Supporting separated migrant children to thrive during COVID-19
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Stirling
Department Name: Education
Abstract
Almost 14,000 separated migrant children (SMC) applied for asylum in the EU in 2019 (Eurostat 2019). Without parents/caregivers close by, their connections to support networks, to social work, education and legal services, and to peers are vital. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these networks and services poses urgent risks for SMC's well-being and ability to thrive, socially and educationally in the UK.
The project aims to examine how SMC (aged 12 -18) experience the COVID-19 crisis and how it has impacted on their connectivity to networks and services. It will identify how services have adapted to meet their needs and will disseminate good practice throughout the UK. An intervention which gives SMC the opportunity to articulate their feelings about this and other crises, while developing English language skills, will be introduced and evaluated.
The interdisciplinary research team will adopt a mixed methods design. It combines online interviews with children, their carers, guardians, social workers and teachers; interactional data from the intervention alongside children's blogs/narratives/poetry, and online discussions with stakeholders. Findings will inform the development of an online resource, comprising briefing and working papers and young people's work and commentaries. The project team will work with CoramBAAF (to ensure findings are relevant to others working with SMC in England, Northern Ireland and Wales), Hands Up Foundation (to deliver an arts-based intervention), Scottish Guardianship Service (to support SMC during the project) and Terre des Hommes (to develop the impact of the project Europe-wide). On-going collaboration with these partners and online workshops and conferences will accelerate impact and build resources that will be available to all in order to support work with SMC during the current and future crises.
The project aims to examine how SMC (aged 12 -18) experience the COVID-19 crisis and how it has impacted on their connectivity to networks and services. It will identify how services have adapted to meet their needs and will disseminate good practice throughout the UK. An intervention which gives SMC the opportunity to articulate their feelings about this and other crises, while developing English language skills, will be introduced and evaluated.
The interdisciplinary research team will adopt a mixed methods design. It combines online interviews with children, their carers, guardians, social workers and teachers; interactional data from the intervention alongside children's blogs/narratives/poetry, and online discussions with stakeholders. Findings will inform the development of an online resource, comprising briefing and working papers and young people's work and commentaries. The project team will work with CoramBAAF (to ensure findings are relevant to others working with SMC in England, Northern Ireland and Wales), Hands Up Foundation (to deliver an arts-based intervention), Scottish Guardianship Service (to support SMC during the project) and Terre des Hommes (to develop the impact of the project Europe-wide). On-going collaboration with these partners and online workshops and conferences will accelerate impact and build resources that will be available to all in order to support work with SMC during the current and future crises.
Publications
Copland, F.
(2021)
A story that takes shape
Maggie Grant
(2022)
Separated in the UK: professionals' reflections
Maria Fotopoulou
(2021)
Separated migrant children and connectivity during Covid-19
Rigby, P.
(2021)
The beginning
Rigby, P.
(2021)
Local authority surveys
| Title | Humble's story |
| Description | Humble is a young man from The Gambia. He worked over six weeks with a storyteller to produce his journey story of coming to Scotland. At the end of the workshops, Humble recorded his story. An animator, with some input from Humble, then created a short animation of the story. |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | Humble's story has been used with Master's level students in TESOL, who have developed teaching materials using the animation. |
| URL | https://www.separatedinscotland.co.uk/story-telling/ |
| Title | Photographs taken by the young people |
| Description | These photographs were taken over a series of workshops on photography with the separated migrant young people. The photographer taught different techniques and set tasks for the young people from landscape to the creative use of things around the house. |
| Type Of Art | Image |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | The photographs were mainly for the benefit of the young people, to help them to develop a new skill, practise their English and to engage with other young people in a similar situation. |
| URL | https://www.separatedinscotland.co.uk/photography |
| Title | Separated migrant children's artwork |
| Description | Separated migrant children created art work through working with a Palestinian artist. |
| Type Of Art | Artwork |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | The workshop series eventually took place after a break because of the bombing of Palestine which meant the artist could not attend. Although two of the young people had previous interest in drawing, the others had not and so were very much at the beginning of their artistic journey. |
| URL | https://www.separatedinscotland.co.uk/drawings/ |
| Title | Thanh's story |
| Description | During the workshops, Thanh (pseudonym) created a journey story telling how he came from Vietnam to Scotland and how Covid had affected him. The purpose of the workshop was for Thanh to develop his storytelling and English language skills. At the end of the workshop period, Thanh recorded his story. The story was then animated, with some input from Thanh, in order to reach a wider audience. |
| Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | Master's students in TESOL have been working with the story to create materials for teaching English to adults and young people. |
| URL | https://www.separatedinscotland.co.uk/story-telling/ |
| Title | The Illest Soldiers |
| Description | This is a rap written and performed by one of the young people in the project. It was then animated with significant input from the young person. |
| Type Of Art | Composition/Score |
| Year Produced | 2021 |
| Impact | This has been viewed on our website and on youtube. |
| URL | https://www.separatedinscotland.co.uk/rap |
| Description | a. This project has generated significant new knowledge about how services in Scotland for separated migrant children coped during the Covid-19 pandemic. Social work services, the Guardianship Service, ESOL provision, and foster care services all took part in the project and knowledge was generated from both service providers and unaccompanied migrant children. Interviews were conducted in two stages (at the start of the pandemic and again once restrictions were beginning to be lifted). In addition, a survey was conducted with local governments in Scotland and focus groups were carried out with practitioners in other UK nations. Findings include: • All services were delivered online during the lockdown periods and continued to be delivered online for the most part once restrictions began to be lifted. • Online delivery had some benefits including reduced travel time for young people and professionals to meetings, and some indications that young people were able to join activities that would usually be too far away from the areas where they lived. However, there were also negative outcomes, including: fewer hours of English language input; reduced understanding from young people of the importance of legal meetings; loss of connectivity between unaccompanied minors and social work services, the Guardianship service and each other; increased risk to young people as there were no face-to-face checks on their well-being; young people reporting loneliness. b. The project included an innovative online arts-based intervention to support young people's wellbeing and to develop their English language skills during lockdown. The young people worked with artists, storytellers, rappers, and photographers as well as English language tutors from the Hands Up Project, loosely taking Covid-19 as their theme. The intervention provided regular workshops and the young people produced artefacts including a rap, journey stories, photographs and paintings. Researchers from the project made sure that workshops were conducted safely and took ethnographic fieldnotes and collected recordings of the workshops. Findings indicate that the workshops supported: young people's connectivity to each other; their English language skills; their wellbeing; and their confidence. c. Researching wholly online during a pandemic created significant challenges. Not least access to some informants proved difficult, a fact reflected in findings which revealed that access to some services for separated migrant children was more difficult during the pandemic. It is still not clear to what extent these young people will have to continue to use online modes and if this will impact on the quality of service provision. d. The project team worked with two key partners: the Hands Up Project and Scottish Guardianship Service. The former has expertise in teaching English in the online space and involved tutors from Brazil, Spain and UK. The Scottish Guardianship Service was created in 2015 to support refugee children and young people, and victims of trafficking who arrive in Scotland alone. Working with these partners enabled the research to take place and ensured that the young people had a positive experience. Both partners also benefitted from the collaboration, broadening their skill sets and opening new areas of development. |
| Exploitation Route | 1. Teachers and other educators. The artefacts created in the workshops by the young people, including two animations of journey stories from The Gambia and Vietnam to Scotland, could be used by teachers to discuss migration and experience. Educators may also find the texts useful for developing arts-based skills in young people, whatever their background. 2. Researchers. The project provides an approach to researching ethnographically online that other researchers may find helpful. 3. Service providers. The findings should support colleagues working in social work, ESOL provision, legal services and fostering to develop responses to crisis situations and to avoid some of the less successful aspects of their Covid responses. It also highlights some of the affordances and limitations of online working with a vulnerable population. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy,Education,Government, Democracy and Justice |
| URL | https://www.separatedinscotland.co.uk/ |
| Description | Improving survivor-informed support for trafficked children and young people - it's a long-term commitment |
| Amount | £229,511 (GBP) |
| Funding ID | AH/V013130/1 |
| Organisation | Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 09/2021 |
| End | 09/2023 |
| Description | Corambaff |
| Organisation | CoramBAAF |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | We provided the organisation with findings from the project which would be useful for their own activities. |
| Collaborator Contribution | CoramBaff held a series of focus groups with their members to road test our findings and to ascertain whether the experiences of separated migrant children in Scotland had similarities or not to unaccompanied minors in other parts of the UK. |
| Impact | The findings from the focus group will inform research papers we are currently writing. |
| Start Year | 2020 |
| Description | Project Conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | The conference was held in June to share findings from the project with practitioners (social workers, ESOL tutors), third sector organisations (e.g. Scottish Guardianship Service) and academics. During the conference titled, 'Dwelling in positivity: supporting separated migrant children to thrive during Covid-19', the PI gave a presentation about the project before each of the artists spoke about their work with the unaccompanied young people and showed examples of the young people's work, including a rap and photographs. Hands Up Project also gave a presentation on their contribution to English language teaching online and the researchers presented a film of them reading extracts from fieldnotes made during the arts-based intervention. I |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://www.separatedinscotland.co.uk/webinars/ |
| Description | Webinar |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | In this webinar, we presented the findings from the interviews in the first stage of our project. Interviews were held with social workers, ESOL tutors, legal representatives, residential care workers/foster workers and the separated migrant children themselves. Our aim was to discover how Covid-19 had affected services and the challenges that had ensued from the pandemic. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| URL | https://separatedinscotland.co.uk/webinars/ |
| Description | Webinar |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | In this webinar we reported on the theme of connectivity which had emerged from our research, particularly as related to separated migrant young people during Covid. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Webinar |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | This was the third webinar in our series. If focused on social work and presented views from across the UK on how social work with regard to separated migrant children had adapted because of Covid, and the differences between approaches in the four nations. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2021 |
| Description | Workshop: Enhancing English language skills of separated migrant children through storytelling |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Abstract In this workshop, we will describe the storytelling intervention we conducted with separated migrant young people in Scotland, that took place online and while in lockdown. We will show examples of the stories young people developed and examine the progress they made with English language skills. We will also demonstrate techniques for combining storytelling with English language development and attendees will have the opportunity to try out some of these. Finally we will provide advice for colleagues who wish to introduce storytelling into their practice. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Workshop: The ethical and practice challenges of continuing online work with separated children post Covid. |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Abstract: This workshop will draw on findings from the recent research 'Supporting Separated Children to Thrive During Covid 19' to look at the ethical and practical challenges of continuing to work with separated children in the online world. It is apparent there is some consensus that online meetings help engagement and are easier to manage for young people and workers, especially if the distances to travel to meetings are large. The workshop will explore the challenges in managing meetings with young people and the ethical and practice issues in continuing online work as restriction are removed, particularly with such a vulnerable and potentially isolated group of young people. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |
| Description | Workshop: Working with separated migrant children in times of crisis; exploiting the digital to develop connectivity |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | Abstract for the workshop Within this workshop we will be reflecting on the experience of working online with separated migrant children in different contexts. Our discussions will focus on conducting research online (Maria Fotopoulou/University of Stirling); offering online drama and storytelling activities o promote connectivity and English language skills ( Sara Wood/ Hands Up project) and finally providing online support services and ESOL teaching (Stefan Smith/Guardianship service ). Within the workshop we will all be discussing challenges and opportunities of online work with this group of children. Although the presentations do not claim to reach definite conclusions, we hope our reflections of our online journey will illuminate issues commonly met within the field today. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2022 |