Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has subsided, but humanity will always remember how it suffered when the deadly virus was raging, killing millions and leaving a million others with symptoms of long-Covid.
A new UK-based survey done on parents sheds light upon how half of all kids suffered a setback to their emotional and social development during the first year of the pandemic.
Another key finding of the report was about how “half of the families” saw no change in their labour market status during the first year of the pandemic, “including a third of households where all parents remained employed and working throughout”.
The survey also says that younger siblings are more likely to have been negatively affected than their older brothers and sisters.
A report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) revealed that children belonging to all economic backgrounds in England were affected.
As per the research, children aged four to seven were significantly more likely to have suffered a deterioration in their skills as compared to those between 12 to 15 of age.
The research by the IFS and UCL Institute of Education stated that the social and emotional development of just one in six children improved over the same period.
Part of the report read, “The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many aspects of children’s lives, with impacts on their social and emotional development as well as their educational attainment.”
The report stated that school closures increased “social and emotional difficulties and lack of contact with friends and extended family left some children without a trusted adult to turn to”.
The report is based on a survey of 6,095 parents living in England with children aged four to 16. The parents answered 13 questions about how their kids have been behaving after the Covid pandemic.
As quoted by The Guardian, Andrew McKendrick, a research economist at IFS and one of the authors of the report, said: “During the COVID-19 pandemic, children from all backgrounds saw their social and emotional skills worsen considerably.”
“Children lived through many changes during these years: school closures, lack of contact with friends and family, and potentially devastating severe illness or death among loved ones,” McKendrick added.
He said that the research shows that another important driver of children’s declining skills was the economic disruptions experienced by their parents, whether or not those disruptions led to a large income loss.
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