Lockdown ‘harmed nearly half of children’

Youngsters more worried and less confident after damage to emotional development

LOCKDOWNS damaged the emotional development of almost half of children, a study has shown.

Parents said that they appeared more worried, more easily lost confidence and were more prone to tantrums and low moods after Covid lockdowns.

The findings have emerged in the first study of its kind into the effect of lockdowns on children’s behaviour and emotional development, after a survey of more than 6,000 parents in England by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and the UCL Institute of Education.

Just under half of parents said their child’s social and emotional skills had worsened during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, revealing that the effect of lockdowns has extended beyond lost academic progress.

It comes as separate research published today shows that eating disorders among children have doubled in the last six years, which Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner for England, told The Daily Telegraph may have been caused by children spending more time online during lockdowns.

About 11,800 people under the age of 18 began treatment on the NHS for eating disorders in 2022-23, up from 5,240 in 2016-17.

Dame Rachel, who analysed the figures, warned children need to be “robustly protected” from harmful online content, which they may have become more exposed to in isolation in Covid lockdowns.

Commenting on research from UCL and the IFS, she said: “This study shows that the disruption the pandemic caused to children’s development has been long-lasting.

“It is vital that the right social and emotional support is made available to allow children the chance to recover and go on to achieve all that they want to.”

She said she was concerned about the rise in children needing treatment for eating disorders, adding: “As we come out of the shadow of the pandemic, the extent of the crisis in children’s mental health is becoming more and more evident.

“I worry that the isolation many children faced in the lockdowns not only led to children being cut off from support networks and vital health services, but also to spending more time online.”

The Telegraph has reported extensively on the effect of lockdowns and school closures on children.

The UCL and IFS study found that job insecurity among parents during lockdowns, including those placed on furlough, had harmed children’s social and emotional development.

It is the latest evidence of the damage of Covid lockdowns, including their economic consequences, on a generation of children.

Government data show that persistent absence from school has doubled since the pandemic, with 1.7 million pupils now missing at least 10 per cent of school time.

The number of pupils who miss 50 per cent of lessons has doubled, with 125,000 now skipping most of their schooling in a phenomenon that ministers have been warned could cause a surge in youth crime.

Education leaders are also worried about the effect of lockdowns on this year’s exam cohorts.

They have warned that teenagers in England who missed out on sitting their GCSES in the pandemic will be set up for a reality check when they receive their A-level results later this month, as they become the first Covid cohort to experience a return to prepandemic grading standards.

Anne Longfield, who served as Children’s Commissioner during the pandemic, said: “The impact of the pandemic on the wellbeing and development of many of our children is extremely alarming.

“I am not convinced though that the Government fully grasps the scale of the problem or the long-term consequences for our society and economy.”

The IFS and UCL surveyed 6,095 parents living in England with children aged between four and 16 in February 2021, at the tail end of England’s third

national lockdown and second period of national school closures.

The researchers asked parents 13 questions about their children’s behaviour, including how often they appeared worried, easily lost confidence, or had tantrums, both in February 2021 and, retrospectively, a year earlier.

They found that 47 per cent of parents believed that their child’s social and emotional skills had worsened during the first year of the pandemic.

By contrast, one in six children saw their social and emotional development improve over this period.

More than half, or 52 per cent, of children aged four to seven were reported to have seen their social and emotional development deteriorate, compared to 42 per cent of 12-to 15-year-olds.

Previous studies have focused on children’s loss of learning during the pandemic, with children from disadvantaged backgrounds falling further behind their middle-class peers.

However, the IFS study found no evidence that children from poorer families suffered any worse harm on their social and emotional skills than their wealthier peers.

Andrew Mckendrick, the research economist at IFS and an author of the report, said: “Disruption in itself was bad for children, whether their parents were going in or out of furlough, or in and out of employment.

“The startling thing is that households where parents continued to be unemployed throughout the entire year don’t seem worse off in terms of their children’s social and emotional development, compared to children with parents who were employed for the entire time.” He added: “There’s been some discourse suggesting that children will bounce back and this has not been long lasting.

“Wider evidence outside of our study has shown that this kind of disruption to children can have long-lasting consequences.

“We are seeing these impacts at present in children and mental health referrals are higher than before the pandemic. Job losses have impacts on children.

“They can cast a long shadow. Here, we have a lot of children being impacted and this may raise challenges in the future.” A Government spokesman said: “We know children were amongst those most affected by the pandemic and we are committed to helping them catch up academically as well as socially and in terms of emotional wellbeing.

“All pupils are taught about mental wellbeing as part of relationships, sex and health education, and we’re investing an additional £2.3billion a year in NHS mental health services by March 2024. We’re also boosting capacity at children and young people’s community eating disorder services, helping them to treat nearly 50 per cent more young people in 2022-23 than 2019-20.”

‘Wider evidence has shown that this kind of disruption to children can have long-lasting effects’