Insights for World Mental Health Day from the Multinational COVID 4P Log Project

Calls for More Dedicated, Collective and Coordinated Action to Promote Children’s Mental and Socio-Emotional Wellbeing During COVID-19

‘Prevention: Children’s social and emotional wellbeing’ is one of the 8 research themes of the COVID 4P Log Project for Children’s Wellbeing. With a partnership of a wide range of international organisations, we set out to capture service providers’ and policymakers’ views and experiences of the adequacy of responses to mitigate the adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children’s mental and socio-emotional wellbeing across 22 countries and 5 continents. 

Using a bespoke smartphone app survey, we wanted to understand what’s been done to promote children’s and families’ resilience, especially in the midst of the myriad of challenges posed by the pandemic and its severe consequences for people’s livelihoods, safety, relationships and mental wellbeing.

We collected responses through the app during the last quarter of 2020. Within the Prevention theme we had responses from 31 service providers and policymakers from several countries – including Kenya, the Philippines, South Africa, Scotland, India, the USA, Canada, the Netherlands and Montenegro. 

• Respondents voiced their increased concerns that, despite the profoundly negative and far-reaching impact of the pandemic on children’s social and emotional wellbeing, those needs were being given insufficient priority.

• Children’s ability to socialise; their coping skills and stress management; nutrition; hopefulness; creativity and self-expression; and parent-child relationships were all reported as negatively affected.

On World Mental Health Day 2021, we want to share some of the respondents’ observations with you:

A service manager at a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in South Africa, for instance, shared:

‘These are very critical dimensions of children wellbeing which needs a long term intervention and consistency presence and touch […]. There is a lack of integrated approach/ or collaborative approach in assisting children with these needs. Practitioners are underestimating each other and private sector systems are not in congruent wit government systems which makes it difficult to see positive outcomes after interventions effort.’   

Another respondent, a service manager working for the government in the USA, reflected:

‘Some youth that already struggle with depression and anger and behaviors related to that, are impacted even more negatively because of their inability to have face to face visits with friends and extracurricular group activities’  

A number of examples of positive actions to promote children’s and families’ resilience, relationships and socio-emotional wellbeing were reported:

‘I and a team are doing a lot of community sensitization on child rights and educating parents on positive parenting’ (Direct Service Provider, NGO, Kenya)

An NGO representative from the Philippines also shared:

‘The outpouring of efforts by individuals, companies and NGO to provide support for children and communities during the pandemic has helped to make our people more resilient. This has also pushed government to become more responsive to the needs of the people’

Despite some positive responses such as awareness-raising and mental health and psychosocial support programmes, most respondents believed resources were often insufficient to meet the demand for socio-emotional wellbeing support: 

‘More children and parents are very stressed. There are not enough resources being put into this. There are some NGO efforts to address this but the needs are bigger than what you can put together’  (Policymaker, NGO, Philippines)

'Tangible needs often take precedence over socio-emotional needs.’ (Policymaker, Government, India)

While relatively few, the responses in this survey unequivocally call for more dedicated action on promoting children’s social and emotional wellbeing during and post-COVID19 by leveraging financial and livelihood support; scaling up support from child and youth care workers; mobilising community support; and harnessing digital technologies to engage children and their caregivers.  

Our hope is that these findings will generate new insights, and spark new questions and ideas to strengthen policy, service and practice with, and for, children and their families.

Watch out for the full report on children’s social and emotional wellbeing coming shortly!