‘Curtailing safeguards such as school and social networks have had a detrimental effect on wellbeing.’

Jayne Dowle

WHEN MY teenagers decided to take a late Sunday evening stroll to the park, I didn’t expect them to come home with two little girls in nightgowns and wellies, carrying a pet ferret.

My husband and I were just thinking about putting the cat out when Jack and Lizzie came bursting through the front door.

“We think you had better come outside,” said Lizzie. I assumed – because it’s happened before – they had found a lost dog.

This was much more serious. On the pavement, holding hands, stood two fair-haired sisters, not much more than five or six years old. Jack and Lizzie had found them literally wandering the streets along our road.

Their mother, the eldest one said, was fast asleep on the sofa and they couldn’t wake her.

There were a few gaps in the story here but somehow it seemed these two tiny mites had left their home and taken the decision to walk to their dad’s house, bringing their ferret with them.

What could we do? This astonishing situation brought up a series of immediate conflictions. It was dark. Our road is lonely at night but cars speed along it. We couldn’t leave them to make their way alone to who knows where.

Should we take them back to their mother? At this suggestion they shook their heads violently. Should we call the police? What if any of our actions had unintended repercussions?

In the end, we did what we hoped was the most sensible thing. We put them in the back of the car, flanked by Jack and Lizzie for reassurance, and took them to find their father’s house.

I’ve never seen a man look so shocked but thankfully he was overwhelmed with gratitude.

What happened next? We don’t know.

My only concern was what could have happened if those vulnerable children hadn’t been found by a couple of decent teenagers. The frightening possibilities ran through my head all night.

We didn’t want to judge. Perhaps it was all a misunderstanding. Perhaps their mother was ill. Perhaps the sisters were prone to mischief. Or perhaps they were two little victims of the hidden cost of the coronavirus crisis.

The NSPCC says its helpline has responded to more than 10,000 “child welfare contacts”, including calls and emails, since the start of the UK lockdown in March.

NSPCC researchers Eleni Romanou and Emma Belton found that months of enforced lockdown had made living conditions for untold numbers of children and young people unbearable.

Curtailing “normal” safeguards such as school and social networks have had a detrimental effect on safety and wellbeing. Problems are being hidden away in the home more than ever. This has been exacerbated by an “increase in stressors” to parents and care-givers.

Romanou and Belton found the risk of child abuse of all kinds is higher when adults are overloaded by stressors in their lives. The pandemic clearly comes into this category.

All this means that lockdown and its long-drawn-out aftermath has heightened the vulnerability of children and young people to certain types of abuse, including online abuse, abuse within the home, criminal exploitation and child sexual exploitation.

It doesn’t bear thinking about does it? But we should. I saw a social media post on our community Facebook group the other day. A toddler, no more than two, had been found wandering through a local village wearing just a nappy, one shoe and accompanied by a small brown and white dog.

He’d been at the police station

Spare a thought for the children who won’t be going to the seaside or playing in the garden.

more than half an hour, it was reported, and no one had called. Again, it could have been a worrying – but entirely blameless – situation. Or perhaps it wasn’t.

As a parent, it breaks my heart to think any child could be frightened and vulnerable. For this situation to be hidden because of what is going on around us should be a major concern to us all.

The Children’s Commissioner, Leeds-based Anne Longfield, author of the damning report Growing Up North, warns that children in our region were already facing challenges much tougher than their counterparts in London and the South East before Covid-19 struck.

Now we’re on the second week of the long summer holidays, with no prospect of return until September. Spare a thought for the children who won’t be going on those long-awaited day trips to the seaside or playing safely in the garden with their friends.

If you think a child is in danger, try and do the right thing. I hope we did.