About the COVID 4P Log Project
COVID-19 abruptly thrust the rights and wellbeing of children and families into greater risk around the world. We know the impact of COVID-19 on children will be vast, and the risks posed to children’s survival and development, to their special protection, education, health and access to food, for example, can be greatly compounded not only by COVID-19, but also by governments’ necessary public health responses.
To mitigate these impacts and protect children’s wellbeing, we are called to respond with policy and practice responses that are distinctively designed to address children’s wellbeing needs. Only then will we mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 for our collective future.
Policymakers, and those working with children, have risen to these challenges in the face of this pandemic in new, innovative and in some cases unprecedented ways. To address the impact of COVID-19 on children in the long term, and to strengthen the resilience of our systems and services for future emergencies, we need a better understanding of the changing demands on these policies and practice circumstances during the COVID-19 pandemic and recovery across cultures, countries and continents.
The Smartphone App
The Institute for Inspiring Children’s Futures, and our Key Partners, gathered this information through the COVID 4P Log – a real-time, free-of-cost smartphone app that gathers these experiences and lived realities by asking one question a day over 8-weeks.
The COVID 4P Log applies a children’s human rights framework of Protection, Provision, Prevention, and Participation to this pandemic context to better understand the ways practitioners and policymakers are able to protect children, provide for their unique needs, enable their participation in decisions that affect them, and prevent harm, at different stages in the current pandemic.
Watch our instructional videos here.
The Questions
The questions explore the views and experiences of people working at the heart of responding to the pandemic to support children’s wellbeing. Over the 8 weeks, participants using the app were asked reflective questions about their view of these core areas:
1. Learning from the pandemic so far
2. Protection: Ending Violence against Children
3. Provision: Access to Food, Health, Education
4. Collaborations, Flexibility, Transparency and Trust:
Applying Evidence from Past Emergencies to COVID-19
5. Prevention: Children's Social and Emotional Wellbeing
6. Special considerations - Access to Justice, Alternative Care
7. Participation: - Responding to #COVIDUnder19 Children and Young People’s findings
8. Preparing to rebuild post-COVID
To facilitate a direct feedback loop from children to policymakers and practice, the ‘participation’ themed questions in our study are informed by the #CovidUnder19 initiative, co-led by Terre des hommes, OSRSGVAC and Queen’s University Belfast. The initiative aims to create spaces for children across the globe to be meaningfully involved in discussions about pandemic responses and to contribute towards shaping the post-COVID-19 world.
The Findings
The collected data is being used to better our understanding, informing thematic Learning Reports to support and better prepare policymakers and practitioners to respond to children’s rights, needs and opportunities, in future stages of this pandemic, and in the event of future pandemics.
Anonymous Data Only
All data collected by the COVID 4P Log will be held in accordance with data protection laws. Neither our study nor the app gathered any identifiable information, and all questions asked were prefaced with a reminder for users not to share personal information. Within our study there were no questions that could build up a profile leading to the identification of any individual - the data collected is anonymous, and thus no living individual will be identified from it or related to it.
Furthermore, when using our app, no phone analytics were collected. No metadata was collected, and therefore location privacy is also guaranteed. Participants may opt out of the research by not using the app, or indeed going further by requesting to delete their data from the app or by deleting the App from their phone entirely.
Frequently Asked Questions
Any questions about the COVID 4P Log? Click here!