Recovery from COVID-19 within the CYPSE: A qualitative study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Recovery from COVID-19 within the Children and Young Peoples Secure Estate (CYPSE): A qualitative study of wellbeing
IRAS ID
300760
Contact name
Charlotte Lennox
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Manchester
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 8 months, 31 days
Research summary
Research Summary
Background: Living with COVID -19 has been hard for everyone. Children in prison/secure homes have faced the most restrictions. They may have been locked in their bedrooms, not been able to see or talk to their families and not been able to go to school.Aim: we want to learn what the impact of COVID-19 has been on children in prison/secure homes, and how these services may have changed the way they work during this time.
Design and methods: we will conduct interviews with children who spent time in prison/secure homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. These interviews will be conducted on prison/secure home premises. We also want to do interviews with family members of these young people, staff members from the prison/secure homes, and other professionals involved in making decisions about prison/secure homes. These interviews will take place online using video calling. We will voice record all interviews so that we can turn the conversations into a written document to read and analyses.
Analysis: we will code the data and look for themes across the interviews which explain the impact of COVID-19 has been on children in prison/secure homes, and how these services may have changed the way they work. We will use these themes to produce a report of the findings and to make suggestions about how children in prison/secure homes can be better supported going forward.
Summary of Results
Background: Children in custody (prison) have poor health, especially mental health. Before COVID-19 there were worries that some units were not managing children's health and safety very well.
COVID-19 has had an impact on everyone, however, because children in custody were already so vulnerable, we were worried about the impact of COVID-19 and the restrictions that were introduced.Aims:
This study aimed to understand the impact of COVID-19 on children in prison.Approach:
This study had three parts. In part one we looked at reports from all the units, when they were inspected during COVID to see how they were managing. In part two, we interviewed 41 people, this included young people, staff working in the units and the people responsible for managing the units about their experiences. In part three, we looked at how well the health teams worked, before COVID, during COVID and when all the restrictions started to be lifted (we called this recovery).Findings:
We found that there were ways in which COVID-19 had direct and indirect impacts on children in prison. Directly, COVID-19 guidance did not include children in custody, so all sites did things differently, but it meant that children were locked in their rooms for long periods of time. Children did not have as much access to healthcare, their families or other professionals to help them. Lots of the sites grouped children into small bubbles but this seems to have made violence more likely. Indirectly, there were a lot fewer staff and staff often got COVID-19 so they could not work and so children were even more restricted.Conclusions and Recommendations:
Children in custody experienced longer periods of isolation and more restrictions because polices did not include them. Future policies should include children and make sure they are not isolated for long periods.REC name
Wales REC 4
REC reference
21/WA/0380
Date of REC Opinion
21 Dec 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion