Over the past week, there have been blogs about the issues faced during the Covid-19 pandemic by families facing poverty (HERE), by children in foster care (HERE), and by children who have suddenly be pushed out of institutions as part of the protection measures against the virus (HERE). What we have not looked at yet, are children who are still living in institutions, and it is high time that we did.
In March, I wrote a blog (HERE) warning about the increased risk posed by Covid-19 to children in institutions, due to them being packed closely together with no possibility for social distancing and due to their weakened immune system. This problem has since been illustrated in practice. Although reports are rarely made public about outbreaks in institutions (if they can find a way of preventing the information coming out) when this does become known, generally you hear that half or more of the there children are infected and that practically all of them were hospitalised. Follow-ups on how many of them survived, in the end, are even rarer than reports of outbreaks, I have not come across one yet.
I was encouraged, however, to discover that in many places the risk to the children was taken seriously to a large extent. Despite being unable to travel and see for myself, I did get information from quite a lot of countries where institutions were put into complete isolation from the community, by having staff stay with the children on the premises, so that they would not bring the virus into their place of work when they started their shift.
From a medical perspective, this is a sensible precaution. And an added benefit I have heard about from various sources has been that by being forced to spend all their time together usually, stronger bonds develop between caregivers and children. This has led to greater empathy and understanding.
Despite this positive side-effect, there is also a flip-side, however. In practice, not all caregiving staff tends to be made to move in with the children. Instead, a skeleton staff of caregivers is responsible for the children 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and no one knows how long this is to go on for. In addition to this, children cannot go to school, they cannot visit their families during holidays (as happens in many places) and there are no volunteers to keep the children occupied. Everything lands on the caregivers’ shoulders, all the time.
It is not hard to imagine that this would wear a person down. Exhaustion, stress about the pandemic situation, worry about their own family whom they cannot visit, and children who are harder to manage than usual because of the stress they are experiencing in isolation all add up. And there is no opportunity for escape, for rest or for detaching from the situation.
In a situation like that, people’s abilities to deal with problems or unexpected events, to not take things personally, and to manage their own reactions to situations reduces. In other words, they are more likely to snap and react with disproportionate anger and even aggressiveness. Under the given circumstances, this is inevitable. And the result is an increase in physical and psychological abuse of children in institutions. Something that is already widespread at this moment.
The stress does not only affect caregivers. during the pandemic. With so many dangers and uncertainties, everyone is under increased stress. And this increase in stress reduces the capacity for making well-considered decisions. This is also something I have seen happen up close, in practice, already. Management of an institution being confronted with a problem or a challenge (not even one that is actually new) and making sudden decisions and implementing them immediately, without consideration of the serious traumatic consequences to the children.
Children living in institutions at this moment are at increased risk and even danger due to circumstances connected to the pandemic in many different ways. For me, it increases the feeling of powerlessness to only be able to provide advice from a distance, rather than being able to do anything practical to protect the children.
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