Ecorys awarded Nuffield Foundation grant to understand social impacts of COVID-19 for young people

Ecorys awarded Nuffield Foundation grant to understand social impacts of COVID-19 for young people

April 2020

Ecorys has been awarded a prestigious grant by the Nuffield Foundation, to understand how the Covid-19 crisis affects children and young people’s everyday lives. The work will be carried out in partnership with the University of Huddersfield.

Over the next 18 months, a joint research team from the two organisations will recruit and train young people as co-researchers, supporting them to document their family lives, peer relationships, education, and their roles in society as the pandemic unfolds.

The research will be conducted entirely online, using virtual forms of communication to mirror young people’s changing modes of social interaction during the crisis.

The research will take place in seven countries. It will compare young people’s experiences in the four nations of the UK, with those of their peers from Italy, at the original epicentre of the European outbreak; Singapore, where SARS is still within memory and where the response to Covid-19 has centred on contract-tracing, and Lebanon, where a fragile civil society and quarantine for refugee children have particular implications for the pandemic.

The study will provide findings to inform the development of appropriate tools and measures to safeguard child well-being and children’s rights during the crisis. The main outputs will include interim and final research reports, alongside online briefings and blog posts aimed at the general public, professionals, public authorities, and NGOs.

Final reporting is scheduled for September 2021.

Further information: 

Team Leader:

Laurie Day 
Research Director, Ecorys
Laurie.Day@ecorys.com 

Co-Applicant: 

Barry Percy-Smith  
Professor of Childhood, Youth and Participatory Practice, The University of Huddersfield
B.Percy-Smith@hud.ac.uk 

Grant award notice: 
Nuffield Link here

23 April 2020

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