‘Data about children’s lives in the pandemic’ looks at the impact of the pandemic on children’s lives, and the wellbeing of parents and teachers, through the lens of new data made available to the ODI, as well as various open data sources and in-depth qualitative research.
The ODI team worked for the first time with Barnardo’s and Mumsnet and were given access to new aggregated and anonymised data from Barnardo’s See, Hear, Respond programme as well as from Mumsnet forum search tools from its Mumsnet Talk discussion boards (which attract 7 million monthly unique visitors). These helped to paint a picture through data of how the pandemic was affecting both children and parents from the start of the first lockdown to going back to school in September and beyond.
The report aims to demonstrate how data held within organisations such as these, can provide valuable insights into the most urgent and pressing challenges of our time. The project team also examined open government data from the Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions.