New research explores social impacts of Covid-19 for young people

Huddersfield researchers Professor Barry Percy-Smith and Dr Leanne Monchuk will be working with Ecorys – the final report is due in September 2021

RESEARCHERS at the University of Huddersfield, Professor Barry Percy-Smith and Dr Leanne Monchuk, are working with Ecorys on a prestigious grant awarded by Nuffield Foundation to understand how the Covid-19 crisis affects children and young people’s everyday lives.

The research will be led by Ecorys’s Research Director Laurie Day.  Ecorys have a global reputation as an international provider of research, consulting, programme management and communications services.

Over the next 18 months, the joint research team from the two organisations will recruit and train young people as co-researchers, supporting them to document their family lives, peer relationships, education, and their roles in society as the pandemic unfolds.

The research will be conducted entirely online, using virtual forms of communication to mirror young people’s changing modes of social interaction during the crisis and will include a range of methods including blogs/vlogs, photos, videos, diaries and interviews.  Young people will also be involved in ongoing analysis and reporting.

Study Social Work or Childhood Studies at Huddersfield

The research will take place in seven countries.  

The team will compare young people’s experiences in the four nations of the UK, with those of their peers from Italy, at the original epicentre of the European outbreak.  Other countries involved are Singapore, where SARS is still within memory and where the response to Covid-19 has centred on contract-tracing, and Lebanon, where a fragile civil society and quarantine for refugee children have particular implications for the pandemic.

The study will provide findings to inform the development of appropriate tools and measures to safeguard child well-being and children’s rights during the crisis.  The main outputs will include interim and final research reports, alongside online briefings and blog posts aimed at the general public, professionals, public authorities and NGOs.

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Nuffield Foundation project WEL/FR-000022571 – Further information can be found at the Nuffield Foundation website: http://nuffieldfoundation.org/project/growing-up-under-covid-19.

• Professor Barry Percy-Smith is Professor of Childhood Youth and Participatory Practice and the Director of the Centre for Applied Childhood, Youth and Family Research
• Dr Leanne Monchuk is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Policing and a member of the Applied Criminology and Policing Centre