A series of conversations with students since 2018 about different forms of peer-on-peer abuse provides the first-hand context and a strong foundation for the guidance in this post.

We have outlined ways that schools and universities can prevent and respond to this form of harm, specifically looking at some of the challenges and strengths facing institutions that serve geographically mobile and culturally diverse student bodies. We’ve also been careful to reflect on the Coronavirus, anti-racism and diversity and how these may also have an impact on peer-on-peer abuse. 

We hope that the information and links to resources will help to support you in your roles as you work to protect students. 

Content Warning: This article contains information about sexual violence that might be triggering for some. The article might also make you reflect on personal or professional issues, which may be upsetting. If you would like to speak to someone after reading this article, we would encourage you to talk to friends or family members, or to talk to a counsellor. You can also call a mental health helpline or a trusted child helpline in your country, and they can point you in the direction of further support if necessary.

Peer-on-peer abuse is the ‘physical, sexual, emotional and financial abuse, and coercive control, exercised within young people’s relationships, including their intimate relationships, friendships and wider peer associations.’[1]  

Students from multiple countries and diverse cultural contexts have spoken about their experiences of peer-on-peer abuse including:

Being blackmailed to engage in sexual activities

Being threatened by knife point in the locker rooms and bathrooms

Having sexual images taken of them without their consent

The rape of students, including on campus, at parties and on trips

Being excluded from social groups because of where they come from or the languages that they speak, or don’t speak

Having rumours and ‘gossip’ spread about them and other students

Figure two: students’ experiences of peer-on-peer abuse in a school setting.[2]

Here are some actions you can take to prevent and identify peer-on-peer abuse at an early stage.

1.   Ensure that your policies address all forms of peer-on-peer abuse

Young people often experience multiple forms of harm that can intersect and overlap with each other. Having policies that address all forms of peer-on-peer abuse can be helpful. We have heard from counsellors, whose schools only had an anti-bullying policy in place, that they were ill-equipped to respond when other forms of harm occurred.

2.   Provide on-going education that enables students to identify and report harm

Providing ongoing, evidence-based social emotional skills and prevention education, tailored appropriately to the audience, is critical to helping students identify and report peer-on-peer abuse.[3] We have heard from a survivor of peer-on-peer abuse that no one had ever spoken to her about different types of harm before her abuse, which meant that she didn’t have a framework to understand what was happening to her, or a language to describe it. As she explained:

"Too many children and adolescents suffer these things in silence. After the most severe rape incident I found myself searching Google looking for the right word. It wasn’t a male, so could it really be rape? Sexual assault was too vague and didn’t encompass the actual act. But this was a peer so could it even be child abuse? It is important to me to keep telling this story so that the next teenager to go through this at least knows how to talk about it and has someone who will listen."

Rather than leading with the message ”it’s wrong to send a photo of yourself to others”, focus on the abusive and harmful aspects of image sharing. For example, that it’s wrong to put pressure on another person to send images of themselves, and to share any images of others.

"They teach you not to send images in the first place. So, if your photo gets shared around, you’re not going to speak to a teacher because they are the ones that told you not to send it” —Student engagement session on sexting, 2019.

3.   Identify and address the risks presented by the Coronavirus, and build on any protective factors that might have emerged

We are still learning about the impact of the Coronavirus on young people’s experiences of peer-on-peer abuse. Many organisations have issued warnings that with more young people online more often and for more time, the exposure to online risk is likely to be increased (UNICEF, NCA-CEOP, NSPCC, IWF, Europol).[4]

Our conversations with counsellors over the past few months indicate that some students are reporting less peer pressure and bullying, and increased time for self-reflection. A key question for schools and universities will be to ascertain what protective factors may have emerged during lockdown, and how these can be carried forwards as campuses start to reopen.

4.   Embed values of equity, diversity and inclusion throughout your institution

Inequalities and discrimination provide fertile breeding grounds for peer-on-peer abuse. We know that socio-economic inequality within a school can increase bullying rates, that young people experience peer-on-peer abuse in gendered ways, and that racial or ethnic minority status can be a risk factor for peer victimisation.[5]

Our discussions with students in some institutions suggest that where a school or university has been able to embed values of diversity and equity throughout its institution, this can help to protect students from harm.

"I think in our school we have a sort of culture of acceptance. It’s really part of the values to accept difference, so I think we support each other perhaps more”—Student engagement session, 2019

This is consistent with research studies which suggest that a school culture which is underpinned by values based on equity, diversity and inclusion, and is open and supportive, can foster a caring environment and improve reporting rates.[6] Equally, when students feel that they belong in and are connected to their school, this can reduce levels of peer aggression and violence, and the converse is also true.[7]

Embed anti-racism and consider intersectionality [8]

While racism is one way in which young people can harm each other, the ways that schools respond to peer-on-peer abuse are often embedded within systems that prioritize certain groups. For example, while schools may seek to respond to peer-on-peer abuse through the use of sanctions, evidence suggests that behaviour policies often disproportionately impact black students.[9] In order to tackle both individual and structural racism, institutions will need to look not only at the considerations set out in this article, but also at deeper social, cultural and systemic structures which have privileged voices of some groups over others, and have perpetuated inequalities. At CIS, we are hearing and learning from the personal experiences of people who are suffering from racism, in order to frame the systemic and structural challenges we need to address in international education. We are deep into listening and learning mode as we consider how we can use all the tools available to us to address systemic racism in international education.[10]

Intersectionality invites us to think about how people can experience multiple and overlapping forms of discrimination based on different aspects of their identity. For example, someone may experience racism, sexism and ageism collectively or individually at different times and in different environments. [11] Intersectionality can be a helpful lens through which to understand how different forms of prejudice and discrimination play out in education, and how we can seek to tackle these forms of harm.[12]

Ensure you offer culturally and ethnically representative support and educate your community on the role of culture

For institutions with diverse student bodies, having culturally relevant and ethnically representative psychological support is important. An Asian student attending a US College in a predominantly white environment told us the story of not seeking much-needed counselling as she could not locate any Asian counsellors, the only people she felt could understand her.

A young person’s behaviour and perceptions are informed by their cultural background and experiences. When young people from different cultural contexts come together, this can sometimes lead to misunderstandings and peer pressure to, for example, drink alcohol or engage in casual sex. Some professionals have helped students navigate these differences by creating spaces to have conversations about nuanced areas such as identity, peer pressure and consent, why someone might not want to do something but might feel pressured into doing it, and how cultural difference may play a role in someone’s understanding of how they should behave. Training in intercultural competence can also help young people to understand their own culture and strengthen their conviction to their own core values and behaviours.[13] We have heard from professionals in schools about the positive impact of staff training that focused on identifying and addressing harm across cultures and on supporting students with the impact of culture shock. Understanding how the influence of peers in adolescence differs between cultures, with it being more pronounced in some countries, for example, than in others, can also help staff to identify and manage peer dynamics.[14]

5.   Provide multiple avenues for students to report

Providing multiple avenues for students to share concerns and prominently displaying posters around your institution can help to provide students with a language to use and can encourage reporting. Engage students in all stages of this process to ensure messages are student-led.

"We would never tell our counsellors because they were asked to find out who was involved [in drinking alcohol] so they started bringing everyone in to question them.”—Student engagement session, 2019 

"The counsellors are great but they are not well represented by the school. Their office is hidden and far away, you have to make an appointment and it feels like something is wrong with you or you are sick if you go to a counsellor, it should be normal”—Student engagement session, 2020

If schools want to ensure that their responses to peer-on-peer abuse are relevant and effective, it is critical that they learn from students. This can take many forms. For example, small group sessions with students can help you to understand the forms of harm that are most prevalent in your setting. Administering student well-being surveys can enable you to spot trends over time. Carrying out a location mapping exercise with students can help you to identify the safe and unsafe areas. This can also be carried out in relation to social media platforms, online games and websites.

Any consultation with students should be done safely and ethically, with the appropriate policies and procedures in place. The International Taskforce on Child Protection is carrying out research and preparing guidance on this topic, and will be consulting directly with students as part of this.

7.   Review the ways in which you record concerns

There should be secure and confidential ways for all staff to report concerns, and for these to be recorded. Digital systems which allow for the triangulation of data, tracking trends and recording locations and times, are helpful. A small number of senior staff should have oversight of safeguarding and behaviour records in order to identify patterns at an early stage and understand when behaviour may indicate a safeguarding issue. Reviews of records can include consideration of the following:

is the threshold for recording harm set at the right level?

is there evidence of victim-blaming, racist or stigmatising language, or a lack of clear descriptions of the behaviour or incident?

8.   Implement effective transitions programmes

Transitions are periods of change and can bring with them a range of challenges as students leave one life behind and start another.[16] Effective transition programmes are critical and can support new students to integrate into their environments and help existing students to manage the grief that can arise from their friends moving on.[17] Information sharing between the institutions that students move between can also be critical in ensuring that the new institution can safeguard the incoming student. This is a complex area involving legal and ethical considerations, and CIS will be providing further guidance on this issue.

Handling allegations of peer-on-peer abuse in a way that safeguards all young people involved can be difficult. Your policies should allow you flexibility so that each allegation can be handled on a case by case basis, while at the same time ensuring that there is enough consistency that individuals have confidence in the process and an understanding of how it will be applied.

1.   Conduct a local mapping exercise and learn about your legal context

In order to respond effectively to peer-on-peer abuse, institutions need to understand the legal obligations for reporting abuse to external agencies in their country, and the support services available. A local mapping exercise whereby you identify and build relationships with external agencies can help.

2.   Intervene early to prevent escalation 

It is critical to address inappropriate and problematic behaviours before they escalate.

Student: "When we are worried about something we normally talk to a houseparent or a teacher."

Interviewer: “And how do they usually respond?”

Student: "Their response is always excellent. They always listen to us and tell us what they are going to do. They are very discreet, and they usually solve the problem."—Student engagement session, 2019.

Case reviews of institutional abuse consistently highlight that when these ‘lower level’ behaviours are present in an institution and go unaddressed, this normalises harm in the environment and creates conditions that are conducive to further harm.[18]

"I told my counsellor about the bullying, but not the assault. He assured me that there was nothing he could do without making it worse for me. I told him that it was more than I could handle and that it was contributing to my suicidal feelings. He told me to just have thicker skin. I never felt comfortable expressing the assault due to this assumption that there was nothing anyone could do."—Young person, 2019.

3.   Intervene with the contexts and not just the individuals, and be wary of zero tolerance approaches

Evidence suggests that when young people encounter harm from their peers it is often in contexts beyond their families, for example at school or university, or online. It is important therefore that professionals recognise the relationship between the harm and the context it is happening within. For example, in an instance of bullying between a group of boys at school it would be important to understand the dynamics of the peer group—the leader and followers—and how this informs interventions. If a sexual assault occurs on campus, the university should consider the physical environment, systems and structures alongside support to students affected. To support these approaches, schools and universities can consider Contextual Safeguarding approaches, which support educators, social workers and families to assess and intervene with the contexts, and not just individuals.[19] Similarly, zero tolerance policies that require institutions to take punitive actions without allowing professionals to exercise judgment or seek to understand how wider contexts might be driving certain behaviours, can be very damaging.[20]

A social media initiative Everyone’s Invited launched in June 2020 as a place where students can anonymously describe rape and assault within school communities. The number of postings (almost 15,000) has led to a special UK governmental investigation.

“As young people bravely tell their experiences of sexual harassment and abuse, it is clear that schools need to take stronger action to ensure they are safer places. But in a bid to do so I caution against ‘zero-tolerance’ approaches to sexual violence. My research in schools over the last three years has highlighted that often ‘zero tolerance’ approaches don’t work. Instead, we need proportional, contextual, and practical approaches to sexual harm in schools.”—Dr Jenny Lloyd.

4.   Do not dismiss peer-on-peer abuse that takes place away from campus, online and during the holiday

Students talked to us about the pervasive nature of online harm, and the difficulty escaping from it. Some students told us that they would be less inclined to report abuse that took place online or away from campus, because they didn’t think that their institution would do anything about it. 

"We would never tell a teacher if someone was sexually assaulted at a party. Our teachers tell us all the time that if something happens outside of school it’s not their problem.”—Student engagement session, 2020

All allegations of peer-on-peer abuse, regardless of where and when the alleged abuse took place, raise questions about the safety and well-being of students on campus and, as such, should be responded to. Policies should make this clear.

5.   Identify where the behaviour falls on a continuum: examine the power dynamics and think carefully about consent

Not all sexual behaviour between young people is harmful and when responding to instances of peer-on-peer sexual harm it is important to understand if the behaviour is developmentally appropriate and acceptable or potentially harmful or abusive. The following continuum can help.

Simon Hackett’s continuum of sexual behaviours.[21]

Is there is a difference in power between the young people involved?

Much of young people’s power comes from their social and cultural capital and understanding the power dynamics therefore requires professionals to understand what gives young people capital in their context.[22]

It is important to consider not only whether the young person made an active choice, but also whether they had the freedom and capacity to make that choice. For example, where a young person is being pressured or blackmailed into certain activities, or where the culture of the institution facilitates or condones harm, their ability to consent freely is likely to be constrained.

6.   Consider your duty to refer allegations externally

You should always seek to comply with mandatory reporting obligations to refer allegations of abuse to external agencies. Even where there is no legal obligation to report, you should always give any alleged victims the opportunity to report allegations of criminal behaviour to law enforcement directly. It may be necessary for institutions to report to law enforcement even where the young people involved do not want to report. For example, where the allegation indicates that a young person poses a risk of harm to the wider community. These cases need to be handled with care, and expert advice should always be sought.

There may be some instances where reporting an allegation to local agencies could lead to members of the community being put at risk of significant harm. For example, in some countries there may be a real risk of harm for the victim for cultural reasons, or a risk of significant human rights abuses in the legal system.[23] It is helpful in these cases to carry out and document a risk and benefits assessment whereby the risks of reporting are weighed up against the risks of not reporting.

CIS resources on intercultural competence

Farrer & Co. Safeguarding children from racism

Learning from young people: How schools and universities can protect students from peer-on-peer abuse

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.

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

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