How children in the UK are coping with the coronavirus lockdown
Blog Post
Photo credit: Gabe Pierce via Unsplash
Oct. 8, 2020
The Learning Sciences Exchange (LSX) is a cross-sector fellowship program designed to bring together journalists, entertainment producers, policy influencers, researchers, and social entrepreneurs around the science of early learning. As part of the program, our fellows contribute to various publications, including New America’s EdCentral blog; BOLD, the blog on learning development published by the Jacobs Foundation; and outside publications. The article below, by LSX Fellow Catherine de Lange, is excerpted from a July article in New Scientist: How children in the UK are coping with the coronavirus lockdown. Catherine de Lange was an LSX Fellow in the inaugural 2018-2020 cohort.
SINCE lockdown began in the UK, Cathy Creswell at the University of Oxford and her colleagues have been surveying thousands of families to find out how they are affected by the covid-19 pandemic. The Co-SPACE Study has now published its first findings from a longitudinal study that questioned people over several months.
What has your survey of families during lockdown shown?
More than 10,000 people have now taken part. Our first report was at the beginning of April, looking at the first 1500 people. What we saw then has remained pretty consistent all the way through, which was that families were certainly feeling under a great deal of stress. Parents were particularly struggling with balancing work and childcare, and the most common concern they were reporting was about their children's emotional wellbeing. We could see that very early on, but we couldn't obviously see the direct impact that lockdown had.
To continue reading, see the full article published July 15, 2020 in New Scientist.
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