The Covid-19 Pandemic’s Forgotten Children

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to significant numbers of fatalities around the world but primarily among older adults and those with underlying health conditions. Children overall have escaped the worst of the physical effects of the pandemic but the toll on their cognitive, emotional, and social development may be greater than first realized. This is exemplified in a recent report published by the English government regulator for education Ofsted. This report reveals that younger children especially have been severely affected by the challenges to normal development attributable to societal impositions which were necessitated in response to the Covid-19 global pandemic (Ofsted, 2022).

Ofsted is the English Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills, and the other countries of the United Kingdom and elsewhere across the world have similar bodies. Ofsted’s primary role is to inspect services providing education and skills for learners of all ages. It also inspects and regulate services that care for children and young people.

This ongoing global pandemic has caused significant educational disruptions across the entire globe which have impacted on all aspects of children’s lives. Although morbidity and mortality among children has been low when compared to older adults, children’s overall development has undoubtedly been affected. This is attributable to a number of pandemic factors, not least among others being societal lockdowns, school and preschool institutional closures, and mask wearing to halt the spread of the virus (Benner & Mistry, 2020).

This English report reveals that the pandemic has continued to affect young children’s communication and language development. Many of the key informants who contributed to the production of this report have particularly observed delays in young children’s speech and language acquisition. Of concern are reports that babies born during the pandemic are not responding as they should to fundamental facial expressions. This may be attributable to lower levels of social interaction which have followed in the wake of the periods of lockdown which have characterized this pandemic. This has resulted in an increasing number of young children being unable to understand facial expressions perhaps caused by less opportunities for them to develop their social and emotional skills. Furthermore, the social isolation necessitated by the pandemic has been the cause of delays in children’s personal, social, and emotional development with many children lacking confidence in group activities. Perhaps unsurprisingly this English report shows that the children most affected by the negative sequelae of the pandemic are the most vulnerable children in society but especially those living in smaller homes without access to a garden or play area. This group of children has spent a greater proportion of their waking time looking at computer or mobile phone screens during the periods of social lockdown. This has also impacted on younger children’s ability to acquire developmental motor skills such as crawling and walking.

The chief inspector of Ofsted has raised fears that unaddressed issues related to young children’s development might be responsible for later problems when children start school. The data collected from 70 educational providers in England revealed that children had limited vocabulary and that some babies were struggling to respond appropriately to basic facial expressions, undoubtedly caused by interacting with people wearing face masks. Additionally, and again following in the wake of the pandemic, children were noted to have fallen below the expected level of development in acquiring vital self-care skills, such as being potty trained, tying their shoelaces, and putting on and taking off their outer clothing such as coats. The societal lockdowns and Covid restrictions have undoubtedly resulted in children having less time in early-years education with many simply being at home and spending their time looking at the touch screens of digital devices. The report even divulges that children have been replicating the cartoon voices of the programs they have been watching on their screens over the prolonged period of the pandemic, thus threatening their ongoing language development.Although the world is now focusing its attention on other worrying aspects of global unrest such as food shortages predicated on the Russian invasion of Ukraine there remain lingering challenges to the welfare of children in many societies in the wake of the pandemic and not least the effect on overall child development throughout the children’s schoolyears. This is because the pandemic has delayed the development of social skills across wide swathes of young children.

Rao and Fisher (2021) suggest that it is the children from lower socioeconomic groups in society who have suffered the most from the restrictions imposed by the Covid pandemic, resulting in a hindering of their normal development. Such groups of children may not have had access to digital resources and may not have had readily available outdoor play areas, thus compounding the effects of the pandemic on child development. Prior to the pandemic it was fully appreciated that children’s access to high-quality early-years childhood care and education services such as nurseries and playgroups had a beneficial effect on early childhood skill development and acquisition (McCoy et al., 2021). Furthermore Spiteri (2021) argues that health pandemics and political crises such as that happening in the Ukraine following Russia’s invasion will always threaten children’s development and education.

So how can children’s nurses help? Many of these pandemic developmentally delayed children will be admitted to hospital or require health care for a whole range of medical conditions. Accurate and comprehensive initial assessment using the nursing process SOAPIE algorithm (i.e., subjective and objective assessment, planning, implementation and evaluation) within a family-centered care paradigm will reveal any discrepancies in child development. In addition to safeguarding such children’s physical health it is also important to provide care for their ongoing emotional health. Children’s nurses working in contemporary pediatric hospitals and units can provide child life or therapeutic play interventions working in harmony with child life/play specialists. Such interventions may address some of the negative childhood development aftermaths caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and through therapeutic play forge a positive response to more than two years of disruption!

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