One of the UK’s leading charities has called for support from teachers, nursery workers and education professionals to offer vital support to children amidst Coronavirus pandemic.
Through the Department of Education’s new See, Hear, Respond programme, Barnardo’s is leading a ‘coalition of charities’ across England to provide much-needed support to children who are susceptible to adverse impacts of lockdown, self-isolation and in some cases prey to grooming.
The service is particularly committed to finding children who may be most at risk of harm, including children under five, those with special educational needs or who experience other associated harms such as adverse home-life or online harms, children at risk of any form of abuse, criminal and sexual exploitation, BAME children (who are not being seen or reached) and young carers. Commenting about the programme, Barnardo’s chief executive Javed Khan said,
“Children have too often been unseen and unheard during this crisis and they risk becoming the forgotten victims. This initiative is a vital lifeline for the hundreds of thousands of children and young people as we navigate the pandemic and its aftermath, helping to improve their long-term outcomes so they can have successful futures.”
In the biggest ever survey of the leading children’s charity’s services’ practitioners, respondents said that fewer children and young people were being referred into services, despite increasing need. Nearly half (45%) of Barnardo’s front line workers who reported a change in their safeguarding caseload in the charity’s practitioners’ survey, said they had seen a decrease in referrals to their services.
Frontline workers also reported that lockdown has resulted in vulnerable children and young people being turned away from the support they are entitled to and desperately need, with 8% saying this had happened to a child or young person they are working with.
