Supporting separated migrant children to thrive during COVID-19

Almost 14,000 separated migrant children (SMC) applied for asylum in the EU in 2019 (Eurostat 2019). Without parents/caregivers close by, their connections to support networks, to social work, education and legal services, and to peers are vital. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these networks and services poses urgent risks for SMC's well-being and ability to thrive, socially and educationally. The project aims to examine how SMC (aged 12 -18) experience the COVID-19 crisis and how it has impacted on their connectivity to networks and services. It will identify how services have adapted to meet their needs and will disseminate good practice throughout the UK. An intervention which gives SMC the opportunity to articulate their feelings about this and other crises, while developing English language skills, will be introduced and evaluated. The research adopts a conceptual lens which assumes that for SMC, COVID-19 is likely to be only one of many crises they have faced; in contrast for services, COVID-19 represents the first crisis of this scale. The interdisciplinary research team will adopt a mixed methods design. It combines online interviews with children, their carers, guardians, social workers and teachers; interactional data from the intervention alongside children's blogs/narratives/poetry, and online discussions with stakeholders. Findings will inform the development of an online resource, comprising briefing and working papers and children's work and commentaries. On-going collaboration with UK partners and online workshops and conferences will accelerate impact and build resources to support work with SMC during the current and future crises.