having so much more money than they were used to, that quickly dried up, especially when the prices of everything started going up. And the food prices started rising in supermarkets, especially at the start, when there was so much panic buying, you couldn't buy what you were usually buying, and you have to buy sort of what was there at the time, there wasn't the money there. And it was wondering where that money was gonna come from, because you couldn't go out and earn anything or do extra overtime. Catherine McDonald  5:35  The overtime is that something you would normally rely on? Stacey  5:38  I work in sales. So I rely on sales to do extra on my sales to earn extra commission, whereas all that went. I had had two jobs before, whereas that had stopped. So money just sort of dwindled into nothing really. Catherine McDonald  5:54  And what did keep you going? Stacey  5:56  Knowing that there was other people in the same situation, and knowing that no matter what happened, my kids needed me, because they had no one else to rely on. Catherine McDonald  6:05  And how are the children? Stacey  6:07  They're fine for two little girls that have been through so much. They, they are amazing. Catherine McDonald  6:12  That's great. That's great to hear. So Jim, if I could bring you in now, how typical is Stacey's experience when it comes to parenting alone during the pandemic? Jim Kaufman  6:22  I think there are a number of things that Stacy has mentioned, that will really resonate, certainly with the other single parents who are part of the COVID Realities project. I guess the thing that Stacy puts really well is just the cumulative impact of lockdown and of the pandemic. And how that weighs differently on different people and perhaps has a heavier weight or you know, was a heavier burden to carry if you were carrying it on your own one thing after another of having to manage of never being able to fully switch off, we know that single parents are more likely to be getting by on low incomes. And the work of getting by on the low income is work. Getting by requires an awful lot of thought and planning. And one of the things that happened in the pandemic for everybody, I guess, is that that became much more difficult. So lots of the practices that low income families have for getting by on limited insufficient means became impossible. So like Stacey mentioned, the panic buying at the start of the pandemic meant that everyday shopping practices of looking for the best bargain, trying to find the best deals, shopping in different places became impossible. And you know, people were having in certain circumstances, if they were isolated having to use deliveries and to buy things online, there was less choice. People were less able to kind of make the incomes that they have stretch, also the impact on parents’ mental health. And that's something that we found as a very common theme of conversation among our participants and not being able to access other forms of support the relationships that they normally get help and support from they were cut off from. Catherine McDonald  8:22  And also that parenting from work issue in that we were all living and working in the same space. Was that a theme that came through? Jim Kaufman  8:31  Yeah, for sure. That's definitely something that many people have mentioned. Although I should perhaps say that some people also welcomed the flexibility or well at the time, it wasn't flexibility, but the the ability to work from home. So there was something about that for some people, for sure. Not for everybody. But for some people for whom working from home was perhaps an improvement, they were saving money on the commute. And also it made picking up their children easier and things like this. So there's something there. That's that's quite interesting, although obviously, it doesn't apply to everyone, certainly not for people who were unable to work from home. The other thing that people talk about having to deal with and having to manage is the uncertainty

In episode 6 of the Generation Pandemic podcast we're looking at the lived experience of children in the UK and Ireland during the pandemic. Joining host Catherine McDonald are Dr Aisling Murray, Senior Research Officer on the Growing Up in Ireland study team; Aoife McNamara, Participation and Rights Education Co-ordinator at the Ombudsman for Children's Office in Ireland; and Dr Louise Moore, Research and Impact Manager at The Children's Society. The panel discuss first hand accounts from children about their experiences, look at the nuanced effects of the things they've missed and highlght the need for our young people to keep talking.    Transcript Catherine McDonald  0:04  Hello and welcome to Generation Pandemic, a podcast from the Interdisciplinary Child Wellbeing Network looking at the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on children in the UK and Ireland. I'm Catherine McDonald, and today we're looking at the lived experiences of children during the pandemic. Joining me are Dr. Aisling Murray, Senior Research Officer on the Growing Up in Ireland study team. Aoife McNamara, Participation and Rights Education Coordinator at the Ombudsman for Children's Office in Ireland. And Dr. Louise Moore, Research and Impact Manager at the Children's Society. I began by asking Aoife, what she felt had been the main effects of COVID-19? Aoife McNamara  0:46  I'd say the biggest impact really has been on education. So this was particularly highlighted in our No Filter survey. So 1389 children from 23 different schools across Ireland took part and 8 out of 10 of those children felt that COVID had had an impact on their education. Probably as well, one of the biggest things is that they missed out on those extracurricular activities that happen after school with 60% of children saying that restrictions had a major impact on things like sports training, school trips, choir, drama, those sorts of things. And interestingly, as well, the survey drew attention to the fact that while a lot of the restrictions in schools eased in 2021, since September 2021, over a quarter of children reported, having missed more than two weeks of school as a result of COVID-19 and 29% have missed between one and two weeks, so that we're still seeing the impacts of this ongoing. And we do believe that this has had a major impact on children's mental health. So one child said in the survey, that she felt that more and more children felt stressed at home than they did at school as a no support. And potentially no one at home was able to help them. And this child said that left her feeling hopeless. We also really looked in depth at the school closures through our child rights impact assessment. And it really underscored how much we rely on schools and professionals working in schools. And this really had an impact on children's rights. So the top line kinda findings of our children's rights impact assessment was that school closures had predominantly negative effects on children's right to education. And those experiencing educational disadvantage were disproportionately affected. It also had a negative impact on children's right to the highest attainable standard of health, including on their mental health and had an impact as well on their right to adequate nutrition. As school closures meant that food provided under school meals programmes didn't happen, or didn't reach children who might have otherwise received it. And shockingly, really, the school closures together with other lockdown measures increase children's exposure to harm and abuse, including domestic violence, and that the school closures really reduced the opportunities for a school-based professional to identify, monitor and report on child protection and welfare concerns. Catherine McDonald  3:05  It's such a complex picture, isn't it? I mean, already, there's so much there. Aisling, does this resonate with what the Growing Up in Ireland study team have found? Aisling Murray  3:15  Yeah, so I certainly recognise themes there. Growing Up in Ireland has two cohorts of children and young people that we've been following since 2007. So suppose we're in a good position to in the future, consider how things were before and after COVID, if you like, but in December 2020, we did a short online survey for both our cohorts who would have been aged 12 and 22, approximately at the time, just to kind of get a snapshot of how things had changed for them as a result of COVID. So we could get that contemporary information. And yes, certainly disruptions to usual activities, especially activities outside the home were common, large portions of both children and young adults were saying they were doing fewer cultural activities, like Aoife mentioned, and they'd have done pre-pandemic. They had more screen time than they would have usually had quite a few were doing sort of more sports and exercise and they'd normally have, but it was more common for young adults and children to say they were doing less than they had done pre-pandemic. And also I think it kind of the changes to interactions with people. So they were spending more time with their family generally, but they had less face-to-face contact with friends. And that was particularly so for the 22 year olds, because at the time the schools had gone back to in person teaching but the colleges were still mostly online. So 81% of 22 year olds said that they were seeing their friends less face-to-face and they would have pre-pandemic, but then there was kind of like the emotional cost. So for our 22 year olds, we use the same measure of kind of depressive symptoms like trouble sleeping, feeling lonely, etc, during the COVID pandemic compared to just two years earlier when they'd been 20. Before COVID was on the horizon at all. And we saw a big increase in the number of young adults who were kind of reaching that threshold of concern about the frequency of symptoms they had. And it went up from 27%, pre-COVID to 48% a that thresholds at the COVID survey in December 2020. So quite a lot of disruptions to routines and things that they could do outside the home, obviously, because there were restrictions on gatherings, but also changes in the amount of contact and relationships with family and friends. Catherine McDonald  5:25  So Louise, would you say these effects are echoed across the UK as well? Louise Moore  5:29  I think children will have had some differences and experiences between the UK and Ireland. And indeed, within the four countries that comprise the UK, which will have affected obviously, you know, how they responded to COVID. We do an annual survey with Children's Society of children and young people aged 10 to 17 and their parents. In our survey in 2020, was actually conducted during the first national lockdown. We found then that there was a decline in children's cognitive wellbeing but encouraging the assay last year in 2021, which was just after the lockdown suggested that children had had some recovery in wellbeing. And that's been reflected, actually, in other work by the Department for Education showing a reduction in wellbeing during periods of lockdown and recovery and other times. One of the things that we really wanted to look at in our survey as well the effects that families and children experienced. And in particular, we asked families about the impacts and their anticipated longer term consequences. And one of the areas they did report which relates to things that other speakers have said today was about the impact on their children's education. We asked both children and parents about how well they felt they'd coped with the restrictions that were in place, because of the pandemic and encouragingly, most of them felt that they'd coped relatively well. So responding above five in five out of 10, zero to 10 scale. But what we did find is that there were pockets of children and parents who responded below the midpoint of that scale, indicating they hadn't coped very well, overall. And I think, you know, we have to be careful to take into account that there are real variations in experience. One of the things that we found was within that group, there were much more children in particular, whose parents had reported multiple impacts from the pandemic, so showing that they've not coped as well, perhaps, as a result of being disproportionately affected. What we also asked them about was individual areas, that they coped in individual areas and the areas that children told us that more children were coping less well when we're around things like not seeing their family or friends. And then last year, we didn't ask this in the first year, we did the survey during the pandemic, we asked them last year about how they felt about not being able to do hobbies, and pastimes, and that was another area where they seem to have coped less well. So I think there's lots of kind of resonance with what the other speakers have said, based on the events being experienced in Ireland. And our NHS survey in the UK has obviously shown that rates of comparable mental disorder are much higher in children and young people now compared to before the pandemic. And I think we were already aware of some of the issues that was already arising children's needs, and from a mental health perspective before the pandemic hit. And then the most recent NHS survey suggests that there's been an increase from one in nine children and young people aged six to 16, with probable mental disorder in 2017, to one and six in 2021. So I think there's kind of a range of things that children have experienced across the pandemic. Catherine McDonald  8:20  And Aisling certain groups of children and young people were at greater risk, weren't they? Aisling Murray  8:26  Well, yes, because Growing Up in Ireland has several waves pre-pandemic, we can look at, I suppose, how the families who are already low income versus high income before the pandemic and how they were sort of differ

In episode 5 of the Generation Pandemic podcast we discuss the mental health and wellbeing of children before, during and after the pandemic. Joining host, Catherine McDonald, are Professor Cathy Cresswell and Dr Jennifer McMahon from the Co-SPACE study, Professor Birgitta Rabe from the Institute of Social and Economic Research, and Laura, a mother of two primary school aged children. Laura explains how the isolation and anxiety caused by the pandemic has manifested in her children's behaviour, and the panel discuss how they have tracked children's mental health changes and the urgent need to address the effects they have evidenced.    Transcript Catherine McDonald  0:04  Hello, and welcome to Generation Pandemic, a podcast from the Interdisciplinary Child Wellbeing Network, looking at the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on children in the UK and Ireland. I'm Catherine McDonald and today we're focusing on how the pandemic has affected the mental health and wellbeing of children. In a moment we'll be hearing about the work of Professor Cathy Cresswell and Dr. Jennifer McMahon from the Co-SPACE study, and a Professor Birgitta Rabe from the Institute for Social and Economic Research. But first we're going to hear from Laura, a mother of two primary school aged children. I began by asking her what effects the pandemic has had on her son and daughter? Laura  0:45  I had a seven-year-old girl and a just turned five year old boy. And I've noticed a significant change in their mental health through the pandemic and through the lock downs that we had. Most noticeably, during the pandemic, my daughter developed a very strong anxiety and separation anxiety. She has always been a very confident little girl. And she's always been very independent. And from being at home during the pandemic, she started to want us to sleep in the same bed as her or in the same room as her and want lots of cuddles and reassurance that we were there and that we weren't going to go away anywhere. If I was to change room putting the laundry away for say she would follow me I can no longer visit the bathroom without having a little visitor with me at the same time. Because she feels me being in another room from her is quite anxiety provoking. And equally, we've had issues at school with her wanting to be close to other students almost sitting on top of them and needing that close bonds, and not necessarily respecting their personal space because she feels that they're going to not be there, or she might lose them. With my son, I felt he was a young enough age not to be affected by the pandemic. But I feel as though I may have underestimated that. And having started school, he's had issues with settling in. And he's got a big issue around personal space. So, with other children coming too close to him, he reacts and that isn't necessarily an appropriate way either. He will either push another child to get them out of his personal space, because he finds it too difficult to verbalise his feelings. And I think that's due to the lack of stimulation during the pandemic with children of his age and developing those relationships and those bonds and behavioural attitudes that he would have normally learned in his preschool years which he just missed because he was at home with us as a family. Catherine McDonald  2:46  And when COVID had hit and we were then in the various lockdowns, his age combined with that meant that he had not had a birthday party had he So has he had one now? Laura  2:55   He has just had his fifth birthday, and has had his first birthday party, which he really enjoyed. But again, he struggled with being in a room full of 30 children that halfway through he kind of switched off and was playing with the balloon and hitting it himself and needed some time on his own. Because he was being overstimulated by all the excitement that was going on. Because he not only had he not had a birthday party up until that point, he's not had the normal playdates. Normally you go around to other people's homes and have a playdate. Or you might go to a toddler and baby group and socialise with other children. He's had none of that he's had no experience of forming relationships with children of his own age. So he doesn't know how to interact with them how to share toys, how to take turns. So he sometimes then retreats into his own little world until he feels comfortable and ready to talk to another child or interact with them. Catherine McDonald  3:55  And as we all tried to get back to normal, do you have long term concerns around the effects that COVID and the lockdowns have had on your children? Laura  4:04  I do. I think it's a bit of an unknown. I don't quite know what the long term effects will be. But it's certainly a huge learning curve for them. They're having to learn the skills that ordinarily would have come naturally to them through hitting various different milestones of playdates, birthdays, preschool transitioning into reception. And they've lost that natural progression. So we've almost got to go back a couple of years and start that from the beginning. And be respectful that actually these children don't have those life skills that would have normally been built and how long that will take I don't know, because they're suddenly thrown into reception or my daughter's now in year two. And there's a level of expectation of right this is what a reception child should do. Or this is what a year two child should do, but actually forgetting that they haven't had the foundation leading up to that. Catherine McDonald  4:32  And to what extent have you found that they're able to articulate how they're feeling and what's going on for them? Laura  5:02  I think that is something that is still evolving. We used an emotions diary for my daughter when we were at home so she could log the positive and negative things that happened throughout the day and trying to get her to focus on the positives. And that is still ongoing. With my son he is only now just starting to verbalise his feelings. And that has been a significant challenge because up until now, he would verbalise his emotions through a tantrum, or through crying or having a really big meltdown, because he didn't know how to say, actually, mummy, I'm scared, or I'm a little bit worried about things. Catherine McDonald  5:43  And what do you think we need to be prioritising in the recovery process to help our children through this and move into the new normal? Laura  5:53  I think it needs to be focusing on their relationships through play, and emotions around that, and allowing them to explore it in a nice, safe environment and in a fun environment. Because realistically, over the last few years, the fun has been lost in their lives, you know, they got up, they've stayed in their homes, yes, they've had access to their toys at home. But, you know, multiply that over the past two years, that then becomes quite boring. So actually allowing them to explore life and life skills. And around those activities, I think around forming relationships and by forming the relationships, other things will then come into play from that naturally. Catherine McDonald  6:35  Sure. So Cathy, Jennifer, you're joining us today from the Co-SPACE study, which has tracked the mental health of children and young people during the pandemic. Can you talk us through your main findings, and Cathy, if I could start with you. Cathy Cresswell  6:48  So the Co-SPACE study is a longitudinal study where we invited parents of school aged children to report on their children and young people's mental health on a monthly basis throughout the pandemic. And we have data from over 8000 families. And we started in March of 2020. So a week after the first lockdown started in the UK. And we continued until a summer of last year, so collecting data on a monthly basis. And we're actually now we've just done the two year follow up. So two years from our very first lockdown. And we'll be following up families now in six months, and then again this time next year. So that will give us a better sense of the longer term impacts. But the data that we've really had a good look at so far has focused much more on what was happening during those times when we were at peak restrictions. And essentially, what we saw from our UK sample was that if we focus on the parent report, because that we can look at that across all ages, the pattern that we saw was that as restrictions increased, unsurprisingly, we saw parents report higher levels of difficulties, both in terms of emotional, but particularly in terms of behavioural difficulties, including kind of attention hyperactivity type difficulties. Ours isn't a representative sample. So we can't draw conclusions about what things were like for people as a whole. But what we are able to do within our sample is look at how patterns may have differed for people in different circumstances. And some of the things that were really clear were that families who we already know are more vulnerable to mental health problems. So those living on very low incomes, or where children have special educational needs. For those groups, we saw consistently elevated levels of emotional behavioural difficulties throughout the pandemic. And one of the most concerning things was that when we were looking last summer at the patterns and how symptoms seem to generally show some improvement as restrictions had eased among those groups, that we actually weren't seeing that evidence of kind of bounce back after restrictions ease. So it really raised concerns about ongoing challenges for some young people, and particularly those that we could see that that was the case where people had those sorts of vulnerabilities. Among our sample, we saw particular, more dramatic changes in symptoms among the primary school age group among our samples. And so particularly the sort of behavioural disturbance at times when schools were closed, w

In episode 4 of the Generation Pandemic podcast we explore how the COVID-19 pandemic doubled down on disadvantaged familes and children. Joining host, Catherine McDonald, are Dr Jim Kaufman from the COVID Realities project, Sarah Edmonds from the Irish Youth Foundation and Emma, a mum of three whose family has been hit hard by the pandemic. Emma gives a first-hand account of her family's experience and the panel discuss both the enormity and complexity of the pandemic's legacy.   Transcript Catherine McDonald  0:05  Hello, and welcome to Generation Pandemic, a podcast from the Interdisciplinary Child Wellbeing Network, looking at the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on children in the UK and Ireland. I'm Catherine MacDonald and today we're focusing on how the pandemic has doubled down on children and young people from disadvantaged and low income families. In a moment we'll be hearing from Dr. Jim Kaufman, from the Covid Realities project, and Sarah Edmonds from the Irish Youth Foundation. But first we're going to hear from Emma, a mum of three, as she explains the point at which the pandemic began to put a strain on her family. Emma  0:43  It started to affect us just a few months in my husband was furloughed on 80%. I wasn't working at that stage because my middle child had health issues. So I had to give up work a few months before the pandemic in order to look after her. It just it gradually got worse and hit an all time low, mid-summer, last year. And it's just generally got worse from there. Catherine McDonald  1:12  And what is it that's got worse? Is it mainly financial income? Emma  1:15  Yeah, completely. I mean, inflation obviously hasn't helped. And we was already playing catch up. And when you're on a downward spiral, financially, it is so hard to get on top of that. You're constantly chasing your tail. And it is generally just got worse and worse and worse, no matter how hard we're trying to improve our situation. Catherine McDonald  1:39  And what has happened with your husband's work now has the furlough, so obviously the furlough period has ended has he now gone back? Emma  1:39  He's now gone back on reduced hours and reduced income. He was working full-time, six days a week. But he's now working full-time, five days a week. He's lost seven hours a week, but he was furloughed for a total of 10 months. And the application for universal credit took a while. So that automatically put us on a setback. It has been hard without what we had before. I mean, it's crazy to say that two years on, we're now doing more to improve our situation, but we're worse off than where we was back, then. Catherine McDonald  2:26  That's a really interesting point, actually, isn't it that even though you know, we are all back at work, and the children are back at school and preschool and nursery, so to that extent life is back to normal, but you are still having to pedal faster than you were just to be in the same position as you were? Emma  2:43  Yeah, exactly. You just you constantly feel like you're drowning. I looked at going to work full-time. So I figured that would be my only option. And in order to do that, and put my two youngest in childcare, it was gonna cost over £900 a month. And there was no way that it would be beneficial to be working full-time, and to be paying out that at the same time, because then you've got travel costs on top of that, and it didn't matter what we did, you felt like there was no way out of it. And there still isn't, I mean, things are starting to look a bit brighter. Now I've got the warmer weather, but it is just so hard, and it does consume you completely. It's had a massive impact on my mental health and my oldest child as well. And is this just a sad the last few years have been absolutely horrendous. Catherine McDonald  3:40  And do you mind me asking how that's impacted on your mental health and that of your child? Emma  3:46  No, I mean, when, when we was in the midst of lockdown, and I was trying to homeschool my son, the girls were only two and three at the time. And it was just so hard and my son is a very sociable person. So it impacted his mental health greatly. And he even we even went for a patch where he turned around and said, Mom don't want to be here anymore. It breaks your heart but it's just what. It's so hard to get out of that situation. We got him the help he needed. And now everything has opened up again. He's fine, but it made me feel like such a failure as a parent. I couldn't do a weekly food shop like I used to do so the kids went from being able to eat almost what they wanted when they wanted to basically having rations. And everyone knows when when you've got kids at home and they're bored all they want to do is eat and it was it was such hard work and it took a massive toll on my mental health because financially we just couldn't cope. I couldn't give the kids what they wanted, what they needed. And if it hadn't been for the children, I can honestly say I wouldn't be here now. Catherine McDonald  5:10  Emma, that's just you know, that's, that's just gonna stop everyone in their tracks. That's just so awful to hear. But um, you know, obviously, we'll all be pleased to hear that, as you said earlier, things are starting to look a bit brighter for you. So what was it about your sort of pre-pandemic situation would you say that sort of laid the ground really, for you and your family to experience the pandemic in the way you did? Emma  5:36  Well, my daughter's health issues started in the November before the pandemic, and we nearly lost her. And I had to give up work to look after her. It's just it's so it's so sad in this day and age that a man who's working full-time still can't provide what he needs for his family. Do you know if you went back, God knows how many years that used to be the thing moms used to stay at home, look after the children, the man bringing the money, but it just doesn't work that way now. Catherine McDonald  5:36  Exactly, and as you say, for families who want to live that way. And like you said, you knew because of your daughter's health issues that you wanted to be at home, that's where you felt you needed to be. But doing that put you in an awful situation. Emma  6:26  Yeah, exactly. And it's, it's frustrating. The fact of the matter is, I had to put my child's health first and look after her in order for her to make it through the pandemic. And by doing that, we went through, well we are still going through the financial repercussions, and it shouldn't be that way. Catherine McDonald  6:49  So what would you say to policymakers listening to this? Emma  6:53  Policymakers? Well, I think at the end of the day, as far as the decisions they're making at the moment, they're not putting the younger generation first, which is what we need to do, because ultimately, they're the ones that are going to suffer in the future. They're the ones that are going to have to live with it long term, and they are our country's future. So there should be more in the way of supporting the younger generations and all the children going through child poverty that aren't getting that fair start. There should be something to support them. Catherine McDonald  7:27  And how are your children now in themselves? How are they doing? Emma  7:30  My daughter has come out the other side of her illness, my son's mental health has improved. I think they're just they're much happier now. Because they get to socialise with other children live a pretty normal life. Yes, it's not as I'd like it to be at home. I'm skipping meals to make sure the kids are fed. And my son's now noticed, but it's a case of swings and roundabouts I suppose. It's positive that they're now being able to social and get the education that they need. And they're improving in that sense. So we're at a point where we need to be grateful as there are worse things. Catherine McDonald  8:06  But you are skipping meals? Emma  8:08  Yeah, yeah, I don't, I don't have breakfast or dinner. I will just have something small throughout the day. I mean, it was a few weeks ago, my son said to me, said, he asked for some cereal, and he picked up two bowls. I said, you don't need two bowls of cereal. You have one bowl breakfast, and he was like. No, I'm doing you some cereal mum. But I haven't seen you eat in days, I will need to make sure you eaten before I go to school. And that broke my heart because he's actually noticed that and he's trying to make sure that I'm eating but I've got to make the food last as long as possible. And we are using food banks. Catherine McDonald  8:42  And obviously it's we're seeing as you mentioned earlier, inflation and everything just seems to be getting more and more expensive. And at the moment we're heading for summer. How do you feel about the year ahead, you know, including a winter in that where you're going to need heating. Emma  8:58  I'm absolutely dreading next winter. I mean, last winter was hard enough because we had the universal credit uplift got taken away. Our energy price went up the same month, we had Christmas around the corner. That was hard enough, but this winter, I'm absolutely dreading because the prices are meant to go back up again in October. We can't even cope with the prices that we're having to pay now. And it's the warmer weather imagine I can't even begin to imagine how much next winter is gonna affect us. I really can't. Catherine McDonald  9:32  Jim, so obviously Emma takes part in the Covid Realities project. Are you hearing similar experiences to Emma a lot? Jim Kaufman  9:41  Obviously Emma's experience, and everyone's on the project is unique, but there are some common themes that come up. So Emma's talked about the inadequacy of pay, particularly in relation to rising costs. So not having enough income and not really having enough income before the pandemic either. So just getting by. And then the pandemic comes along as a shock, other

In episode 3 of the Generation Pandemic podcast we focus on the learning loss suffered by children as a result of the pandemic. Joining host, Catherine McDonald, are Adam Salisbury, Research Economist from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Dr Jennifer Symonds, Asosciate Professor of Education at University College Dublin's School of Education, and Alice Brighty-Glover, Head of Humanities at Hall Mead School in Essex. The panel discuss how children's learning loss evolved during the pandemic, raise concerns about the negativity around phrases such as 'learning loss' and look to the future employment prospects of Generation Pandemic.  Transcript Catherine McDonald  0:04  Hello, and welcome to Generation Pandemic, a podcast from the Interdisciplinary Child Wellbeing Network, looking at the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on children in the UK and Ireland. I'm Catherine McDonald today we're focusing on the loss of learning experienced by children as a result of the pandemic. Joining me are Adam Salisbury research economist from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Dr. Jennifer Symond's Associate Professor of Education at University College Dublin School of Education, and Alice Brighty-Glover, Head of Humanities at Hall Mead school in Essex. I began by asking Adam how the learning experiences of school children in England evolved during the pandemic. Adam Salisbury  0:48  So my colleagues and I at the IFS are interested in this question. And to answer it, we fielded two surveys of parents of English schoolchildren at two critical points in the pandemic. So the first was in March and April 2020. So during the first lockdown, and the first round of national school closures, and the second was in February and March 2021, and that was during the second round of national school closures. And we asked parents about the educational experiences of their kids, so how long they spent on various educational activities, and what resources they had available to them. And when we compared the answers two broad messages came out. The first is that learning experiences appear to have gotten better between the first period of closures and the second. So to give an example, primary school kids back in April and May 2020, spent around 22 hours per week on learning activities. By early 2021 that had increased to 26 hours per week. And we also found that they spend more of this time on interactive activities, such as online classes, which we probably think of as more valuable than more passive, based learning. So that's kind of the positive message, the more concerning one is that even though things improved, they were still significantly below pre-pandemic benchmarks. We know from time use surveys before COVID, that primary school kids tend to spend around 35 hours per week on learning activities. Clearly, this is quite a lot higher than both the 22 hours and 26 hours per week, we recorded in our surveys. So obviously, this raises concerns about substantial and protracted learning loss throughout the pandemic. Catherine McDonald  2:19  And then of course, learning loss has continued, hasn't it? So even when the children went back to school, there were periods of isolation, first if they came into contact with somebody who'd had COVID. And then obviously, if they got COVID themselves. So through that sort of detection and isolation process, learning loss continued, didn't it? Adam Salisbury  2:37  Yeah, I think that's right. So we didn't collect any data after March 2021. But we could ask the parents about the autumn term of 2020. And this was a period when schools were open to all children. But learning was frequently disrupted because children caught COVID, or their classmates caught COVID. So they had to sort of frequently self-isolate at home. And I suppose this model of instruction, this that characterised most of 2021, as well. So we can think that the lessons that we learned in autumn 2020, are probably applicable, at least somewhat to 2021, as well. And what we found was that children lost out on average, eight days of face-to-face instruction. And when they were forced to self-isolate, they had less access to things like online classes than periods of national closure as well. So again, these periods were probably very disruptive for children. Catherine McDonald  3:23  So Jennifer, what would you say about the significance of the learning loss that's been experienced by children across the pandemic? Jennifer Symonds  3:30  Well, I would say that it's too early to tell whether the learning loss will be sustained into later ages for the individuals who experienced a learning loss during the pandemic, because we haven't had the opportunity to follow up these cohorts over a longer period of time. But the concern I think, amongst the research community of learning losses is that if there is a difference in the standardised test scores. In particular the school leaving qualifications that can be observed for cohorts who are completing those who have experienced a learning loss due to the pandemic, compared to previous cohorts that did not. That this potential inequality between cohorts in school leaving qualifications will lead to losses and income between age cohorts across a much longer period of time and potential losses in opportunities for different types of employment that might be available with different levels of qualification. So that's one of the significances that people are, I think, rightly concerned about. But as I say, I think it's far too early to tell whether or not this will become a reality. I think something that's important to be considered is how individual children, individual families and individual schools are managing the learning loss that would have occurred as a result of the pandemic and the school closures. Because when we consider how we prepare young people and children for standardised testing, including school leaving qualifications. Quite often we start the study periods at a particular point in time during the school year. Whereas I know from anecdotal evidence that some schools are now starting the studying period earlier. And I think it's important also to consider the pace of learning during an ordinary school term, and during an ordinary school year, and how the curriculum is covered in class, and how schools and teachers and indeed, families and children can also in their own way impact on the rate of their learning. So whether that be through a teacher teaching the curriculum quicker, or through starting the study period earlier, or through individual families focusing with their children, and here, I'm referring to younger children, on the types of academic competencies that they would like their children to recover or to develop more quickly, and also the role of individual children and their agency in managing their own learning and classrooms. Catherine McDonald  6:01  And as you say, Jennifer, we're talking about individual experiences, no two families are the same. It seems a good time to start talking about the socio-economic inequalities her. Adam, how did the socio-economic learning inequalities evolve during the pandemic. Adam Salisbury  6:17  Learning inequalities between children widened quite significantly in the first lockdown. So for example, children from the poorest 20% of households spent around 19 hours per week on learning activities, whereas children from the richest 20% of households spend 27 hours per week on learning activities. So really quite a substantial difference, and one that we didn't see before the pandemic. So during the second national closures in February and March 2021, inequalities in learning time had largely returned to their pre-pandemic levels. So children spend about the same amount of time learning. There's many reasons we can speculate for this, we find in our data that poorer kids are more likely to have gained access to laptops and tablets. And they were also more likely to gained access to things like online classes, which they were less likely to have access to during the first lockdown. Catherine McDonald  7:02  And so am I right in saying then that COVID has sort of doubled down if you like, on children, who might have already been finding it harder to learn for various reasons. Adam Salisbury  7:13  Yeah, I think that's right. So even though sort of patterns of inequality had returned to the pre-pandemic levels in early 2021. I don't think that necessarily means that inequalities after COVID, will be the same as they were before. They could indeed be worse. There's two reasons for this I think. The first is that the inequalities that emerged during the early pandemic could have sort of long lasting consequences. And the second is that inequalities could also have widened outside these periods of nationwide school closures. And we have some evidence for this in our data. So we find that during the autumn term, so when kids were back in school, poorer kids lost out on more in person instruction compared to richer kids due to the need to self-isolate. Again, there's reasons we can speculate for this one being that we know infection rates were higher in poorer communities. And also poorer kids tend to attend schools with larger pupil-classroom ratios. With more kids in the class, just the likelihood of catching COVID and having to isolate is higher. Catherine McDonald  8:07  Sure. Alice, I'm really keen to bring you in here. So you teach in a secondary school. What are you thinking, as you're hearing Adam and Jennifer talk about the work that they've done? Alice Brighty-Glover  8:18  From everything that I've heard from Jennifer and Adam, so far, I completely and wholeheartedly agree. Talk of a digital divide between socio-economic groups has been really poignant. And although the pupil premium or disadvantaged gap has been very prominent in education. Over the pandemic, it has never been wider in terms of students accessing online materials and

In episode two of the Generation Pandemic Podcast we compare the social policy responses to the pandemic in the UK and Ireland. We look at the significance of the policy landscapoe pre-COVID-19, what was implemented, and the impact of the different schemes on individuals, families and children. We discuss the longer term policy legacy of the pandemic response and how this might inform our reaction to further crises such as climate change. Joining podcast host, Catherine McDonald, are Dr Rod Hick from the University of Cardiff and Professor Mary Murphy from the University of Ireland, Maynooth.  Here is a link to the research discussed.  Transcript Catherine McDonald  00:05 Hello, and welcome to Generation Pandemic, a podcast from the Interdisciplinary Child Wellbeing Network, looking at the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on children in the UK and Ireland. I'm Catherine McDonald and today we're comparing the social policy responses of the UK and Ireland to the pandemic. Joining me are Dr. Rod Hick from the University of Cardiff, and Professor Mary Murphy from the National University of Ireland Maynooth. I began by asking Rod about the policy landscape pre-COVID-19 and why that was significant. Rod Hick  00:39 It was significant in the first instance, because minds were focused elsewhere. So as we note in the paper, the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the UK, came on the very day that the UK was, was leaving the European Union. So the attention of policymakers was very much on Brexit in the lead up to those initial cases. But it's also relevant, I think, because Brexit as a period was one where the relationship between the UK and Ireland was very much brought to the fore, not an easy aspect of those negotiations. But I think that lends itself to, I guess, the comparison that we made in the paper between the UK and Ireland. Catherine McDonald  01:24 And Mary so as Rod has, has said there the work that you've done, compared to the UK and Ireland, why was that? Mary Murphy  01:31 Well, I suppose there's a logic for comparing the UK and Ireland in terms of the historical connections between the two welfare states. And the, the similar kind of liberal structure of the two welfare states. But it also gives a very interesting opportunity to look at path dependency in action, if you like in that we did, although they're similar, we started the pandemic with quite different basic welfare systems in the capacity of the two countries to respond. And that, that meant for an interesting, almost natural experiment, in terms of how the configuration of income support sort of enabled the responses or configured to the responses that happened. So it was an interesting case in that sense as well. Catherine McDonald  02:15 And what time period did your research look at? And again, why? Mary Murphy  02:19 Well, to be honest, it was it was a moving clock in that we started this research very much at the start, you know around May where we had a chance to look at what had happened since March 2020. And I think we thought we might stop it in the end of the first wave. But things kept moving, as we know. So we ended up luckily, I think, for the work that we did being able to observe some of the ongoing responses as the second wave emerged. So we were able to kind of, kind of capture almost a year really, in terms of their responses. And so we were very much capturing a moving picture as was the world at the time, because nobody knew quite when things were going to start and stop. Catherine McDonald  02:56 Absolutely. So let's look at the initial policy responses. Rod, can you talk us through what the UK did, first of all? Rod Hick  03:04 Sure. So the UK had two main planks to its policy response. There were initial changes in terms of the waiting days for sickness benefits, but those were pretty small. But the the two real changes were the introduction of furlough, on the one hand for people who weren't able to continue working but hadn't lost their job they were formally retained. And changes made to Universal Credit for those who were either unemployed at the time of the onset of the pandemic or who became unemployed. And those policy changes were really quite different. Furlough was perhaps the one that grabbed most attention of, for obvious reasons, on the grounds that it was a wholly new instrument rolled out incredibly quickly really. And paid a very generous or level, at least for for higher earners, paid up to 80% of earnings up to two and a half thousand pounds for retained workers. So really, a new instrument and a really generous level of paying for higher middle income earners. And then in for Universal Credit, this was increased from around £74 a week to £94 a week, this was the £20 uplift that there's been a significant amount of discussion about. Catherine McDonald  04:14 And Mary, what about Ireland? What were the initial policy responses in the Republic of Ireland? Mary Murphy  04:19 Well, I suppose for people who are in employment still the same policy response was there as the furlough in terms of what was called the temporary wage subsidy scheme, and which was broadly similar in design in terms of the thresholds and the intention to keep people connected to their employment. What I suppose the biggest contrast between the UK and the Irish responses, more lay in the income support system. So Rod has described the Universal Credit being the main mechanism for supporting people who weren't connected to employment, or who are marginally connected to employment in the UK and described how that was just a £20 uplift. In Ireland, there was a completely different response. In that they chose not to use an existing welfare payment, or to innovate a new pandemic unemployment payment, which was much more generous and much more administratively easy to get and keep than the the other types of welfare payments that were available. So this pandemic unemployment payment, instead of being paid as a 203 euro rate per week, which was the normal unemployment payment, this was paid at 350 euro per week on an individualised basis. It was given ex ante. So it was given to everybody who applied with a retrospective check on eligibility and means testing. So, in a way, it was a completely new departure for the Irish welfare system to have a payment that was very accessible, very generous, very individualised. And that was only tested for eligibility after the event. So this was a very different type of approach to the more low key approach, maybe in the UK, which was a much more less generous approach where, where people only got £94, the Irish equivalent was 350 euro. And so that those two were, they gave us an opportunity, I suppose to look at that issue of past dependency, whereas the UK already had Universal Credit, and decided to use that as the main mechanism. Ireland felt it had no real welfare payments that they could quickly respond to the crisis with, and therefore innovated this very quick response - pandemic unemployment payment. Catherine McDonald  06:31 That was pretty incredible that they were able to do that then if they were coming from a base that had less. Mary Murphy  06:36 It was administratively incredible. And it was politically quite interesting to see how quickly the political system could choose to respond to a need, you know, and ditch a lot of their previous concerns about you know, what was necessary in a welfare design system. Catherine McDonald  06:45 And Rod can I come to you on that as well? How do you feel the two compared? So the two meaning the UK and the Republic of Ireland? And so moving on, what were the implications of these policies? Mary, can I come to you first. Rod Hick  07:01 Sure. I mean one similarity that I think is is important is that policymakers in both countries realise they needed new policy instruments to deal with this crisis. So one of the things we see if we pan out and consider, what some other European countries did is they essentially lent much more on existing instruments. So sometimes those social security schemes might have been tweaked to make them a little more generous. But essentially, policy rested on existing social security instruments. In both the UK and Ireland, you have the recognition that existing schemes weren't going to function and there needed to be a major supplement. In the UK that came via the furlough scheme in Ireland, both of the two schemes that were relied upon were novel. So I think that's an important similarity. A key difference, I think, was that in the UK, the reliance on furlough was really much greater. It was more generous payment, then potentially, you know, for higher earners than either of the Irish schemes. And then there was a huge difference down to the level of payments provided via Universal Credit. And as Mary said, you know, that's a that's a product of a long standing, emphasis on rate restraint in relation to social security payments in the UK. So the uplift was only £20 a week, much, much more modest than the increase in payments to the pandemic unemployment payment in Ireland. And yet in the UK, that was viewed as a really major change and is argued by many people to be a success. And no doubt it was in terms of making a difference to family incomes, but the fact that that increase was only £20 also kind of shows us the, the somewhat limited horizons of social security policy in the UK. Mary Murphy  08:52 If you look at it from the perspective of families or gender and child poverty, I think one of the implications in Ireland from the pandemic unemployment payment was it was a new focus on on inequalities. At first glance, it looks like a really strong and positive response in that each adult who found themselves unemployed had access to a much more generous pandemic unemployment payment. But in reality, a lot of families would have been traditional male breadwinner families, where the adult dependent or the qualified adult, la

In the first episode of the Generation Pandemic series, we discuss the experiences of parents during the COVID-19 pandemic. We explore the experience of home-schooling, the isolation and what it took to keep our children on track -  and we look at what the recovery needs to prioritise. Joining host Catherine McDonald are Dr. Jennifer McMahon from the Co-SPACE study, Dr. Hope Christie from the University of Edinburgh, Dr. Claudia Hupkau from the CUNEF University and the London School of Economics and Laura, a mum of two.  Transcript: Catherine McDonald  0:05  Hello and welcome to Generation Pandemic, a podcast from the Interdisciplinary Child Wellbeing Network looking at the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on children in the UK and Ireland. I'm Catherine McDonald and today we're looking at the experiences of parents during the pandemic. Joining me are Dr. Jennifer McMahon from the Co-SPACE study, Dr. Hope Christie from the University of Edinburgh, and Dr. Claudia Hupkau from the CUNEF University and the London School of Economics. Before we dive into the research, we're going to hear from Laura, a mum of two about her experiences of parenting through the pandemic, and how she felt when we first went into lockdown. Laura  0:47  The first thing was how I would occupy my children stuck in my own house with very limited resources to keep them entertained. And as a small business owner with it having to close down how would I provide for my family? And how would I juggle my business and my role as a mother going forwards? Catherine McDonald  1:06  And talk us through those first few weeks - how did it unfold for you? Laura  1:11  I had to relocate all of my patients. I work as a, as a physiotherapist. So I was trying to reassure them that it wouldn't be going on for very long, as well as trying to reassure my children, the fact that I wasn't getting them up and getting them out to go to school in the morning, that it was okay, and that everybody was doing the same thing. And it wasn't us being unusual. Catherine McDonald  1:30  And what types of things were the children saying at this point? What questions did they have? Can you remember? Laura  1:36  My little boy was three. So for him, nothing really changed because he was always at home with me anyway. He wasn't in full-time childcare for my daughter, she had literally just started reception at primary school. So for her, she felt I was denying her seeing her friends. I mean she kept saying that mummy can't I see my friends? Why are you not allowing me to see my friends? I just want to go to school. And I want, want to go and have fun. Catherine McDonald  2:04  And how did you respond to that? I mean, that's such a, such a tough call. It's such a tough position for you to be in. Laura  2:09  I think I just embraced being at home and tried to make it as fun as I could, and try to devise a plan each day. So there was some form of routine that like she would be getting at school. So we'd have we'd get up at the same time and we'd have breakfast at the same time, then we would have some maybe some messy play in the kitchen, we would do Joe Wicks because I thought that's at least we're getting some exercise and it filled half an hour of our morning and then we'd have lunch and just tried to instil a sense of routine for the children really. Catherine McDonald  2:45  And as the lockdown went on and then obviously, some children were allowed back to school, I'm guessing yours were. Oh, no, yours would have been because reception was one of the years. And so how did that go? Laura  2:57  I think, I think I had to run on to the school with my daughter, she was so excited about the possibility of going back into school, which was very different to how she had remembered her schooling life. Whereas before, it was all free play and free flow around the classroom. All of a sudden, they were expected to sit in twos, in desks spaced two metres apart, all facing the front, and no free movement across the classroom at all. So having gone from this sort of play environment to a very structured learning environment was different. But for her, I think it was just a change of scenery. She was pleased that she wasn't in the house anymore, and that she was seeing her friends and felt a little bit like she'd got her life back. I know she was only five but she'd started on this really exciting educational journey in reception, making friends and learning to read and write to all of a sudden having that ripped away from her. And she struggled with that so she sort of embraced going back even with the changes. Catherine McDonald  3:58  And what about your other child who obviously was still preschool age when your daughter was able to go back to school? How did that affect him? Laura  4:07  He didn't have anyone to play with apart from me. He was only I think doing one or two days a week at preschool during the first lockdown because he'd only really just started on sort of socialising. But again, we walked my daughter to school, we would come home and then there was just interactions with me all day. There was no interactions with other children. There was no ability to socialise, learn skills, friendship, turn taking not snatching toys, and actually, you know, he got everything when he wanted which now with him starting school is tricky learning to take turns and there are 20 other children in the class that he has to wait his turn. It's not everything now. Catherine McDonald  4:49  And so when we then went back into lockdown how did firstly your daughter who was at school, how did she react to that? Laura  4:58  She was devastated and I can remember it really clearly because it was Christmas, we had a lovely Christmas holiday. And there was umming and ahhing of are the schools gonna go back? Are they not gonna go back? Or we were planning on the schools going back. And then everything started on social media, and I put my daughter to bed, and it all unfolded. And she woke up the next morning with me saying, we're not going to school today, the schools aren't going to reopen, and she just was so upset. And again, it was that feeling that I bore the brunt of that she thought I was not sending her in, and that I was the one that was stopping her from going to school. And that first week of home-schooling was horrendous. She didn't want to engage with any other home working. And then when the Google Classroom started, and she could see all of her friends were on the Zoom meeting and the calls and going actually, it's not just me at home, we're all at home, she settled in a little bit better, but still was very, very upset that she couldn't go and see her friends. Catherine McDonald  5:55  What's coming through loud and clear is how and I think it's something that every parent, it will resonate with that how you became the centre of everything, the energy that was required to home school, and to keep them amused, to keep them happy, to make sure they weren't getting too anxious. It was all on the parents, can you tell me a bit about the effect that had on you? Laura  6:17  I think for me, it was a case of head down, keep going and, and plough through to be honest. And I didn't really take a huge amount of time to think about what we were doing. And just going right, this is what I've got to do. This is the home-schooling and we just attacked it basically together and threw ourselves into it. But that's all we could do. Because there was nothing else to do. There was no other external influence at that point. We just had to embrace it. Catherine McDonald  6:44  So obviously, it sounds like you were in a fortunate position in that you were able to take the time to be with the children. What difference do you think that made to you, and presumably, you know, other people whose circumstances were different? Laura  6:57  I think during the first lockdown, I wasn't working, because my business had been shut due to the restrictions. In the second lockdown, I was able to work. So I was juggling, childcare, home-schooling, and my business at the same time. And we live next door to my parents, and we took the decision that we would bubble together just for us to all be able to cope, really. The children to be able to have an extra support network, as well as being able for me to facilitate going back to work to provide for the family. To actually keep, like you said before my mental health in a reasonable state, because I could step out of that home-schooling, oppressive environment really of being stuck in your house 24/7 and engage with my patients, but I had other parents who have only children. And they were really worried about the impact that no socialising with other children was having on their children. And the fact that their only child was engaging in adult conversation all the time, there was no silliness, you know that you would get between five-year olds having a conversation, it was all grown up conversations and discussions all the time. Catherine McDonald  8:07  And so when you look back at the various lockdowns and the various periods of time in between what is your overriding sense of the effect that it's had on both you and the children? Laura  8:19  I feel at the moment, we're just starting on our journey of recovery, both my daughter and my son and myself. My daughter is finally starting to find her confidence again. She suffers quite a bit with what we call worry tummy, which we had a lot during the pandemic and it does rear its head every now and again now, but it certainly isn't as frequent as it was. We never co-slept as we were bringing my daughter up but during the pandemic, we had a lot of co-sleeping because she couldn't cope with me not being in the room with her, those things have started to change. She will now spend a little bit of time on her own doing things without me needing to be there 24/7. But my son who I thought maybe naively was unaffected by the pandemic, be