Catch up with the latest in safeguarding for schools: best practice, thought leadership, and all the latest insights within single central record management.

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Come March 27th at 8am, we will be releasing a huge update to our platform, internally dubbed our Version 2. This has been under development since the first lockdown and our team are super excited to get this in front of you.

The system will be offline for a few hours while we complete the upgrade. Don't worry, all of your data will be safe.

When SCR Tracker was first built, it was designed around giving our customers the checks they needed to be compliant for their school in line with the relevant guidance. It soon became apparent that adding your own checks, applying conditions and customising the existing ones was paramount. We plugged this gap with Additional Checks but internally it's 2 opposing systems, our internal checks which cannot be tailored, and your custom checks which have limited functionality. Building anything on top of this has proved extremely complex.

We now have a new system that combines all the checks into a system, which we are calling Templates.

You will now be able to see all the built-in checks and, where allowed, you will be able to make modifications in our stunning new drag-and-drop editor. Templates are hierarchical. Your template will still be based on ours, so when legislation changes, we can update our template and it will continue to flow through to yours.

Being able to show and hide checks based on the state of another is what gave our app a unique ability to be flexible. Now that we're no longer hampered by the old dual-system, we have recreated our Condition Logic engine from the ground up around the new Template system. You can now show and hide fields based on the values of other fields such as the start date, the current date, or even if it's their birthday.

We will also now be committing to a much more rapid release cycle to get many more exciting updates out to you this year, with the biggest feature of all coming within a few weeks, custom profile types.

Although we have essentially rebuilt the entire application, we have kept its look and feel with a few improvements.

The first thing you’ll notice is our brand new Login page. The new page can now be bookmarked you can access the help guide should you have issues logging in.

Your dashboard is now customisable with a selection of Widgets available in a library (more to come!). You will see a default dashboard that has been set up for each school designed to look the same as before. The difference is you can now customise that dashboard and its individual widgets. 

You can also create multiple dashboards that are either just for you or shareable amongst your School or Trust and of course pick your favourite that shows up on login.

One of the most powerful widgets here, is our Profile List. You can setup a Condition on the Profiles, so if you want to see who is starting this week or month, or maybe show who has overdue Training, just add this widget and adjust the Condition.

We've added a Tags column, indicating if the person is Active, Onboarding or a Leaver. 

The other major change is the filter. We’ve replaced the confusing bar with a component that will hopefully make it much more explanatory to what you’re seeing. Note, by default, it will now show you everyone that is not a leaver. 

Don’t forget you can always click the dashboard items to go directly to the Profile List.

We've replaced the indicators with an overview panel on the left which is a lot clearer than before. When making an edit, a panel will now slide out from the right and scoring will also update instantly after a change.

And you can now change the profile type directly from within this page.

We’ve improved the styling to make it much easier to read and also incorporated the same filter you see in the profiles list. There is also some undo/redo functionality but otherwise, it is the same editor you are used to.

The Multi-Factor Authentication is now integrated. This will allow you to use Google Authenticator to add an extra layer of security to your account. We highly recommend enabling this. It also works with password management tools such as 1Password and Lastpass.

We've replaced the Languages section with User Preferences. Here you can set your default language, Timezone and select your default school that is shown when first opening the application.

Introducing our brand new drag-and-drop Template editor, this is where you will notice the biggest change. Here you will be able to see all the built-in checks as well as your custom ones and be able to make modifications to the section labels as well as the Profile Types and Rating Systems. (Custom Profile Types is not quite ready yet, it's coming next!!)

We hope it is fairly intuitive, but we will of course be putting lots of help guides up and be available if you have any questions.

Editing is now done in draft mode and when ready, just press Publish to go live. All changes are now versioned should you make a mistake and don't worry, deleting fields or sections does not automatically delete data!

We've improved on our Profile document management quite significantly. When viewing a Profile, documents are now located in their own tab and can be moved into the relevant sections if required. You can also drag and drop multiple files directly from your desktop to a section or to the documents page.

We really hope you enjoy these changes and look forward to now building on top of it. A lot of work has already begun and we cannot wait to get it in front of you.

If you do have problems or any feedback, please just contact us at help@scrtracker.com

For our Trusts, there's no longer a school page. But you can add a schools list widget to your Dashboard, as well as using the school dropdown to quickly switch between. We will be expanding on the Trust reporting functionality soon.

Manage Checks, Organisation Types, Additional Checks and Additional Section Types are now all part of the new Template system and can be managed through the Template Editor.

There is no longer an Export to Excel button on the Advanced Editor. You can still access your Single Central Record report, which is immediately available on the Insights tab.

We have a big exciting roadmap and have already started work on the next set of features. The top 3 requested features by far are the following, and are already well underway in development

+ lots more such as improved integrations, improved permissions and something extra special later this year.

We expect to see the Custom Profile Types update in the next few weeks with the others following shortly after.

Need Help? Have Questions? Want to suggest features?

If you need help, as always, please use the in-app help icon, or to see our guides visit http://help.scrtracker.com/. Alternatively, just contact help@scrtracker.com

We love hearing from people regarding features and ideas. Please just submit your ideas above and we’re happy to get them added to our roadmap.

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns meant to help curb the infection have been around for a year now. When the quarantine, social distancing and lockdown were first enforced, they were handled with gusto — it was all very sudden, but in doing the responsible thing to #StopTheSpread, unprecedented times called for unprecedented actions. The road wasn’t without challenges, however — transitioning to remote work impaired work-life boundaries, online or blended classrooms were tricky to navigate for everyone involved, the consequences on the mental health and safeguarding of children were pronounced — the looming dread of the pandemic not helping.

And because all of this was happening in an emergency-like situation, it became harder to optimise the action plan. Soon enough, note was taken of the vulnerable populations, the marginalised children who may not have had a smooth experience in the quarantines and lockdowns due to various reasons. 

As the vaccines get rolled out, going forward, what we also need to account for are the possible long-term negative consequences of the pandemic for children and adolescents. Psychologists and researchers have been warning about the lifelong — or at least the long-term — impact of loneliness and isolation on children. What may have started out as benign regressions and children “acting out” soon evolved into separation anxiety, cabin fever, and either horribly frequent skirmishes or totally silent despair. A review by the University of Bath pointed out that children and adolescents “who are lonely might be as much as three times more likely to develop depression in the future, and that the impact of loneliness on mental health could last for at least 9 years.” 

The studies also show evidence that the duration of loneliness may be a relatively more critical factor than the intensity of loneliness in increasing the risk of future depression among young people. Considering how long we’ve been under lockdown, this does not bode well. On top of it, parents, who are usually the ones to model calm for the children have been in a state of panic themselves, yet another experience the children will carry with them through life. 

Dr Sarah Mundy, Consultant Clinical Psychologist who specialises in working with children and families & Author of Parenting Through Stories reinforces that we are in this for the long haul and it isn't going to be a linear answer to this, “Imagine the impact of high levels of anxiety over the long-term, particularly when children don't have the support to manage them (as is the case with their supportive adults being stressed themselves). There are both psychological and physical implications of this. The University of Bath study also suggested that the scale of the impact of the pandemic upon young people's mental health may not show fully for a number of years.” 


Let us look at these implications and how they could linger on for a while, one by one:

A very obvious impact on children’s developmental progress comes on the academic front. Prolonged school closures have been detrimental to the academic progress of many children, especially those in key year groups, like Year 1 or Year 6, requiring uninterrupted learning and acquisition of numeracy and literacy skills. The lag is similar to what’s referred to as the “summer slide” or “summer melt” effect that typically results in achievement slowing or declining over the summer months when schools are closed.

With lockdown, parents are stepping in as teachers to supplement online schooling. Parents, while having to deal with their own hardships, economic or domestic, are also feeling burdened and burnt-out. And there’s a chain reaction at play here: distressed parents mean distressed children. It doesn’t help that the teacher-student relationship and the eyes-on attention children used to have at their disposal have also been untenable in the current situation. Ultimately, the experience of education is seemingly very chaotic for children. 

Much of this has been attempted to be dealt with through the gradual lifting of the lockdown and the blended learning that filled the later months in 2020. However, concerns about long-term learning lag are very well-founded. This gets further exacerbated for vulnerable children, those from marginalised sections, those with special needs, and those living in unstable family contexts. 


Exposure to the direct fear of the pandemic, loss & grief

Children are being asked to live in a less-than-optimal environment, with the many political and social stresses, and with the pandemic, the discomposing fear of contagion has been added to that list. The direct losses of the pandemic are not a rare anecdote anymore, either. At the time of writing this, the death tally due to coronavirus in the UK stood at 122,953 and the total number of cases at 4,182,009. With these numbers, it’s likely that several children have been personally impacted by this pandemic, albeit in varying degrees — losing an acquaintance, a beloved friend/relative or worse, an indispensable caregiver. Some may have experienced multiple losses, without a healthy grieving process due to lockdowns. For many, an illness in the family may have created severe hardships, what with the parents already stretched thin due to remote work and online school, and possibly financial strains. 

Another potential impact of the pandemic is the children internalising the fears that they’re living with. They might live with obsessive habits or socialising fears for a long time, as often happens with traumatic experiences which take a long, long time to unlearn. For children who have essential workers in the family, the fears and paranoia could be scary and overwhelming. All of these experiences will have an impact on children’s coping abilities over time, even though children are known to be resilient. 


Impact of loneliness and isolation on long-term mental health in the developmental years

As mentioned before, the impact of loneliness and isolation might be one of the most profound and problematic one for growing children and adolescents. Socialising, playing in groups, meeting friends — these are intrinsic elements of the growing years. They look forward to sports tournaments in schools, dances, graduations, or other social gatherings, all of which have been denied to them, albeit with good reason. To substitute these interactions, children seek some interaction through online modes. The increased use of technology comes with safeguarding and protection concerns of its own. 

In another concern, children may also feel stressed about having rusty social skills, since they’ve been away for so long. When it’ll be time to reintegrate into the social fabric, it might again take some time to adjust and adapt. Dr Lucy Russell, a clinical psychologist based in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire and founder of They Are The Future, shares what she thinks would be the two major long-term impacts, “One, a divide between children who had the resilience skills and emotional support to thrive during the pandemic (and who will have built their resilience skills yet further), and a large group of children whose mental health is in danger of being poor in the long term (into adulthood), without intensive therapeutic support. Isolation and lack of regular feelings of safety re-wire the brain to be in survival mode (fight, flight or freeze) much more of the time than is healthy.” 

Living for too long in survival mode means that the children will require long-term therapeutic support to get out of the survival mode when the time comes. But the system seems ill-equipped to deal with this deluge, which is Russell’s second concern, “Mental health services (at least in the UK) were unable to meet the needs of children requiring therapeutic support before the pandemic. The pandemic has massively amplified this. So, I predict there will be a large group of children and young people who will not receive the psychological support they require, over the next few years. This means we may see children entering adolescence and adulthood in a state of surviving rather than thriving.”


Is it possible to pre-empt the negative consequences?

Short answer: Yes. With the awareness of these consequences, we are halfway there. But we need to take actionable, yet gentle steps.

Mundy wants the focus of the schools, in the post-pandemic time, to be on supporting the emotional wellbeing of children and on letting the children re-connect socially. She also suggests explaining to children what they’re feeling, like separation anxiety, through appropriate tools. This way, it'll be possible to have a healthy conversation with them, instead of talking down to them. 

With the larger goal of supporting children, it is also important to ensure their parents are managing well. After all, they’re their immediate support system. Mundy agrees, “We also need to support parents manage their own mental health, and help them feel confident in supporting their children with their emotional worlds. What we know about resilience is that having supportive relationships is so important — we must work with their families too.”

Russell has some advice for the mental health professionals, and counsellors, "in the long run, we need a huge shift in our understanding of mental health. We need to move away from a medical model of mental health (which focuses on “fire-fighting” – treating a condition once it has been diagnosed) and move towards prevention, for example, a lifestyle medicine model. Many health professionals including Dr Rangan Chatterjee are heroically leading this movement. A focus on mental wellness through social connection and a healthy lifestyle will help future generations to thrive, not just survive. This approach also recognises that physical health and mental wellbeing are intimately linked.

In the meantime, it is important that children are given opportunities for interactive play, encouraged to engage in physical activities, allowed to co-create their online schedules with adults so they don’t lose their social developmental progress. On the flip side of all the negative consequences, there’s also a positive side-effect: people are talking about anxiety and mental health concerns far more openly now. So children who battled social anxiety and performance anxiety in the pre-pandemic time are now recipients of empathy. 

As is clear, emphasis around the recovery strategy should be on a) fostering social connectedness to compensate for the lost socialisation, and b) a holistic framework for creating time and space for catching-up, whether on the intangible life/social skills or the tangible academic progress.

Long-term effects of the pandemic and lockdowns on children and adolescents

As the pandemic rages on, so do the measures to combat it, including lockdowns, remote work/study and blended learning models. Because the government guidelines related to lockdown and social distancing differ across countries and from one week to another, a lot of firefighting has been ongoing for months. For school leaders, this has meant:

Managing the school operations remotely and responding to policy changes in a timely manner

Ensuring a seamless transition to the hybrid or online learning models

Arranging for accessible and affordable technology and tools to prevent disruption in children’s education

Accounting for the safeguarding threats that have emerged out of the constantly changing situation for vulnerable children, among other challenges

In the wake of a global public health emergency, they have been relentlessly making provisions for all possible scenarios, including forming communication channels and lines that work for their students and staff, on a case-by-case basis. There isn’t a quick-fix or a one-size-fits-all solution to the challenges posed by the lockdowns. About 14% of children in England are currently getting in-person teaching. These include children of key workers and those identified as vulnerable. Therefore, even though school closures are in order until February half-term, schools aren’t literally shut down, in the strictest sense of the word. In fact, at many schools, the school staff have been available hands-on for allaying any worries that the parents might have:

Media has been replete with stories of headteachers & other school leaders — a large part of whose jobs has been crisis management for most of the last 12 months — on the brink of burnout due to the sheer load of measures to look after and implement. Headteachers are expected to be experts in a lot of skills in addition to teaching: they’re looked upon as leaders in pedagogy, crisis navigation gurus, and impact-driving forces. 

As Ben Solly, headteacher of Uppingham Community College in Rutland writes in SecEd, “The reality is that life as a headteacher is completely unpredictable and every single day could present a scenario that you have never before encountered. The truth is that the buck stops with the headteacher and, should disaster strike, we are the ones who end up in court.”

All school staff are having a hard time, too. They’re bone-tired and worn-down. Combine the general impact of the pandemic — isolation, lack of social interaction, health-related restlessness — with the pressure of being responsible for the education of children, and there’s a recipe for an anxiety juggernaut. 

The pivot to online learning came about as an emergency response. This meant that the transition wasn’t smooth, and we still aren’t quite there. Across the world, even teachers who are more comfortable with traditional classroom teaching and/or are intimidated by technology have had to unlearn and re-learn quite a lot in terms of technologies, tools, lesson planning — in a bid to create an effective digital classroom. Even so, there is an endless number of considerations: not all children have equal access to technology, their home environments may not be the most conducive to learning, there’s a mental health impact of the pandemic and lockdowns, and in some cases, these issues have exacerbated the existing inequities, driving the students to self-harm, suicides, etc. School staff are walking on eggshells.

Zerrin Gurcali, who teaches at Sharnbrook Academy, Bedfordshire, shares with us, “It’s been quite hard not being able to meet friends and family, and as a teacher, it has been hard because I feel confined to my room where I have my computer system and I keep working from here. The whole school routine has been difficult, as we've had very little time to prepare for our lessons.” Because the shift to online teaching was a palliative measure, the schools didn’t have enough time to prepare and train. 

She adds, “It has been hard making the transition from teaching in school premises to the virtual set-up, in part due to the little amount of training that we've received for online teaching. I teach English, and for me, it’s been quite hard to cover important modules and topics like language techniques. Students are often reluctant to participate as actively in a virtual discussion. On top of it, we cannot fully assess if they’re truly understanding what’s being taught.”

To add to the stresses facing school staff is the fact that they are often the first point of contact for parents, who are barely holding it together themselves. When COVID-19 cases were identified in a school, headteachers were reportedly hounded, the staff was afraid, and it hasn’t been easy to stay available for all parents at all times. Headteachers are imploring the parents to show empathy:

As a result, school staff are tired, overworked, exhausted, and burning out. According to this research by the University of Oldenburg, during the lockdown, teachers experienced medium to high levels of stress, pulling in remote teaching for more than four hours each day. For support staff, it’s suggested to tailor the support and systems: 

Mental health support should be extended to the entire staff, irrespective of their position in the school.

CPD for support staff, especially in non-teaching positions, should be facilitated, either in collaboration with the teaching staff or independently.

If, owing to staff shortages, additional duties are transferred to teaching assistants, then the DfE guidance should be followed, “…discuss and agree any proposed changes in role or responsibility with the member of staff.” Arbitrary changes in job roles should not take place, and only after proper consent and discussion should the changes be implemented.

Now, as we are nearly completing a year since the first lockdown was announced, there’s another phenomenon to battle, what Northwestern Medicine Psychologist Jacqueline K. Gollan, PhD, calls “caution fatigue.” When we first started taking preventive measures, people were enthused to stay home and help curb the spread of the virus, but with time, people have become callous, carefree and less strict about following these regulations, due to drained motivation from anxiety and isolation. Psychological distress can be a major contributing factor to caution fatigue, so experts suggest sticking to routines, having a work-life balance, and taking breaks from a constant stream of news/information.

Caution Fatigue-induced dips in motivation can directly impact the performance of school staff and in turn, education of children. Therefore, it’s important that school leaders and teachers are given the space to recuperate.

Reclaiming routine and setting boundaries

School staff shouldn’t be expected to be available 24*7. Technology can make it easier to communicate outside of work hours and parents might often wish to get information at odd hours so as to prevent panic, but the teachers should not be expected to respond immediately. The workflows in a remote set-up are fluid, if at all present, and it may leave teachers feeling a little unmoored. Therefore, limiting the synchronous work hours during the day can help provide teachers with some downtime. 

At Gurcali’s school, what has also helped curb teacher overwork is the school policy to bring down the class time to 50 minutes. The teachers have also been told to limit their teaching time to 20 minutes and follow it up with more interactive, activity-based learning for the rest of the class. 

For teachers, it’s important to end their workday in a tangible way (taking a walk, shutting your computer system, working out) — since many teachers are working at home, the boundaries are blurring. It’s suggested that all professionals should have an end-of-the-day ritual that divides the working hours from the rest of the day.  For support staff, establishing boundaries around work is key, for example, for teaching assistants, this can also look like limiting how much they offer to fill in for the main teachers. For the rest of us — parents, colleagues, bosses — this means respecting the work hours that teachers set. 

Combatting isolation through access to mental health services and/or peer support

Gurcali shares, “I am working out of my home, so I often feel confined in one small environment. I’m constantly in my room where I work, where I have my computer system. I don’t get to interact with my peers, students, colleagues in person and that has certainly impacted my mental health. It can get draining to be in front of a computer all the time. Not being able to see family and friends takes a toll, eventually. But I do keep in touch through phone calls.”

Colleagues can check in on each other as a part of their routine. Schools can bring in some method to this madness by creating a buddy system, pairing colleagues across different levels. Another suggestion is for schools to create conscious spaces where teachers & school leaders can get together to interact for non-work matters. A virtual break room to help everyone reconnect — it could even be a simple idea of having lunch together online — and can act as a peer support space. 

To prioritize teacher wellbeing, a therapist or coach could organise reflective sessions where teachers can freely express themselves.

While we recommend that teachers should leverage technology to make life easier, we also encourage teachers to schedule time away from technology. Some schools have incorporated a weekly day of sensory breaks, whereby no live lessons are scheduled and learning happens offline. This effort comes as a relief to everyone involved, from students, teachers, headteachers, to parents. 

School staff have been hard at work ever since the pandemic gripped the world. They’ve shown incredible empathy in the midst of crisis, so it is only humane to reciprocate with empathy. 

Teaching during the pandemic has been stressful. What can be done?

The pandemic and lockdown have together escalated the safeguarding risks that children face as they become isolated from social support and move towards online learning. We discuss measures to help curb the negative impact of these events. 

It has been around 9 months since the first lockdown was announced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic across the world. It’s now widely known that the disruption to normalcy has impacted children in a number of ways – from detrimental impact on their academic performance and mental health to the endangerment of their safety. It is well known that infectious disease outbreaks can exacerbate vulnerabilities and generate new risks for children.

According to an INTERPOL assessment, such risks to children’s safety manifest in striking ways. Increased time spent in lockdown and confinement has increased the amount of time spent online by children for educational purposes as well as for entertainment and social interactions. According to the report, “During COVID-19 children seek alternative ways of socialising through games, chats, social media, etc. whilst not necessarily being aware of any associated risks.” It sheds light on other possible challenges, too. For example, instances where victims of exploitation or abuse may be in lockdown with the offender might not be surfacing enough due to underreporting or delayed reporting, lack of reasonable access to communication services, among others reasons.

Research has also shown us that boredom can lead to indiscreet risk-taking – which in the case of students can manifest as an increase in the taking and sharing of self-generated material – with further possible negative ramifications. Such safeguarding risks are present across the world. In fact, according to the INTERPOL study, some countries have even reported “concerns with regard to the impediments victims face in accessing safe accommodation, alternative care options and related health-services during COVID-19” and all of these challenges exacerbate when we factor in the possibility of children living in potentially abusive households.

Various stakeholders have been recognising these threats to safety of children and taking measures to combat these challenges. Before diving into the solutions, let’s explore the possible risks facing the children in a pandemic.

While all children face some form and level of psychological distress under the pandemic, some children are at a higher risk of abuse and neglect. Here are the broad risk factors identified in children: 

Isolation and loneliness, adverse psychological tendencies & emotional distress

Dr Lucy Russell, a clinical psychologist based in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire and founder of They Are The Future, a wellbeing support website for parents of school-aged children shares, “The main safeguarding issues I come across in my clinic are related to loneliness and isolation, and generally deteriorating mental health leading to self-harm and thoughts of suicide. These have increased since the pandemic.” 

In America, CDC reports that one in 4 young adults have struggled with suicidal thoughts since the coronavirus hit. Children are also finding themselves in increasingly uncertain routines — they’re trying to understand why we’re going in and out of lockdowns. At the same time, their social interactions are now limited, monitored, and extremely measured. Children — especially the younger ones — need an open environment & routines to thrive with a sense of security and to help develop self-discipline. In fact, when the schools in the UK briefly opened for hybrid classes, UK-based mental health charity YoungMinds found out in their autumn survey that the respondents highlighted seeing friends, seeing teachers and returning to a routine as being positive for their mental health. 

There have been exceptions to this, as Dr Sarah Mundy, Consultant Clinical Psychologist who specialises in working with children and families & Author of Parenting Through Stories explains, “for some of the children I work with — I specialise in adoption — they thrived during the first lockdown, particularly the younger children. I think this related to having a "nesting" period with their adoptive parents, which they may not have had when they first arrived, as well as school often being a stressful experience for this client group.”

But for the most part, she agrees, that “the pandemic has been a negative experience for most children and families and, for some, devastating.”

When children are confined to their homes, the amount of time they spend online for educational, entertainment, and social purposes has shot up exponentially. This increased exposure to the online world has created an inadvertent risk of online abuse, exploitation by predators, and other concerns. Zoom-bombing, the term coined to describe incidents where trolls with unwarranted access to the meeting hop on to the video calls, has been reported in isolated incidents across the world, from Germany to US, from India to the UK.

Children have been interacting with the outside world through a screen, whether plonked in front of the screen for their online classes or for fun activities or even a family meet-up. When children are online for longer, they’re also at an increased risk for interacting with strangers. Gaming rooms have also become a breeding ground for such risks as cyberbullying, online harassment, . Even the act of putting out more content online puts them at a higher risk of online abuse as the viral circulation of content can lead to continuous re-victimisation. 

Family’s economic hardship, uncertainty and domestic discord

The pandemic hasn’t been kind to adults, either. Many people are undergoing economic hardship, some professionals have been furloughed, yet others might have experienced a personal loss due to the pandemic. There’s a widespread concern that when parents resort to maladaptive coping mechanisms, like substance abuse, to cope with the increased pressures, it can create a plethora of issues for children. It starts with reduced supervision & neglect of children and can aggravate into physical abuse. Some caretakers/parents believe in corporal punishment and might take out their frustration on children. Therefore, children who weren’t vulnerable in the pre-pandemic phase might now be falling in the “at-risk” category.

The impact can get particularly amplified for families who moved right before the pandemic, and are strangers in the new house, are operating with low social capital and support, or possibly even facing language barriers. Children in such households are situationally predisposed to neglect and/or violence at home.

The fact of the matter is that children who come from vulnerable contexts often look at schools as their safe space, where the school’s security and protection makes them comfortable enough to learn in peace. So school closures, or lack of access to public transportation due to social distancing protocols, etc can hit them hard as they are forced to stay at home.

Disabled children at particular disadvantage

Among the vulnerable children and adolescents are those with disabilities, those living in institutional facilities, refugees in camps, those in densely populated areas, those on the move, or children who are internally displaced. 

Particularly for children with disabilities, even the shift to virtual learning is riddled with challenges. Issues like bad sound quality or lack of accurate captioning can impede their progress in school, especially in subjects that require jargon-heavy texts or contextual group discussions. On top of it, the usual impediments — limited internet access, lack of interpersonal communication, etc — can be harder for those with special needs. Often, children on the spectrum are more sensitive to changes in routine, and teachers may be too burdened to support them independently. The bottomline? None of this is easy for them.

Having enumerated the possible risks confronting children, we now explore the measures that can help us mitigate or alleviate the damage from these risks.

Parental engagement and age-appropriate supervision

As screen time goes through the roof and hybrid/online learning gets more commonplace, it becomes important to engage the caretakers in the action plan. Imparting lessons around digital citizenship, talking to them about using privacy and security settings when online, blocking suspicious people or accounts, is the first step. Children should adobe able to tell a trusted adult if something uncomfortable happens in their online world.

At the same time, Russell suggests it’s equally important for parents to be emotionally healthy during this time, “Adults must do their best to prioritise their own self-care and emotional stability, so they are in the best position to be emotionally available for their children, or those in their care (eg teachers). We need to contain children and young people’s emotional distress, helping them to feel safe and less out of control.”

SEL on consent & body autonomy and a robust reporting mechanism

It has also been suggested that Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is easy to overlook, but important to prioritise in a pandemic situation. SEL is defined as “how children and adults learn to understand and manage emotions, set goals, show empathy for others, establish positive relationships, and make responsible decisions” by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL).

It is critical to apprise children on topics like positive discipline, healthy relationships, and bystander skills, in order to help reduce vulnerability to abuse. They should be taught about their rights, body autonomy, consent, etc without attaching negative connotations with these themes so not to scare them more. To this effect, it’s equally important to have robust communication with children to facilitate reporting of any issues. This can be done through multiple reporting pathways including options for anonymous reporting like monitored email, an app, or a digital form.

Russell also suggests that schools and extra-curricular activities must remain open. She explains, ”These provide essential social contact, a sense of safety and structure, and are an opportunity for vulnerable children who do not feel safe at home to connect with safe adults.”

Prioritise child protection in onboarding, induction, and staff professional development 

It’s also important to incorporate child protection measures in the school’s recruitment and hiring protocols. Conducting a background check on all employees should include confirming identities of the employees, social media searches with modifiers to corroborate the character checks, and to expand the scope of staff training to cover school policies and procedures regarding reporting and first responder to disclosure; signs and indicators of abuse; and risk assessment. As Mundy recommends, “It may be helpful for schools to be provided with advice from psychological practitioners on the best way to support their student's mental health, as well as how they support their own staff to manage these difficult times.”

Conduct periodic teacher or counsellor check-ins

Each school should have a Code of Conduct under their Child Protection Policy where child protection is made a community focus and various stakeholders are involved. A teacher or school counsellors should do regular check-ins with children to find out what’s going on with them in their lives, apart from their classes. Teachers are far more likely to receive first disclosure of abuse than any other profession. The disclosures usually happen over informal chats, so it’s important to create that space intentionally. 

In certain cases — for example, when the parent is in the background — the child may not be comfortable talking about issues. To circumvent this, schools can make provisions for anonymous reporting channels as pointed before. This is also where enlisting the help of community can be useful. For instance, in Chennai, India, the help of a police wing was enlisted to ensure that the cases of child abuse were addressed and attended to, that the children were fed and provided for. 

Mundy suggests that we shouldn’t go quiet on our efforts now, “Certainly there seemed to be a fantastic response to the first lockdown, with communities pulling together, identifying the most vulnerable and offering support. However, with increased uncertainty and anxiety, particularly with new restrictions and new strains of the virus, people seem to be less hopeful and the changes in restrictions leads to confusion for many.” It’s still very much an all-hands-on-deck situation. If all entities in the community join hands, identification of safeguarding risks, prevention of such risks and management of the impact can be done more effectively. Having various stakeholders working together can help keep everyone emotionally resilient and better equipped to deal with the uncertainties.

Safeguarding risks for children in lockdown & measures to mitigate the risks

There are many ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic might take a psychological toll on children. Here’s how we can protect them.

What has been the impact of coronavirus on children? According to most reports, children have largely remained unscathed from the severe symptoms of the coronavirus infection. However, the social and economic impact “is potentially catastrophic for millions of children", according to a UN report. Recently, TIME also reported on how the effect of the pandemic on children’s mental health is deepening. 

In an unprecedented situation, over 188 countries worldwide suspended schools as a preventative measure to mitigate person-to-person transmission. The lockdown panic, the quarantine, the deluge of information and glaring statistics about the pandemic together make for a heady mix of psychological stressors for the children. For months now, they’ve been living in a world where their daily rituals have been unequivocally altered.

Such a psychological toll on children has been observed all over the world. Early reports from World Vision showed that the isolation and loneliness – triggered by school closures – was impacting 71% of children, while 91% expressed their extreme discomfort manifesting as emotional distress, anxiety, anger, and worry. This impact – in one version or another – is palpable across countries. In Spain, reportedly 90% of the parents described concerning “emotional and behavioural changes in their kids”, spanning concentration difficulties, irritability and anxiety. 

Here in the UK, mental health charity YoungMinds surveyed 2111 young people aged 25 years and under with a history of mental health issues. Eighty three percent of them experienced an aggravation of their condition, with 26% facing problems in accessing mental healthcare as teletherapy can be challenging for some groups to use. Similar reports have surfaced from Italy, China, and India, among others. 

The most obvious cause here is the disruption of routines. As Ezra Golberstein, a health-policy researcher at the University of Minnesota explains, “There’s the disease itself and the fear of it. On top of that, you’ve got the lock-downs, with kids removed from the school environment and their friends.” Children have gone through an entire summer without the normalcy of socialisation. The rules of interaction have changed – and it has certainly not escaped their notice. Routines are important for children, as they provide a sense of security and help them develop self-discipline. Right now, any semblance of certainty has gone awry. It doesn’t help that the pandemic has caused a surge in internet usage, putting children at a greater risk of being targeted by perpetrators through social media, apps and gaming.

Let’s dive into the ways in which this prolonged school closure and home containment has made children more vulnerable. It has been observed since the early days how some children believe that the very act of stepping outside could be deadly, as they’re having what the American Psychological Association defines as “an emotional response to a terrible event”. Cath Knibbs, a Cyber Specialist and trauma psychotherapist shares:
“Children pick up on fear by watching behaviours – they could possibly be anxious even to step out or to infect the older people in the house. Their fears can be calmed to a large extent by having a transparent conversation with them, so they can get all accurate information with a complete picture, rather than scary statistics that they might be exposed to inadvertently."

For younger children, it's a struggle to understand what’s happening. For the adolescents, it’s aggravated. Children have been acting out. Dr Koyeli Sengupta, a developmental paediatrician shared, “A mother told me that her child is not even letting her go to the bathroom. In slightly older children, three to six-year-olds, a common thought is ‘did I do something wrong that my parents went away?’”

Other negative experiences as children become vulnerable 

Another way children have become vulnerable during this time is through their home confinement with family members who are possibly not coping well with the events. Experts maintain that a child’s safety is largely influenced by the extent to which their family has been impacted by a turn of events. A loss in the family or a strained economic situation can aggravate vulnerabilities or create new ones. 

Risk factors for violence, exploitation and abuse increase manifold for children under restricted mobility (as is the case with lockdown and quarantining measures) and socioeconomic decline (as the economic consequences become more defined). Kate Young, CEO of Safeguarding Association calls it the perfect storm where parents are struggling to manage the financial impact & their constant worry about the children, “From a safeguarding perspective, I would anticipate a huge increase in the number of concerns. And probably, even for those children who've never been on your radar before. Some children have suddenly fallen into the at-risk category. To manage that, schools need to have a good support system in place to manage such cases, and have resources in the form of professionals that the children can turn to.”

At the other end of the continuum, there are children experiencing abuse, neglect or exposure to potential harm. This could either be due to reduced access to trusted adults outside the family, unclear communication from stressed parents or individual feelings of loneliness.

Parents taking to maladaptive coping mechanisms – alcohol misuse, substance abuse, or denial – can exacerbate the situation further. Such behaviours are known to co-occur with child abuse, and with such behaviours increasing during the lockdown, the knock-on effect on children is concerning.

It’s likely that when children return to school, they’ll bring with them a mixed bag of experiences. It is important to be prepared for the impact that the pandemic has had on children’s mental wellbeing and to provide active support in this regard.

As a starting point, the Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) in the school should chalk up a bespoke plan to provide a safe space for children to share their experience, especially in the first few weeks back. Some measures include:

An extensive identification of the range of possible issues concerning children’s mental health

Providing signposting and information to children seeking help/support if they experienced abuse or neglect during this time, especially with limited access to trusted adults

Provision of specialist support for victims of domestic abuse or trauma 

Training for school staff to recognise signs of troubled conditions and to respond sensitively, including child development science and how trauma can manifest in behavioural problems or poor emotional regulation

Scrutinising attendance records to identify patterns in children missing from school and sharing information with necessary relevant parties where appropriate

Address digital exclusion and provide resources – technological, therapeutic and mobility-related – for greater access under a blended learning approach

Scheduling mandatory psychological check-ups with school counsellors

Leveraging the power of peer support groups to help children feel safe

Ultimately, it is imperative to acknowledge that the pandemic has unevenly impacted all children – for some the pain will be more pronounced than others, while some may be suffering in silence. The goal, for school authorities, teachers, and safeguarding professionals, will be to successfully address any and all traumatic experiences and to help create safe spaces that provide much-needed relief through such hardship.

Kritika M Narula shares how to protect children as the coronavirus outbreak takes its psychological toll.

Protecting children as the pandemic takes a psychological toll

The recent shift to online learning came about as a result of an emergency, but going forward the trend will only get more defined. The traditional means of instruction where teachers lecture students in a physical classroom setting might be replaced by a mixed-method approach – one where online learning wouldn’t just be an “alternative”, but a part of the teaching-learning framework. As experience has shown, a drastic shift to solely online modes of instruction has its own challenges, too. There are glaring issues pertaining to access, technology, and equity that need to be addressed. 

The good news is that there’s a middle ground: one where education will be imparted both in-person as well as online, involving the students as more than just passive recipients of knowledge and information. This middle ground is presented in the form of the blended learning approach.

Also referred to as hybrid learning, blended learning is exactly what it sounds like: a “blend” of traditional in-person or in-classroom instructional strategies along with online learning techniques. Both have their own set of advantages, and the idea behind blended learning is to combine the positive points of both, minimise any friction in this combination in order to ultimately offer an enhanced learning experience for students. 

An obvious concern for educators and school business leaders is finding ways to make the distance learning component within the blended learning model more effective. As Professor Stephen Heppell, an English educator who specialises in the use of ICT in education writes, “Online learning is not a subset or analogue of face to face learning; it is different, can be better, and like all learning is complex to get right.” In that vein, it’s important to understand that our digital classrooms will look different from the in-person classroom – and that’s okay. We now have to move more consciously into a hybrid model where we distribute the lessons according to what can suit each mode.

It’s realistic to think that we’re going to stay in hybrid schedules and that even when we’re in the traditional setting, it’ll involve socially distanced classrooms. So it’d make sense for the instructional planning henceforth to take a remote-first approach. 

How can that be achieved? Here are some steps educators can take:

Coordination with publishers to secure digital counterparts of each lesson. Educational publishers often offer online resources to accompany the textbooks and in-classroom lecture plans. 

If curriculum resources have not been made available by the publisher, educators can create their own resources, or collaborate with other educators to find complimentary online resources.

Accessible resources should be arranged for students with disabilities. 

Lesson plans for the virtual classroom components should have an element of interaction, eg. using breakout sessions or check-ins.

Under the hybrid model, the time in the physical classroom should be leveraged for peer interaction & collaboration. Activities could include:
1. Collaboration for problem-solving
2. Sharing peer feedback on assignments/projects
3. Guessing games for scientific phenomena
4. Creative writing exercises
5. Performance of music/short skits/poetry

A BLENDED LEARNING TOOLKIT FOR EDUCATORS 

In adapting to the virtual classroom component under the blended learning approach, technology is going to be key. While not all communication and work need to be synchronous and on-screen, there are several apps and tools that can help you plan, deliver and assess the curriculum. 

The difference between the early-2020 adoption of these tools & an ongoing adoption lies in the decision-making: you should weigh all your options, look at available alternatives, shortlist the most suitable ones, test them out for various features and then choose the one that checks most requirements on your list.

“Technology alone will not improve education, but it can be a powerful part of the solution.” - Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google

Apart from the obvious options of Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom, and Zoom, there are other platforms that come with pre-loaded templates.

Messaging tools for school-to-home communication

Discussion boards and tools for peer interaction

Creating a more consciously inclusive classroom

Implementing a blended learning approach in classrooms now gives us the chance to find ways to be flexible, to connect, and to grapple with the considerations we might have overlooked before. In designing your blended classroom plans, start out with the awareness that education isn’t one-size-fits-all. Then, take measures that can help create an empathetic classroom, providing for students with disabilities or psychosocial problems.

In your quest to design quality distance learning experiences, the obvious problem of equity will surface. Children at home might not have access to a dedicated laptop or may have limited internet access; older children may sometimes be responsible for their younger siblings, parents might have been furloughed or laid off. The question of access amplifies for children with special needs. 

Some simple guiding principles to minimise inequity:

Keep synchronous lessons crisp and short. This way you can keep the lessons accessible and prevent the dwindling of attention spans. 

Make the files and modules available offline by sharing downloadable formats for asynchronous study. Synchronous lessons can exclude many children, so include pre-recorded lectures in your lesson plans.

Try and record the classes for those who find it hard to make it at the specified time.

Try to create lesson plans that can be viewed, accessed and studied over smartphones – these are more affordably available with families.

Online learning also shouldn’t mean that everything is to be done on a computer. Make space for non-screen activities too. 

Technology shouldn’t determine the task. Your instruction doesn’t need to revolve around technology, it just needs to be intentional and organized for maximum effectiveness.

Sort children into the same breakout rooms every time, so that they can establish a continued and comfortable relationship with their peers.

Pre-announce tasks/projects along with their deadlines, so that children can get an ample window of time to turn in the work. 

Whether the student wants to be on video should be optional. Don’t force them to be on camera. Always give the benefit of the doubt: there might be a reason why they want/need the video off.

Flexibility and collaboration are key ingredients in order for distance learning to work. Collaborative tasks in small groups of 2-4 can teach children teamwork, while at the same time give them an immediate sense of audience. They can act as positive motivating forces for each other and flag problems with their peers – the way buddy systems work.

Under the blended learning approach, flexibility also means dividing activities for in-person classes and online classes based on their suitability in each environment. This gives children the opportunity to work on different timetables, without feeling alienated from the rest of their class. Children can also be extremely inventive with extra-curricular activities online – if given a comfortable space to do so. 

Universal Design Learning (UDL) guidelines can come in handy to achieve the goals of equity and access. For example, if students with sensory sensitivities need to tune out noise, they can choose to wear earbuds or headphones during independent work. Multiple media can be used in virtual classrooms and pre-recorded lessons to make it accessible for the deaf or hard of hearing. Visual tools can be used more flexibly and generously to highlight patterns, features, ideas and relationships in concepts so that these are easily comprehensible. Students should have many options for reading, including print, digital, text-to-speech and audiobooks. Provision of alternate keyboard commands for mouse action and software that works seamlessly with keyboard alternatives can also go a long way in creating a safe learning environment. 

Remember that relationships are at the heart of instruction. We can foster a sense of belonging through peer groups, regular check-ins or one-on-one interactions. At the same time, it’s important to ensure that no one’s left out when it comes to accessing resources. Using mobile-friendly and offline functionalities, balancing synchronous – asynchronous lessons and planning around project-based learning can help achieve this goal.

Kritika M Narula shares a comprehensive guide to the blended learning approach.