New project to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on family life

The study will focus on families in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It will examine the impacts of the lockdown, and its aftermath, for the borough's young children, who are likely to experience new health and educational inequalities as a result of the mobility restrictions that were introduced on 23 March 2020 to slow the spread of COVID-19.

The researchers will work with colleagues from across UCL and with Born in Bradford, a cohort study aiming to reduce health inequalities, to examine the social, economic and health impacts of COVID-19 on family life with young children. In addition, the team will also explore parenting and family relationships, family work-care arrangements, employment, and the way the community has pulled together to support residents.

Data will be collected through a longitudinal survey of 2,000 parents of children aged 0-4, including 200 pregnant women, a subsequent qualitative panel with 20 households from the survey and mapping changes in availability of support services for families. 

The project, which runs from June 2020 – December 2021, aims to understand how families, including those defined as vulnerable, deploy their interpersonal, economic and social resources to manage risks associated with living in lockdown restrictions and its aftermath.

Its findings will help support Tower Hamlets council to shape its service offer to all families with young children, especially those newly impoverished and those designated vulnerable: pregnant women, and children.

Professor Claire Cameron, Principal Investigator of the project and deputy director of the IOE’s Thomas Coram Research Unit, said: ‘We know that the direct and indirect impacts of the pandemic fall disproportionately on people from poorer backgrounds and those who live in high-density housing. This makes Tower Hamlets, with its pre-existing stark income and health inequalities a crucial borough in researching the effects of the pandemic. We look forward to working with the borough to support recovery’.

Take part in the study

If you live in Tower Hamlets are pregnant or have a child aged 0-4 (up to 59 months old) and would like to take part, you can complete the survey here:

Complete the survey

Links

• Families in Tower Hamlets: impacts of COVID-19
• View Professor Claire Cameron’s research profile
• Department of Social Science
• COVID-19 research at UCL Institute of Education
• UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health
• UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering
• UCL Epidemiology and Public Health
• Born in Bradford
• International Network on Leave Polices and Research

Image

• Photo by August de Richelieu from Pexels