2 October 2025

(9.59 am)

Lady Hallett: Ms Dobbin.

Ms Dobbin: My Lady, may I please call Baroness Anne

Longfield.

Baroness Anne Longfield

BARONESS ANNE LONGFIELD (affirmed).

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much for coming back to help

us, Lady Longfield. We can continue the discussion we

started some months ago.

The Witness: Thank you.

Questions From Lead Counsel to the Inquiry for Module 8

Ms Dobbin: May I please ask that you give your full name to the Inquiry.

Baroness Anne Longfield: Anne Elizabeth Longfield.

Lead 8: And I think you ought to have a witness statement in front of you with the number INQ000588139.

Baroness Anne Longfield: I do.

Lead 8: And can you confirm, please, that that statement is true to the best of your knowledge and belief?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, it is true.

Lead 8: I’m grateful. I think it’s correct that you held the role of Children’s Commissioner for England from March 2015 until February 2021; is that right?

Baroness Anne Longfield: That’s right.

Lead 8: And thereafter you became the founder and the executive chair of the Centre for Young Lives?

Baroness Anne Longfield: That’s right, it was founded last year, at the beginning of last year.

Lead 8: And could you explain or just summarise what the work of the centre is, please?

Baroness Anne Longfield: It’s a think tank and delivery unit. It is established to focus on children and young people entirely. It’s to look at the needs and outcomes of all children, but especially we take an interest in disadvantaged children and vulnerable children. There’s much in the work that I undertook as Children’s Commissioner that I continue in this role. It’s a new organisation, it’s a charity, and it has a small team.

Lead 8: Does that mean, then, that you’re also able, in the course of your evidence, to provide evidence about ongoing impacts to children that link back to the pandemic?

Baroness Anne Longfield: That’s right. It has a number of programmes that it’s taken over the last year and a half which highlight the state of the nation, if you like, of our children. Most, in particular, a piece of work that looked at statistics around vulnerability and was published in July, and that relates directly in comparison to the statistics around vulnerability just before Covid.

Lead 8: Perhaps we’ll come to that at the end of your evidence,

if I may. But I wanted, really, to go back to the start

and to ask you about the statutory functions of the

Children’s Commissioner first. I think it’s right that

the primary function of the Children’s Commissioner for

England is to promote children’s rights; is that

correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: It is, it is.

Lead 8: And is it also the statutory function of the Children’s

Commissioner – and this is under section 2(3) of the Children Act 2004 – in the discharge of that function to provide advice to persons who are exercising functions in relation to children?

Baroness Anne Longfield: That’s right. It works under the framework of United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the international treaty. I was the Children’s Commissioner for England, there are also Children’s Commissioners for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland and I think you’ve had some evidence, submissions from them, and it also has lead responsibility on non-devolved issues such as immigration and youth justice. But essentially, you are the eyes and ears of children within the sphere of decision making. Your role is to understand children’s lives and listen and consult with children but then reflect not only their views but their best interests to those that are making decisions.

It’s independent of government. I was answerable not to a department; I was answerable to the education committee, ie, Parliament, and as part of your role within UNCRC, you submit evidence for their periodic reviews every five years.

Lead 8: Just going back to the statutory language, the Act provided that the Children’s Commissioner may, in particular, advise the Secretary of State on the rights, views and interests of children; is that correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: That’s right. And within that range of children and their rights, there were particularly responsibilities about vulnerable children and particularly children in care as well.

Lead 8: I think what that means, looking at this statutory scheme was that in effect you were charged with the provision of advice to the Secretary of State, amongst your other functions?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, amongst others. It would also include local authorities, it would also include those who are heading up health agencies, but all of those that had decision-making powers over things that affected children’s lives. It was a small team. The budget at that time was about 2.5 million which meant you’ve got about 25 people and it’s an arm’s length body for Parliament, so it sits within that kind of remit.

Lead 8: Just moving away from the statutory scheme and looking toward the Secretary of State, how did that work in practice, prior to the pandemic? How would your advice be elicited?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, there would be an element of regularity around some meetings. Now, that might be every six months, with different – there were quite a few secretaries of state over this period of time, but – and so that would differ, but it may be a meeting every six months; it may be a meeting every three months or even annual, annually.

The Children’s Commissioner, it was – it’s down to them how they deliver on their responsibilities, so there is a work programme that is initiated by the Children’s Commissioner, and that, for me, focused on vulnerable children and young people. There are – we had a small research team.

There was a really important power, statutory power which the commissioner has which is to be able to gather evidence and gather data. That means they have an ability to be able to ask any public body for data, administrative data, not on individual children, and expect that they would provide it, unless there was a particularly good reason for it. And that is quite – you know, that is quite a significant power. It’s something that even, you know, government departments don’t have of other departments. So that enabled me to be able to gather information on the kind of issues that children and young people were telling me were affecting their lives.

I could then – such as mental health, for instance. Lots of young people told me they were struggling to get help, struggling with waiting lists and the like. I was then able to undertake a piece of research which would ask and gather data from those that were meant to be providing those services, and then present – analyse that and present that in a report which highlighted actually what was going on, and give recommendations of what needed to change.

And over that period of time in any one year there would be probably about ten different aspects of research going on, that were reported on.

A key piece of work which follows through in terms of all of my statement is a piece of work which we at the time called a vulnerability index. It was – it looked to establish what vulnerability meant.

Lead 8: I’m so sorry to interrupt you. I’m going to move on to that. I just wanted to stick, if I might –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Okay, fine.

Lead 8: – on this narrow issue of your functions, because I really just wanted to get to the point.

Your statutory role foresees that you will provide advice to the Secretary of State. Does that equally require that the Secretary of State comes to you to say “Government is considering doing this”, or “We have a piece of legislation in the pipeline, what’s the advice of the Children’s Commissioner?”

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, you would hope that that would be the case, and certainly when there’s been the context where you have a Secretary of State which is very interested in children’s issues and wants to make that happen, I think that is much more the case, and you can see it in other countries. It’s not a requirement.

There is, within the statute – it does say that you should consult, but it leaves it open over to what level you would do that. And certainly I was never formally consulted as such, even though I might have been asked my opinion on something. Largely, that came very late in the day and it was informing rather than consulting.

Lead 8: All right. And are you there reflecting on the general practice prior to the pandemic?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes.

Lead 8: Because I think you say at paragraph 24 of your statement that there was no, I think, settled practice of government coming to the office of the Children’s Commissioner to consult – (overspeaking) –

Baroness Anne Longfield: No, that’s right, and it was a relatively new role. I was the third Children’s Commissioner. I was the first one with those statutory powers to gather data that you discussed. So it was an emerging role. And I think it’s fair to say that it hadn’t established itself within the decision-making powers within Westminster at that stage or, indeed, the decision framework within Westminster hadn’t yet adequately involved the Children’s Commissioner, in my mind.

Lead 8: So I think it follows from all of that, that there was no, for example, threshold test that government applied in order to decide, “Yes, this is something that we should ask the Children’s Commissioner about before we decide to do it”, for example?

Baroness Anne Longfield: No, that precedent wasn’t there.

Lead 8: And I’m going to come on to some specifics, but in general and in summary terms, did the position improve over the course of the pandemic? In other words, was the Children’s Commissioner more closely integrated in decision making in government in respect of children?

Baroness Anne Longfield: I think there was lots more contact during the pandemic because obviously there were a lot of decisions being made, often at high speed. I would often be telephoned the night before there was an announcement, such as the closure of schools, to let me know what was happening. And, you know, that was courtesy, I think, as much as anything which, you know, I was grateful for.

So the meetings were much more regular at all levels. I would meet officials formally once a fortnight. I would meet with the Minister for Children every month; probably every six weeks, I think, the Secretary of State. So there was more contact. I don’t think that that led to responding to the advice that I was giving. I think the situation was very fluid, and somewhat chaotic, and it wasn’t easy to see it – well, it was very difficult to see where decisions were being made and they certainly didn’t seem to be made by – primarily by those people that were talking to me.

Lead 8: And again, I’m just putting this at a high level rather than looking at specifics, which we’ll come to, but was there a practice of telling you – and I mean government telling you – “This is what we’re thinking of doing, what do you think”, during the pandemic? Or did the position remain that they told you what was going to happen as a matter of courtesy or as a matter of –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah, there were occasions where that discussion about “This is what we’re thinking we might do”, where that was put to me, but I don’t think that the conversation we had when concerns were raised led to a change in the pattern or the decision.

Lead 8: All right. Maybe we’ll turn to some of those specifics and just examine what in fact happened.

I want to ask you, though, I’m going to move on to some specific pandemic-related issues.

Did you consider that your statutory powers were adequate in the face of the pandemic? In other words, these new powers that you had been provided with to gather information; were they sufficient or were there any powers that you consider the Children’s Commissioner lacked?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, they were very good for gathering data, also very good for having the right of access to young people who were living away from home. So if there was an occasion, either before or during the pandemic, where a child may have been in some kind of secure accommodation, for instance there was one occasion where a young girl was in a secure mental health unit, she’d been there for a long time. I was able to visit and gain access without asking and find out what was going on and intervene in that way.

So those two were really important powers.

There was also a requirement for government to respond to me, which again was useful, although if you can imagine during the pandemic some of those responses took longer than others. What there wasn’t, of course, was a requirement to respond positively to that advice, nor was there any way to upscale that advice or those concerns.

So in those ways, we took it upon ourselves to deliver on 30 different reports during that period of time, on a whole range of issues, wrote lots of letters to secretaries of state, put forward lots of solutions because, ultimately, this was about moving things on to the best interests of children, but the machinery of government wasn’t set up in decision making in a way that really responded to many of those.

There were some examples of a positive response, either before or during Covid, before having raised really serious concerns about children’s mental health and numbers of children and being able to evidence that, then, with the data to back that up.

There was a serious engagement. It took a little time, but there was a serious engagement from government on that and from NHSE, and that in part led to the developmental of mental health teams in schools.

So there were things. Online safety was another. During the pandemic, there were some interventions that you could clearly see had made a difference. There was – I’d raised concerns about the potential to detain children under public health safety without adults seeing it. That was quickly responded to. There were others where, you know, it was really quite dismissed. The exemption of children under 12 for rule of six, if you like, that was a quick exemption – we will come to that.

Lead 8: We’ll come to that. I just want to move on, then, if I may, to the Children’s Commissioner’s estimates of vulnerability which I think were periodically carried out prior to the pandemic; is that right?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, yes, pre- and during, and post.

Lead 8: Yes, and I think perhaps if I can just bring up on screen, please, INQ000062176. This is an example, I think, of one of those estimates.

I want to ask you some questions about this.

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes.

Lead 8: This a breakdown of the Children’s Commissioner estimate of the number of children who were vulnerable in England, correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes.

Lead 8: And it’s not just based on the number of children who had a Child Protection Plan?

Baroness Anne Longfield: No.

Lead 8: Or who had reached the threshold of being a child in need; is that right?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, this was actually one aspect of those sets of data but this actually, for the first time, this was the second year, actually, had calculated the best estimate possible about those children who were living in vulnerable households. That was a figure that hadn’t been calculated until we did it but we found that 2.3 million children were living within vulnerable households.

Lead 8: And the question I just wanted to ask for these purposes: how did your office estimate vulnerability? What did living in a vulnerable household actually mean?

Baroness Anne Longfield: So this looked at the numbers of children who were living in households where there was severe mental health, parents had severe mental health, addiction, or there was domestic abuse, and the figure was so high, actually we had a serious discussion about whether it was too high to be believed because it was around one in six children. We’re very aware that a lot of this was hidden, but it was the figure and we thought it was very important to say that. We estimated from that 2.3 million that actually 1.6 million families were getting little or no help. We looked at the response, the kinds of support these families were getting and we estimated that 1.6 million were getting very little help, they were almost invisible.

So for us as we entered the pandemic period, we felt that this group of children, who would be at home with their families in very vulnerable situations, this is even before you start to look at the impact of poverty and housing and the like, had a particular – there were particularly concerns about their wellbeing and very likely heightened vulnerabilities as a result of lockdowns.

Lead 8: Thank you. And I think within this group, I think that you estimated that 829,000 children were invisible, so I think it’s probably important to make that distinction.

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: That those were children with no form of statutory intervention in their lives?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, that’s right.

Lead 8: Is that correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes.

Lead 8: Then the remainder were either those children who had statutory interventions or it was unclear what level of support they were getting; is that correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, that’s right, them and their families. And there were 800,000 children living in households with domestic abuse. Now, domestic abuse is the biggest driver of children being taken into care, so, this is, you know, a lot of families – children who were living in quite perilous situations sometimes.

Lead 8: All right, I’m going to move on then. That was the situation in 2019. I just want to turn to the period when the pandemic was unfolding, so from January to mid-March. In that period, did the government approach you at all about the possible implications of a pandemic for children generally?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, there would be some discussions that would take place as part of kind of regular meetings, but in no formal way was I involved in planning for the pandemic in terms of children.

I think in the run-up to schools being locked down, it was quite chaotic. It wasn’t clear who had responsible – responsibility for planning for children, if anyone. Nor were options being considered. Nor, if any, assessments were being made about potential impact on children.

Lead 8: Can I just, if I ask you just to halt there and let me just take this in a methodical way. But were you consulted or were there discussions with you about the possible implications of school closures for children prior to that announcement being made?

Baroness Anne Longfield: No, although I did obviously send a lot of correspondence and briefings and raise concerns myself.

Lead 8: Was that prior to 18 March or was that after the announcement was made?

Baroness Anne Longfield: I think there was some – so I think there was, largely during that later March period, probably some between the middle of March and the actual lockdown starting.

Lead 8: And were there any discussions with you or consultation with you about the implications of a lockdown on children –

Baroness Anne Longfield: No.

Lead 8: – prior to the lockdown being announced?

Baroness Anne Longfield: No.

Lead 8: Had there been any discussions or consultations with you about how children’s social care could be maintained in the context of a pandemic –

Baroness Anne Longfield: No, not at that time.

Lead 8: – or a lockdown? Was there any discussion with you about or consultation with you about how possible school closures could be mitigated –

Baroness Anne Longfield: No.

Lead 8: – if that eventuality arose?

Baroness Anne Longfield: No. I’m not sure there were any of those discussions taking place. That’s not to say they shouldn’t have been, nor that – I would have hoped they would have discussed them with me, but I do have to say I’m not – I’m not even sure there were those discussions.

Lead 8: If you had been involved or if there had been that sort of consultation or discussion, are there clear points that you would have wanted to have made, I don’t know, in February 2020, about the sort of groundwork that might need to be done prior to school closures or a lockdown?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, the first one would, of course, have been about vulnerable children and safeguarding those vulnerable children in whatever context was chosen.

Having vulnerable children being able to go to school was very important, and of course – not wanting to jump ahead, but that was agreed, and I was very pleased and relieved about that. But also I would have raised concerns, and did, through letters later in that month, around:

• Families who were living in temporary accommodation, a significant number of families were at risk of homelessness. I think 375,000 families were. Some families were sofa surfing at the time.

• Those families where there was domestic abuse at home.

• Those families where they were struggling financially, and may struggle with, you know, being able to balance responsibilities between their children and working.

• Those families who lived in very cramped conditions at home and had no access to gardens. About 8% of children don’t have access to a garden.

So the pressures that you could see that families were facing before Covid – those that had mental health at home and those children with poor mental health – were all things that, in my view, should have been ringing alarm bells, which meant there should have been, you know, a very serious consideration of balancing those social needs and economic needs against the need for lockdown.

Lead 8: And do you think that there were practical things that might have been done in advance of those considerations as well, for example the identification of those children within schools, those sorts of steps?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I published those figures around vulnerable children living in vulnerable families for a reason. That was to inform decision making so that they could be identified so that they could be supported and so they could be a priority for that support.

So that certainly was a disappointment that at that point, having published those figures for two years, that there wasn’t a greater response in terms of government priority, but broader than that, there were issues around the number of children and families who didn’t have access to either technology or the Internet, over a million children didn’t have access to tech. About the, you know, the resilience of schools to be able to provide that technical support. We know that an awful lot of private schools were able to continue with lessons online whereas state schools just didn’t have the tech or the capability or the resources and skills to be able to do that.

In other countries, they considered things like taking over other public buildings next to schools to be able to operate across, you know, a broader footfall, which would have meant more social distancing.

And of course, then there’s issues around how you protect children and staff against infection and of course when it got to vaccination stage, that was another area where I felt there should be a priority.

So within all of that, there could have been or there should have been huge amounts of planning and prep about how we delivered this life-changing lockdown, if you like, where suddenly 10 million children didn’t go to school anymore and what that meant.

Lead 8: All right. I think we’ll examine what that meant. Just to go back to the slightly drier issue of decision making and where children’s rights fit in, I know that you contacted SAGE, and we’ll come to that, about your concerns about how decisions were being made but I think it’s correct that in the run-up to the decision to close schools, you weren’t, for example, an observer to SAGE. You didn’t have access to the sorts of advice –

Baroness Anne Longfield: No.

Lead 8: – that was being provided?

Baroness Anne Longfield: No, no, I had no formal role in any of that.

Lead 8: And do you think it would have been useful, had you been made aware of the sorts of advice that was being given in order that you could fulfil your statutory functions?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, absolutely. Essentially because I would then have been the voice of the child in that room whereas my feelings throughout this, a theme throughout, is that children weren’t represented in decision making.

Lead 8: Yes, and we’ll come to where that voice might fit when we come to look at the correspondence with SAGE.

Baroness Anne Longfield: Sure.

Lead 8: Moving on then, if I may, you’ve touched upon your concerns about where school closures and lockdown would leave vulnerable children and we’ll come to the policy that the government arrived at, at the start of that period. But at the time, when the government announced that they were going to enable certain categories of children to attend school, were you satisfied with that approach – and I mean at the time rather than with the benefit of hindsight –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Mm.

Lead 8: – or did you think immediately: there are problems with this?

Baroness Anne Longfield: I was very relieved that the decision had been made to open up schools for vulnerable children. And – I thought it was the right decision, and I said so to ministers, yeah.

Lead 8: And then if we look, please, at the detail of the policy.

This is at tab 11, please, and it’s document INQ000520192.

If we could just look at some of the detail of this, please. So I think this was the broad criteria that was applied, and we can see, first of all, that those children who had a social worker or a child protection plan or who were looked after, yes?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes.

Lead 8: – (overspeaking) – a child in need. And those children who had an education, health and care plan, as well; yes?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes.

Lead 8: Can I just focus on that for a moment. The criterion that was applied in respect of them appeared to be, if we read down, that there should be an assessment as to whether their needs could safely be met at home; is that correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: That’s right. There was a requirement for an assessment.

Lead 8: And if we go over the page to page 2, and I think the second paragraph is the paragraph that provided a discretion to schools and local authorities, as well; is that correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, that’s right.

Lead 8: I’m going to come back, when we’ve looked at some parts of this, to ask you some general questions about it. And if we go over the page, please, to page 3, we see, under “3” it states that:

“School is known as a protective factor for children receiving the support of a social worker.”

Correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes.

Lead 8: And then under 4, it says that education is an important protective factor as well.

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: Did you understand the purpose of this policy, then, to be twofold: that in respect of children who were supported by social care, that it was intended to be a policy of child protection and to enable them to maintain their education, as well?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, that’s right. There were the two aspects. These were children who were most likely to be – we knew there’s a disadvantage gap between disadvantaged children and their more affluent peers in terms of education. These are the children who are most likely to be behind in their learning outcomes in that way.

We also knew that they would benefit from that continued education. We know that time out of school, even during school holidays, accounts for much of that disadvantage gap, about two thirds, actually. So we know that time out of education for some disadvantaged children has a huge impact. So there was even the benefit, potentially, of having more one-to-one time with teachers and being able to get some boost to their education within school.

But the other side is yes, of course, school is a protective factor. There’s important oversight from other professionals. It’s – for some children who may be living in difficult situations at home, then school is a place where they will be able to potentially have, you know, a different environment with more support.

And we know that when it comes to referrals to social services, that the majority of referrals come from schools. So you lose that ability to be able to see what’s going on, but also, that eligibility to be able to respond.

Again, going back to those children who were living in vulnerable households, that one in six, that would have been a huge loss.

Lead 8: I am just going to move on so if we look at page 6, please, and 13, “Do vulnerable children have to go to school?”

It set out, didn’t it, that there would be an expectation that they would, yes? As long as it was safe for them to do so?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes. So the expectation was clearly there. My concern was that there wasn’t enough to action to follow up to ensure that happened.

Lead 8: All right. So I think we’ll come to this –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: – but in theory the –

Baroness Anne Longfield: In theory, the expectation was there, yeah.

Lead 8: Yes. And if we skip ahead, please, to page 9.

This is the provision that was made for children with education health and care plans. And I think we see in the first paragraph that there should be a risk assessment for each child; is that correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: That’s right.

Lead 8: And that that risk assessment would take into account health risks to that child. That’s the first bullet point.

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: The risk to the child if some or all elements of their plan couldn’t be delivered?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: Then the ability of parents to care for them, as well?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: Then an overall wellbeing consideration as well; correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: That’s right.

Lead 8: And then it set out the expectation as to the categories of children that this would broadly apply to; yes?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes.

Lead 8: And I think the first one is:

“• children and young people who would be at significant risk if their … placement did not continue …”

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes.

Lead 8: But that these were children “who could not safely be supported at home”; correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes.

Lead 8: So did you read that as, in a way, providing two different thresholds that needed to be met: that a child had to go through the risk assessment process, and then the test was whether or not they could be – whether or not they could be safely supported at home?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes. There were several hoops, quite difficult hoops, that people – children would have to jump through to be able to get through this assessment.

Lead 8: And do you read that test being that those who could not be safely supported at home, that that was the test rather than whether or not children could safely come to school?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, I think clearly there would be huge concern if they couldn’t be safely supported at home.

Lead 8: Yes.

Baroness Anne Longfield: My concern would be that there weren’t adequate arrangements put in place to ensure that alternative support could be offered, and that they were able to attend in school.

Lead 8: And I think we’ll come to that when we see your concerns about the requirements –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: – for healthcare and care plans being –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes.

Lead 8: – diminished.

Then I think if we go over the page again, we can see that the other category of children was:

“• children and young people whose needs can be met at home, namely those who are not receiving personal care from their education setting …”

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: So, looking at that policy, did it appear to – in essence, was it providing that it was those children who had the highest of needs, in terms of those children needing personal care, who were anticipated to be at school?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, I think the implication from this is that children and young people’s needs that can be met at home will be of a lower priority to be able to attend school. And again, the word “expectation” is quite a loose word. And there does seem to be a kind of vague aspiration this might happen, but, as we’ll come on to, my concern was that the action wasn’t put in place to ensure it happened.

Lead 8: So, as regards those children, and these are children who have a plan, so they do have a higher level of need –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: – than other children with special educational needs, nonetheless, this policy appeared to suggest that if they were sufficiently well or –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: – or robust enough to come to school, they were in fact the children who should be at home; is that correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, yes. I think that that’s what this leads to.

The other part of this, though, with the assessment, is if additional resources, including staffing resources, are required to attend school, which children with higher needs are likely to have, then the last piece here:

“Where a local authority is unable to put in place stated provision, they will need to use their reasonable endeavours …”

Clearly there were potential shortages of staff which would mean that that wouldn’t be possible either.

So, you know, it wasn’t a straight line by just saying an expectation here, by any means.

Lead 8: Thank you.

If we just move on, please, I think we can touch on this very briefly.

It’s INQ000519887.

And this is a later piece of guidance. And if we just go to page 3 of that, I think we can see that that remained the position: that children, if we just look, sorry, it’s the second bullet, that it remained essentially the criteria –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: – that children with an education, health and care plan whose needs couldn’t be safely met at home were the children who could attend school; is that correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: And again, if we could just go to page 4 of this as well. And if we just look, please, at the second paragraph “Expectations on attendance”, and again, that reiterates that advice; is that correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, that’s right. So risk assessment was, you know, a key aspect of these children being able to, or not able to attend school.

Lead 8: And I think – thank you, that can come down.

And can I just say, to be clear, sorry I have just realised I skipped over it, but that was later guidance, then, that was from 19 April 2020, so that remained the position.

We’ll come to this but I think your office eventually saw that children were not in fact, or there was inconsistency in children being offered risk assessments in order to be able to attend school in the first place; is that right?

Baroness Anne Longfield: That’s right. Many parents said that they weren’t able to access an assessment.

Lead 8: Thank you. Just, then, looking at that guidance, it obviously, it didn’t explicitly refer to those children who had special educational needs as being entitled to attend school. Was that something which caused you concern?

Baroness Anne Longfield: It was, because the vast majority of children don’t have an educational health plan, children with special educational needs, 75% don’t have a plan. So those children would have needs and weren’t being identified as being in need, and in my view should have been.

Lead 8: I think the answer to that might be that because the level of special educational needs is in fact so high amongst the population of England’s children, I think the Inquiry has heard that it was something like 1.3 million children, that that number could never be catered for without imperilling the policy objective to try and limit infection rates. What would you say to that?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, two pieces of evidence from a very positive practice that got larger numbers in. I mean, we’ll go on to talk about how few did actually attend, so it actually, in practice, wasn’t an issue as so few attended, but we looked in detail at nurseries that were operating within the NHS for workers, and we chose to look at that because they were operating and we wanted to see what their experience was. We found that in these nurseries 50 to 80% were attending. And also, in some schools that worked very hard to get parents, had a lot of disadvantaged children attending, worked very hard to get parents and children to be able to attend, and had much nearer to 80% attending. That was the Oasis Trust of schools. They worked tirelessly to communicate with parents to get them to really get their confidence in being able to attend.

Lead 8: I think, from your answer, I think what you may be saying is that you felt that as time wore on –

Baroness Anne Longfield: I don’t think it was ambitious enough in being able to –

Lead 8: Yes.

Baroness Anne Longfield: – to see how many children both needed that support, but also how many a school could support safely.

Lead 8: I think it became – I think we can return to that and look at some of the specific things that you suggested. I think it quickly became apparent to you that children who were eligible to attend school under this guidance weren’t doing so; is that right?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah, that’s right.

Lead 8: And is it at that point that you started to have concern about the guidance itself and whether or not it was excluding too many children, or was your concern about how the guidance was being implemented?

Baroness Anne Longfield: It was both of those things and there were the discretionary abilities to be able to support more disadvantaged children to attend. So the guidance could have been more embracing and should have been, in my view, but also, how it was handled, if you like. It wasn’t a coherent message across government in terms of attendance and this came just before there was a national lockdown communication, which told everyone they should ‘Stay at Home’ and not leave their house.

Now, in my view, that could have been handled slightly differently. It seemed to show that government hadn’t understood the complexities of life for a lot of these children and families, and the message of course for all parents was, you know: don’t leave home, it’s unsafe to leave your home. Which meant that those parents with vulnerable children who might have attended wondered why their children might take the risk to attend school when everyone else’s wouldn’t.

Lead 8: And I mean, that might appear to be a formidable barrier, how on the one hand you send out that message to the general population and how on the other hand you attract or you try and get families to send the most vulnerable children into school. What sort of messaging do you think might have overcome that barrier or how could it have been made more attractive?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, let’s remember, as well, it was also children with key workers who were attending. So it was acknowledged in some of the documents that there wouldn’t be stigma because key workers’ children were attending. But I think that, you know, language around children who were a priority would have been much more positive, so that actually attending school could have been seen as something which was sought after in many ways and a positive support for children and families rather than something which was kind of labelled as vulnerability.

And I think that was something that then showed through in terms of those that had contact with families, be they schools or social workers, having the confidence to be able to encourage them to attend school. There were very, very small numbers, less than 5%, in the first few weeks. They grew into the, you know, into 12, 15% eventually. It never got past 20% of vulnerable children attending schools.

So what started as a policy of very good intention based on need, and a good decision, wasn’t followed up in terms of how it’s communicated or in terms of how children were, and their families were supported to make the most of those places.

Lady Hallett: Messaging to whom? So if you’re the government and you’re going to try and persuade the entire population, nearly 70 million people to stay at home, how do you get the messaging across so you need a simple message – I’ve had this, as you know, in different contexts about how –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lady Hallett: – there weren’t sufficient nuances in the messaging.

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lady Hallett: So are we talking about the government messaging to the public or are we talking about messaging within the system? What are we talking about?

Baroness Anne Longfield: So I think, first and foremost, the public because that’s what everyone saw. You know, they turned their TV on at 6 o’clock or whatever it was and they got that message. And of course it had to be a stern and serious enough message that actually people did stay at home, but I think within that, there could have been some nuance around groups being able to access additional support, if you like, during this period.

It could have been seen as an offer from government to help families rather than as something which was almost seen as, you know, a punishment for those families.

And then, of course, the messaging from the actual professionals around children’s lives, I think it was such a strong message and everyone reacted with such fear that actually it was difficult for some of the professionals to be able to counteract that and say, “It’ll be okay.”

It was only when you had a really good, trusted relationship with those families in the first place, which some of those schools did – and obviously the NHS nurseries were absolutely needed to get people into work – that they – was able to break through that.

But I think understanding the complexities of how that would be heard, understanding the complexities of those parents’ lives, there could have been a way to be able to show that this was an offer from government to help children who were a priority through this period.

Ms Dobbin: Yes, so the key thing was, it seems – or an issue was the – sort of, the stigmatising –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah, yeah, the blunt message, and then the lack of follow-up in terms of any explanation to those families.

I mean, there were some areas – the practicalities of some – I’m not sure if we’re on this by now, but the practicalities of some children being able to attend and others not, for some families, was difficult. For children in foster families, the child who was being was fostered could attend, less so for the foster family’s own children.

In some local authorities where they realised this was the case, they just allowed all children in foster families to attend, and that was clearly their ability to do so, but that’s a decision from someone who was – who could see what was happening, who had the confidence to make it, and the confidence to follow through, and that wasn’t always the case.

Lead 8: And did you come to any assessment as to why the messaging wasn’t changing or becoming sufficiently strong to try to attract more vulnerable children into school – during the first, I should say, during the first period of lockdowns?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, I think that first of all, the dilution of regulations, which we’ll come on to, had already taken effect by then. So the level of contact with some families was less than it would have been. There would have been fewer staff, not as many as was anticipated would be this absent but still fewer. And I think at this stage there was a mix of either thinking, well, look, schools will open soon anyway – there was still that feeling in the first few weeks that maybe this would be until Easter and – I think you’ll probably remember the conversations: “Maybe we’ll have a long Easter holiday and everyone will come back after that.”

So there was still this feeling that actually it wouldn’t last that long, but almost in a way, you know, that there’s nothing we can do about it. Families have decided that they don’t want to send their children in, and who are we to tell them that it’s all right?

So I think generally, you know, a lot of distrust in – or not distrust but a lack of clarity about what the science did actually say, not great information to professionals, and there wasn’t any kind of accountability framework from government to make sure that actually the professionals were doing their utmost to do that. It wasn’t a direction of government that that should happen.

So those families – those workers who were meeting with families were – in many ways, the default was to support them to do of the best for their kids during that period at home, if you like, rather than point out and support them to see what benefits could have been gained by their children attending.

Of course there were some parents, a few, that would want that lack of scrutiny, would take that as a period where there was less oversight themselves, and they could disappear from view.

Lead 8: Yes.

Baroness Anne Longfield: A huge minority, I’d like to say, with that, but there are instances, clearly.

Lead 8: So I think just two brief points, then. Crystallising the duty as an expectation in the guidance, there is an expectation that children with a social worker would come to school. In your view, then, that wasn’t sufficient to bring about change –

Baroness Anne Longfield: No.

Lead 8: – in the number of children who were attending?

Baroness Anne Longfield: No, there was no roadmap to enforcing or encouraging that expectation or supporting that expectation. And there was no – whilst people were generally encouraged, as you can see from here, to support children to attend, there wasn’t any route to be able to hold anyone accountable for that.

There was data coming back which showed the areas where – you know, which showed data on attendance. So eventually, you could see where – which authorities children were living in were the least likely to attend, but, again, that wasn’t something that was followed up with the kind of rigour that I thought was necessary. Because it was a huge opportunity to be able to support these children, a huge benefit, which would have had such an impact on those vulnerable children’s lives during the pandemic, and it was an opportunity that was lost, in my view.

Lead 8: The children who were specifically mentioned in the criteria obviously, broadly speaking, were children with a social worker, and then there was a discretion left to schools and local authorities to deem children vulnerable. Did you think that that was a sensible approach, ie to provide that local discretion?

Baroness Anne Longfield: I thought the discretion was important. However, I still would have thrown the net wider in terms of the children who were included in the first place, and children with special educational needs definitely, I thought, needed to be part of that group.

Lead 8: And in terms of oversight of the use of that discretion, and specifically government oversight of that discretion and how it was being used, did you think that there was adequate scrutiny of whether or not local authorities and schools were trying to get children within that broader category to come in?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, from what I could see, from the action that was taken to remedy some of those very low attendance rates, even if the data was being collected and viewed, it didn’t lead to a change in terms of the policy around children attending, ie it might have been known, but it didn’t lead to any enhanced action from ministers or senior officials to support or require local authorities and others to support children into school –

Lead 8: And I think one of the things you point to in your statement was that, for example, there wasn’t any sort of target –

Baroness Anne Longfield: No.

Lead 8: – for schools or local authorities in terms of the number of children – (overspeaking) –

Baroness Anne Longfield: No, it was kind of quite – it was a – I think it was an expectation that happened in words. It wasn’t followed through with an informed plan of how it might be delivered. There wasn’t an understanding of what a successful policy around attendance might look like. I think it’s pretty obvious when it’s less than 10% that’s not a terribly high level of success. I think we would know that. But nor was there any plan or process in place to really ensure that those numbers were boosted.

Lead 8: I know that you left your office in February 2021, but by the time you left, had you made any assessment as to why the numbers of vulnerable children who attended school in the second set of school closures was higher than had been in the first?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Could you just repeat that.

Lead 8: Yes, of course.

Baroness Anne Longfield: Sorry, I just got slightly lost in the timescale then.

Lead 8: Jumping ahead to January 2021 and the second set of school closures, there’s some evidence that more vulnerable children attended school during that period.

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: I’m conscious that you left your office in February 2021.

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes.

Lead 8: Had you, though, been able to make any assessment – (overspeaking) –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes. So I think there’s a number of factors, partly the population had slightly got used to the pandemic and children had started to go back to school, and had had, in large, a successful September school term. The majority of children went back to school and I think enjoyed being there, and had done so successfully.

Also, parents had had many months where children had been at home, and for a lot of families, that was quite a stressful time and, you know, for the – for those families that were working hard on homeschooling, they would all tell you how difficult that could often be in part. And they knew that children had often really experienced very negative responses to the isolation and being away from their friends. So most families knew that their children would benefit from being back in school.

And there’s another – with, you know, the families that are the most vulnerable often have been the families who really needed to bring money into the household and needed to be able to work, as well. So I think there’s a whole range of combinations there which meant that more would likely attend at this point.

I think, in general, the population were much keener at that point, and less fearful for their children to be able to attend, and so too for vulnerable families.

Lead 8: I’m going to turn, then, to ask you about the regulatory framework around children aside school, particularly during the first lockdown. I think it follows from everything you’ve said, then, that the most vulnerable children were at home during the first lockdown.

Did you consider that there were – let me ask you an open question. What parts of the child protection framework were compensating for the fact that these children were at home, and not in school during the period?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, again, the guidance asked local authorities to provide, to ensure that their safeguarding responsibilities were delivered and that they adequately protected children from harm. So there was a clear expectation that the responsibilities that local authorities would have would continue, and that it would be local authorities’ responsibility still rather than central government.

However, I was of a clear view that during a period of emergency such as this, then the most vulnerable children needed enhanced support, and there needed to be greater levels of contact, especially seeing as they weren’t going into school, and that there needed to be face-to-face contact, as well. That needed to be maintained as much as possible.

So that was a view that I maintained throughout the whole period: that the greater the vulnerability, the greater interventions government needed to make at this time to ensure that those children were safe. And those were the arguments I made when the proposals in the Coronavirus Act around diluting regulations were made.

Lead 8: Can I just break that down a bit, please. So did you think that enhanced protection was required because, first of all, vulnerable children were at increased risk because they weren’t at school?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, and also, they weren’t in school, but they were locked down at home. Let’s remember that people were only allowed to go out for an hour of exercise a day, children and young people don’t necessarily think of time out of home as exercise, but nonetheless. So it wasn’t that they just – they weren’t in school, it was also that they were in a home environment which, for some children, would have been in itself, would have had dangers within it. We know that referrals of domestic violence rose by 50% during those first few weeks, and as time went on, we also saw that the number of non-accidental injuries, and instances of harm also increased by 27%.

There was a group of children that were – well, there were two groups of children that I was particularly concerned about: very young babies and teenagers and –

Lead 8: I’m just going to stop you because I am going to –

Baroness Anne Longfield: – we’ll come to that.

Lead 8: You’ve slightly jumped ahead, but as you’ve reached that point, let me ask you. Were you sure yourself that the risk to children was actually crystallising into harm being done to children at greater levels during the lockdown –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, I think –

Lead 8: – during the first set of school closures?

Baroness Anne Longfield: I think it was very clear from the first few weeks that there were serious issues around domestic abuse. The police were reporting significant increases, and women’s refuges were reporting 50% increases. And we know where there’s domestic abuse in the home, children will be involved in that as well.

Again, we know that there were families living in very poor accommodation, often cramped, often sharing bedrooms with siblings, instances of some families sleeping on rota, the parents sleeping at certain points of the day, children sharing a bedroom at other points in the day, and the reports were coming in of increases in non-accidental injury, I think by June. So that’s slightly further on in the lockdown but, you know, the instances of children living in a vulnerable household, that was where there was domestic violence and abuse already, that was where there was addiction already, and that was where there was serious mental health conditions, you know, that was a medical definition.

So these were things that were going to become even more heightened whilst people were locked down together, and there was actually, when I looked at babies, particularly around vulnerability with babies, 45,000 children under 1 were living in households with poor mental health, and there were also, you know, significant numbers living in households with domestic abuse, as well.

Lead 8: Yes, I have those figures when we come to small children and babies.

Baroness Anne Longfield: Thank you.

Lead 8: Were you also concerned, then, that there would be children who hadn’t come to the attention of social services, for example, because they hadn’t reached a threshold, but who might be at more risk during the pandemic, as well?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes. I mean, when we looked at those, you know, the 829,000 children living in families which I had already established, in my view, were invisible to the authorities, they were the ones which would remain invisible but were also carrying the risks of harm during lockdown.

And those numbers are backed up in data before the pandemic and after the pandemic. For instance, those children who enter the youth justice system, only one in six of those had been in touch within the authorities before. So, you know, this wasn’t – the evidence we were putting forward was being upheld every time anyone came into contact with a child. Again, those that were being referred to children’s services because of concerns about child criminal exploitation, again, very low numbers. Well, the ones that were referred were, in my view, the tip of the iceberg.

Lead 8: I’m going to move on, then, to some of the aspects of the regulatory regime that changed during the pandemic. I think that one of the first changes that was introduced was via the Adoption and Children (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2020; is that correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes.

Lead 8: And I think that it’s right that they came into force, I think it was around 17 April 2020; is that correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes.

Lead 8: And that you were emailed about them on 16 April; is that right?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, there’d been a short conversation with someone in my team from an official the day before, I think. But it was very much about informing.

Lead 8: All right. And I think these were regulations that were made without the requirement that 21 days pass –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes.

Lead 8: – during which they were laid down before they’d take effect?

Baroness Anne Longfield: They were quite rushed.

Lead 8: And in terms of the email that your office received on 16 April 2020, how did it describe those regulations?

Baroness Anne Longfield: It described them as necessary to ensure that the system around children was able to function during a period of the emergency, specifically looking around concerns around staff absence because of sickness. So it looked at how those requirements could be relaxed during that period.

Lead 8: I think this – obviously we’re not trying to test your memory. I think you’ve said that at paragraph 131 of your statement that your office received an email that referred to them as being “minor changes”. Is that –

Baroness Anne Longfield: It said minor changes, and that was also reflected in the impact assessment that they undertook. It was said to be minor changes that were of a temporary nature.

Lead 8: Had you been consulted about these changes or had they been even mentioned to you –

Baroness Anne Longfield: No they hadn’t.

Lead 8: – prior to 16 April?

Baroness Anne Longfield: No, they hadn’t.

Lead 8: And in terms of your overall assessment as to whether or not these were minor changes, first of all, it may be that this is too broad a question, but did those regulations make changes to a number of pieces of legislation that provided for certain standards of care, or requirements across children’s social care?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, there were 24 different changes which led to practice changes in terms of support for these very vulnerable children. And we actually produced a framework document which described what this meant in practice, because we were very aware that, you know, if ministers were looking at something, and describing it in legal terms, it’s not always clear what that will mean, in practice. So we produced a document that just listed what would happen in practice.

I mean, it’s fair to say, of the – you know, of the – clearly, this was a pandemic, things were moving fast, there were lots of things which you wouldn’t have considered before and that were of great concern throughout, but this was a moment where I was horrified that these changes were being proposed, because my starting point had always been that actually these children need additional help at this time rather than less.

Lead 8: So I think you’ve set out, and I won’t take you through it in your statement, the reasons why you didn’t consider those changes to be minor, and the Inquiry is obviously aware that there has been litigation about those changes as well –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Mm.

Lead 8: – or this legislation, and that it was regarded as unlawful because of failure to consult with you. But can I just ask you, had other parties been consulted about these regulations before 16 April?

Baroness Anne Longfield: It became apparent – I wasn’t aware of this, but it became apparent that there had been some discussion – whether that was fully fledged consultation, it was described as consultation – largely with local authorities and largely around the flexibilities required to be able to function. Which of course is important, but what there hadn’t been is any prior discussion with children’s rights organisations or indeed with myself, being the statutory person within that role.

Lead 8: And was an explanation offered as to why they had been consulted, but not you, about these changes?

Baroness Anne Longfield: There was no – there was no attempt at explanation, really, other than: we have to make sure that local authorities are able to deliver.

Which meant, for me, there hadn’t been a consideration on the impact – or enough consideration on the impact on children.

Lead 8: And I think it’s right that you regarded these changes as having made substantive changes to the standards of care provided –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: – to the – to children.

Baroness Anne Longfield: That’s right, these were wide ranging. They diluted a whole range of different measures and activities. One very obvious one was around the ability to do more work through screens, and clearly there’s a lot of difference from delivering such an intense function for a screen than there is through face-to-face, but also, a whole range of issues around assessments. And, again, EHCP plans, around timescales, around ability to operate, around – the safeguards around sign-off for some of the decisions. They were put together. They had, in my view, a hugely detrimental impact on the safeguards and support for the very vulnerable children that needed the protection the most.

I also felt they were quite unnecessary because actually local authorities, even before, but continued to say that they weren’t experiencing huge staff losses. In fact, in some of the answers I got back later on, I was told that it wasn’t a problem because they didn’t have staff shortages to the extent that they thought they might.

Lead 8: I’ll come back to the justification for them in just a second. I just wanted to ask you a broader question or –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes.

Lead 8: – I suppose, a question about understanding.

These changes had been framed as being minor. Did you draw any broader conclusions or did you have any broader concerns about the understanding that there was about the sorts of changes that were being made?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah, I mean, I think my conclusion was that there wasn’t an understanding about the level of risk that some of these children were living with, day in, day out. There wasn’t an understanding of what that meant in practice in their lives.

There wasn’t an understanding of the vulnerability of their situation in many ways, and let’s remember that babies are also part of this, and we know how vulnerable babies are when they rely on their carers completely.

So in the run-up to this, I had been presenting what I believe is very highly credible evidence on the high levels of vulnerability that was unseen in families, and explaining what that meant in as practical a way as possible to ensure that people understood, and were therefore able to respond to, but then when it got to this point, this, in my view, was a sweeping dilution of legislative protection at the absolute worst time for these vulnerable children.

Lead 8: And may I – I think we’re probably just about going to come to a break, but before we do, may I ask whether or not, in your view, that indicated a disconnect between an assessment made at a policy level or a government level, and the sorts of insight, for example, that practitioners might have into the broader vulnerability of children?

Baroness Anne Longfield: I think it reflected a huge disconnect but I also think it reflected an unwillingness to hear some of these things, because everyone who was working with those children, those families, was saying the same thing about those levels of vulnerability. The evidence that was being put forward was, in my view, very watertight, but also the level of resistance to these changes, and also the strength of the arguments being put forward was significant. So this was an intervention that I responded to over many conversations, over many letters. It was debated in Parliament, you know, there was a bank of evidence and view that this was the wrong thing to do, but it went ahead anyway.

Lead 8: I think what the government would now say is that those regulations weren’t used very much. Do you have a view as to whether or not that –

Baroness Anne Longfield: I don’t have the evidence to say they weren’t used. I know they were used in many ways. I think that, again, was the expectation: they would be a last resort, although that phrase wasn’t used, it was implied. But actually, I think, you know, they became – some of those became commonplace during that period of time, and use of screens is something that became the norm for some elements of child protection. We still see it. But they were, I think they were used. I haven’t the evidence that they weren’t used, and certainly they were in place for several months, and indeed, originally, it was intended that some would continue even for years.

Ms Dobbin: Thank you.

My Lady, is that a good point?

Lady Hallett: Certainly.

Just one question, finishing on this point, it was Department for Education, it was Secretary of State for Education who put these regulations?

Baroness Anne Longfield: It was.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

Baroness Anne Longfield: And it was largely the children’s minister within the department that I was talking to throughout this whole process, and making the case that she should change her mind.

Lady Hallett: Very well, we take our break now. I shall return at 11.30.

(11.15 am)

(A short break)

(11.30 am)

Lady Hallett: Ms Dobbin.

Ms Dobbin: Thank you.

Lady Longfield, before we leave the topic of these regulations can I just bring you back, please, to one of your contemporaneous documents , and that’s INQ000231402. If we can look at page 1, please.

I think it’s correct, is this a statement you issued on 30 April 2020 about these regulations?

Thank you.

And if we go to page 2, does this set out all of the concerns that you had, substantive concerns, I should say, that you had about the changes that had been made by the regulations?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, that’s right. I mean, importantly on page 1, I think I do recognise that we are in a pandemic and that people faced a lot of challenges, and I felt it was important to say that upfront. But listing there on the second page, I list out the range of changes and what would be required.

So there’s the issue around changes to social workers visiting children living in care, the review plans, children’s homes, and the important issue of enforcing deprivation of liberty, if they are showing symptoms of Covid, the independent panels –

Lead 8: Let me – sorry to interrupt you.

Baroness Anne Longfield: A whole range of things.

Lead 8: Let me just stop you and see if we can deal with this quite quickly, but just looking firstly at the first bullet point. So this related to children living in care or who are privately adopted. They should have been visited under the normal regime within one week when they’ve gone into care and every six weeks after that, but that was relaxed?

Baroness Anne Longfield: That’s right.

Lead 8: And it was replaced –

Baroness Anne Longfield: It then became, rather than a requirement, became “reasonably practical”. And it applies, as I said here, even if the visits are done by phone or video call. So clearly, if a child is vulnerable and at high risk, then visits, very regular visits, are very important to ensure and assess whether they’re being cared for. And this reduced that significantly, and again, “reasonably practical” is something that is up for interpretation.

Lady Hallett: Lady Longfield, sorry to interrupt. It’s just that I raised this issue during the break that I wanted more specifics about the criticisms you were making of the regulations. Now I have that summary, and apologies, I didn’t realise it existed in the papers. We don’t need to go through it, I now have the detail of the criticisms that you make, so I’m very grateful.

Baroness Anne Longfield: No, thank you.

Ms Dobbin: Forgive me, my Lady, it is in the statement as well.

Lady Hallett: It is my fault. I haven’t been through it sufficiently.

Ms Dobbin: Not at all, but I was just going to say on page 3, it might be important to highlight what you thought at the time, a concern that you had, and I am just going to ask if we could bring up the first paragraph, please, that – I think one of your concerns was that there was a different approach being applied here than was being applied to adult social care; is that correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, that’s right. And again, I was quite aware that the likelihood is that government wouldn’t revoke the regulations that I was – that’s what I was asking for. And I wanted to see them being strengthened with guidance to make it clear that it would only ever be a last resort and for as short a period of time as possible, ie, absolute emergency. Which would have had an impact on how they were used, but that wasn’t the case.

Lead 8: And I think that what you’ve actually set out here was:

“Similar protections must be introduced for children as those set out in adults when changes to the Care Act were introduced by the Coronavirus Act. This would mean that Local Authorities can only relax their adherence to duties if they can show that their workforce has been significantly depleted …”

Baroness Anne Longfield: That’s right.

Lead 8: So is that a distinction, then, that you were –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, it occurred to me that children were being given less status and less priority, that their needs were being overlooked in this case again, with some of the language about these being minor changes, and that they weren’t – there wasn’t the requirement for any changes to be recorded and evidenced to the department or to Ofsted, and those were all felt to be really necessary, really, to reinforce the message that this should be an absolute last resort rather than a slide towards normal practice during a difficult time.

Lead 8: In your evidence before the adjournment you were explaining about changes being made so that children were seen remotely in some circumstances. The position, though, as regards the provision of general social work was different, I think. That was changed by way of guidance; is that correct? So, in terms of social workers, the routine or the statutory visits that they would have?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, but I think this came as part of a package of relaxation, if you like.

Lead 8: Yes.

Baroness Anne Longfield: And, of course, a lot of us moved on to remote working through screens. It became quite normal. But when you’re making very important decisions about children’s safety, you also need to talk to the child, and you need to be able to make any decisions informed by the whole context of the child’s life, including the house, including food there, including cleanliness, and you have, therefore, to be there. And whilst, you know, for most parents this wouldn’t be the case, there were some instances of some parents who took that opportunity to use and exploit that dilution, of a way of keeping their child out of view.

Lead 8: I’m going to come to that. I’m going to just touch on the guidance, if I can, first, and your assessment as to it.

And this is at INQ000519580.

So this is guidance that was published on 3 April 2020. And if we could go, please, to page 3 and the paragraph under “Principles”. So this set out:

“Local authorities and local safeguarding partners have specific duties under legislation and the statutory guidance concerning support for families and the welfare and protection of children. We know that local authorities and local safeguarding partners will want to continue to meet their statutory duties as far as they can, but there will be times in the current circumstances when this is not possible.”

Did you understand from this guidance what regulations that was actually referring to at that point? Or whether it was specific to any regulations, or did you think this was a general statement?

Baroness Anne Longfield: I took this to be a general statement. It was reflected in some of the language that was in some of the letters that I received from ministers which made it clear that local authorities and their safeguarding partners would still be held responsible for their safeguarding responsibilities, and the language there about “local safeguarding partners will want to continue to meet their statutory duties”, but then, importantly, “as far as they can” – of course, “as far as they can”, within a relaxed framework, starts to open up all sorts of possibilities of what could happen in practice.

Lead 8: All right. If we could just go, then, to page 5 and this was guidance, as we can see, about whether or not social workers should change how they visit children and families, and if we could just hone in on that, please. It sets out:

“We expect local authorities and social workers to make judgements about visiting which balance …”

And it sets out the various risks. And then goes on to say:

“Social workers and their managers are best placed to make professional judgements of risk in each case …”

Did you think – was that a sensible approach to provide a broad framework in those terms, and then to say it’s a matter of local authorities to come to decisions based on discretion?

Baroness Anne Longfield: I would have preferred a much greater emphasis from central government about the absolute necessity for local authorities and social workers to continue their visits, to prioritise vulnerable children, and to ensure that they looked at alternatives. Because one of the things within the impact assessment from the DfE was that it clearly said no alternative solutions were considered.

So I think this showed a very blunt instrument. I think it allowed – it slightly passed the buck in terms of responsibility. Of course it was the local authority’s responsibility but, you know, government is responsible for the welfare of children, and it allowed that to, I think, become much more of a potential local decision about balancing considerations.

And let’s remember that, you know, the social care system was pretty – under a lot of pressure even before Covid. So we know that there’s been, you know, pressure on the workforce, there’s been pressure on recruitment. So it wasn’t a highly resilient sector, if you like, already. So some of those decisions which were – which could have been made very locally might have been made by those who didn’t have huge experience or didn’t have the back-up supervision to make them.

There were lots of potential for things to go wrong with this, in my view, and ones that we shouldn’t have tolerated, given the vulnerability of the children and the seriousness of the pandemic.

Lead 8: If we just look at the paragraph below it says:

“Social workers and their managers are best placed” –

Sorry, it’s the paragraph below that again. It says:

“We recognise there are circumstances where it will be necessary for social workers and other staff to visit children in person. Where face-to-face work is deemed necessary, practitioners should take account of Public Health England …”

Did you read that or interpret that as an assumption that visits would be remote unless it was necessary to see the child?

Baroness Anne Longfield: I think it puts the emphasis on the exception with visits. Now, I mean, I’d want to say there was fantastic work going on with social workers so this is in no way a criticism, and they delivered brilliant support. But I think this is too loose and I think it should have started with the expectation is that face-to-face visits take place. It may on occasions have to be through a screen, but I think yes, the wrong emphasis, and therefore not ensure that the level of scrutiny is absolutely delivered.

Lead 8: In the next paragraph it says – it has the heading:

“Do children’s social care staff need to use personal protective equipment for coronavirus?”

And then it sets out:

“Where social workers and other staff are undertaking home visits, PPE is not required unless the people visited are symptomatic of … COVID-19 or have a confirmed diagnosis of … COVID-19. Where … COVID-19 is suspected or confirmed, those undertaking the visits should use PPE …”

Was that useful guidance to social workers?

Baroness Anne Longfield: I mean, I maintained throughout that we should prioritise our social work staff, and indeed our teachers for PPE, actually, to ensure that they have the confidence they need. So if it was a lack of PPE that meant that decisions were made not to visit children at home then, you know, clearly there was something that needed to be done to ensure they had the confidence to do so and if PPE was that, then that should have been part of that action plan.

Lead 8: How were social – I mean, some social work visits are not with notice, are they?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Sorry, can you repeat that?

Lead 8: Some social work visits take place without notice, don’t they?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, they will.

Lead 8: And – sorry to cut across you. In what circumstances are they normally done without notice?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, they might be done if there was a particular concern about the immediate welfare of a child, for instance, but that would have to be a face-to-face visit in any case. So I would have been very surprised if that hadn’t taken place.

Lead 8: And how would a social worker know, then, in those circumstances that people had symptoms of Covid-19 or – (overspeaking) –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, of course, no, you wouldn’t and, of course, that was fast-changing as well. And again, whilst this was by no means many families, there were some families there they would exploit that for – to ensure that they didn’t get a visit from a social worker, if they were looking to stay out of the limelight.

Lead 8: All right. So can I just ask you this, then: standing back from guidance and what you understand to have taken place on the ground, were you concerned that the changes that were made to social work and the use of remote visits were having an impact on children’s protection?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, completely. I mean, I think what we saw was that many of the safeguards and processes that were there to ensure that children got the best possible support they could, including where they were placed, including some of their timings for their assessments and the like, were taken away. We saw that screens were much – came into much greater use during that time, and this was against a period, as well, where non-accidental harm was also increasing.

Now, whilst some of the serious case reviews from some of the more – some of the tragic cases where children died during that period don’t put all the blame down to these regulations of the pandemic by any means, they say quite clearly that there were systemic changes – systemic issues and problems in the social care system long before the pandemic, they nearly all say that the pandemic and the practice during the pandemic exacerbated some of those problems in the system, and contributed.

Lead 8: I’m going to come to some of the specifics of that just very shortly. You point out in your evidence that there was a 31% drop in referrals made by schools in England or children’s social care between pre-Covid, so 2019 to 2020, and 2021, during the period of the two lockdowns. In your view, does that reflect that less children were coming to attention because there was less harm, or is there another explanation for that?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Oh, absolutely that there wasn’t less harm. I mean, all the indicators were that the harm was increasing, the figures I talked around with domestic abuse and the like, but the people – the oversight wasn’t there. The protective factor of school wasn’t there, and these – you know, the instances and cases weren’t being picked up. It’s what, you know, a lot of people warned would happen, and it was clear to see that they dropped off almost entirely at various parts of the lockdown.

Lead 8: So, in other words, comfort should not be taken from those statistics?

Baroness Anne Longfield: No, I think there was a hopeful aspect of some of the – with some, and I’m not saying within government necessarily here, that actually, you know, children aren’t being referred so maybe it’s all okay. But actually, what – what all of those that were coming into contact with children – let’s remember, lots of teachers and staff in schools were going out and meeting families – they all expected a huge surge in referrals once children came back into school. And it took a little time but it did happen.

Lead 8: Do you mean in terms of referrals did recover at points during the pandemic?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, that these – you know, the harm was not visible because children weren’t in places that others could see it, but that it remained. I would argue it was heightened, and when children did come up back into school then a lot of those referrals did take place.

Actually, the referrals to mental health support did increase during this period, and we find that, you know, mental health charities, who – mental health support, which was, you know, already struggling before the pandemic, continued to buckle under the level of demand for help.

Lead 8: In your statement you go on to set out – and this is at paragraph 142 if you need the reference – the increases, for example, in children in need from 2018 to 2024 – so bringing the position right up to date –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Mm.

Lead 8: – increases in the number of children looked after as well up, to 2024, and the number of children in secure homes and children’s homes having increased as well, I think by 31%; is that correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: That’s right. The statistics, the data that we produced in the summer, is completely conclusive on the increase in virtually every indicator of vulnerability that we found from pre-Covid to today. And without – if I may, without blasting you with statistics, you’ll have heard poverty now at – of 4.5 million, but just to say a few, just to give the impression of what – how much this has gone up: persistent absence from school, doubled; severe absence from school, trebled; suspensions up 18%; alternative prevention, 82%; elective home education, 80%; special educational needs, 34%; in care, 11%; those with education healthcare plans up 90%; autism referrals up 300%; mental health now twice as prevalent than 2017; and 50% increase in children who have been referred to social services because of child criminal exploitation.

I say all of those because when you see all of those put together there is clearly something going on. These are all going in the wrong direction. There are lots of areas of policy now which are seeking to meet these needs, but they’re of such a scale that it’s a major – you know, it’s a major barrier to reform because there are so many children now that need help.

Lead 8: You may not be surprised that I’m going to ask you this, but do you see a line from the pandemic through to those statistics?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes. If you look at any one of them, and I’ve not got the graphs here for you, but if you look at any one of them, you will see the graph shoot up either during or just past the pandemic. So for instance, mental health was at one in ten children, and with a suspected mental health condition – so this is quite a bar in itself to get to – in 2017. By 2020, it was one in six, July that year. Now, it’s one in five. And for older teenagers, one in four, with a suspected mental health condition.

And the support service around that obviously has huge stresses on it to respond, and was not responding well, even before the pandemic. Only 20% of children were being seen within four weeks. But also, it was also a postcode lottery. A lot of this – if you dive into this data, you’ll see that around the country there’s a patchwork of responses. Some areas do it – respond very well. For the mental health, as an instance before the pandemic, overall, 30% – in 30% of areas the cases were closed before children got to the point of having any treatment. In one area, it was 48%.

So, you know, there’s a lot lottery here for children, whether they – once they have a referral, how long it’s going to take but if they’re going to get any help at all.

Now, there are measures that have been put in place, mental health teams in schools for instance, that will start to address that, but the fact of the matter remains: the longer children stayed out of school, and of course there was that moment where schools remained shut and pubs and restaurants and zoos and theme parks opened, the deeper the risk to their mental health wellbeing and indeed their education remained.

Lead 8: Thank you. Lady Longfield, may I just ask you, coming back to some of the figures on social care, which is a separate – I know it’s a related issue to mental health but a separate issue, and I don’t wish to be simplistic about this in any way, but again, is there a line that can be drawn between the pandemic and the elevated figures to which you’ve referred in your witness statement?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, completely. There wasn’t just the risk of harm to children directly, and, you know, remembering all of these children were at least risk of the virus itself, but the vast majority of children were coming into care because of the adversities their families are facing. We know that many families faced huge financial pressures during the pandemic and beyond. We know that poverty rates were rising, we know that the time out of school and without support meant that for children who had special educational needs were often not getting the help they need or indeed were able to go back to school as swiftly as they might.

So in any one of these, including children’s social care, 11% increase over that period of time. You will see that rise following the pandemic.

And of course what it means – what it needs is a huge move towards intervening earlier, because the cost of crisis for children, but also for the economy, is huge, which is why everything must be about supporting children to thrive rather than trying to – rather than leaving them to fall into crisis, important though that specialist support, and vital though that specialist support is at that point.

Lead 8: Thank you. I just want to come back, if I may, to the serious case reviews that took place. I’m not going to go into any of the detail of those cases. I just wanted to ask you, please, about some of the findings and I’ll read it to you rather than asking you to go to a serious case review, but there was a safeguarding panel report into the cases of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes and Star Hobson.

Lady Hallett: I don’t know if you can get closer to the microphone, it’s my hearing – as I get older, my – and you have a soft voice.

Ms Dobbin: I’m also slightly small – or short, I should say, so I can’t – I might get a box to stand on and that might help. I’ll try and keep my voice up.

One of the findings that was referred to set this out, and this is in the Safeguarding Report:

“In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the local authority put critical incident arrangements in place from March 2020. These were at an early stage of implementation in April 2020 when concerns about Arthur were notified to the MASH [the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub].

“Children’s social care made a number of important adaptations for Covid-safe practice. Whilst responsiveness to referrals was maintained, the impact of these modifications led to fragmented management oversight of the response to individual referrals, and a lack of clarity about case-holding accountability. These aspects had some impact on the effectiveness of the response to concerns …”

And it goes on to talk about concerns about Arthur that I won’t read out.

Could you help the Inquiry to understand a bit more about what that actually means in real life terms, and what the fragmentation is that was being referred to there?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, as I said, often, you know, there was – social care teams were absolutely stretched to their sinews. There were huge pressures in terms of recruitment. Sometimes there were young, inexperienced social workers who were carrying loads and cases that were more complicated than they should. Sometimes, because of pressures, there wouldn’t be the supervision. And it was generally described by the person who had led a national review on children’s social care being a towering – a tower of Jenga held together by Sellotape.

So it wasn’t a good place if – before in many ways, and those systemic gaps would have been there beforehand but then what happened with Covid and the regulations, dilution of regulations would have exacerbated some of this was, of course, you know, there wasn’t always a clarity about which families would be visited direct or not. There was change in practice in that.

Some of if it, as I’ve said, was through screens, and, you know, families, if they wanted to, could quite quickly see how they could hold the interview in a very tidy, clean room, and the rest of the house might not be the same. The fridge might be full, especially. They wouldn’t have been often an – well, there wouldn’t have been an opportunity to talk to the child without the parent being there. There wouldn’t have been access to the family members and the family members wouldn’t have had a closer route in, so if a family was raising concerns, that might have not been as possible to do, and then there was this sense that, you know, actually, it was an emergency, everything couldn’t be done, you know, there were limits to what could be done, potentially.

I mean, social workers and social work teams did amazing things during this period, but the framework they were operating in was stretched before and remained stretched. I would have liked additional resource and support to have been put into those social work teams during the pandemic to enable them to get more resources, I’d like it to be looked at more creatively at how we could bring in potentially retired social workers and leaders within the team. There was a whole range of different ways that we could have gone around ensuring that support remained at the levels needed rather than just leave it to the discussion and discretion of local teams.

Lead 8: I think you mentioned a little while ago that there weren’t the levels of vacancies in social services that perhaps were expected, although I’m sure that picture – (overspeaking) –

Baroness Anne Longfield: There weren’t the staff shortages.

Lead 8: Right.

Baroness Anne Longfield: So it was an expectation, I think probably most public services got a notification that they should plan for levels of absence at, from memory I’m thinking 40%. I may be slightly wrong on that. But that clearly is a big dent in your workforce, and I imagine that the decisions originally were around some of those things. It became clear that in most areas there weren’t those levels of absence from work, and there weren’t gaps in the social work teams to that extent.

Lead 8: So your suggestion of more creativity being needed in a really practical sense, in bringing in retired social workers, are you saying that it’s actually experience that would help in these circumstances, rather than manpower? Or is it –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, both, of course, but clearly your most experienced staff are going to be even more vital during an emergency. So to have people on hand who can actually help make those strategic discussion and decisions and offer that guidance would have been really valuable.

I guess, for me, it comes down to, do you try to make good of a difficult situation by diluting things or do you try to make good by actually enhancing the investment, effort, resources in there? And I’ve said many times over the last five years that there wasn’t the kind of Nightingale moment that hospitals got in schools.

You know, so many things could have been done differently around keeping schools open, and they weren’t. Similarly with children’s social care, it moved straight to an outcome which was about diluting responsibilities, whereas actually there could have been that creative effort, within the realm – you know, within safeguards and the framework needed to ensure that children not only didn’t get less support, they actually got more.

Lead 8: I’m going to touch very briefly on another area that changed about which I think you had concerns, and that was the change that was made to education, health and care plans for those children with those elevated needs, as we’ve said. That duty changed from an absolute duty under section 42 to a duty of reasonable endeavours; is that correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, that’s right. And –

Lead 8: Sorry, I was just going to ask, that was also of concern to you, and I think a change that you also questioned whether or not it was necessary; is that correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, I mean, the bar to get education and health plan is high. If children are at the point of needing a plan, they and their parents have probably been trying to get support for an awful long time. The range of support available outside that plan at the time was relatively limited. So it left very vulnerable children exposed without the help they need, and that meant that those that were going through that process didn’t have any kind of a surety that they would receive the plan that they needed but also those that needed to be referred and assessed weren’t going to get the help they needed.

Lead 8: I think we’ll see – I don’t think I need to take you to this correspondence, I think I can take a shortcut to this point. You did write to the children’s minister about these changes that had been made, and you may recall this, she wrote back to say that the problem was that children who were on – who were subject to these plans weren’t in school –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: – and that made it, therefore, difficult to provide –

Baroness Anne Longfield: That their needs couldn’t be met anyway, I think was kind of the wording.

Lead 8: Yes. Did you have concern that that was the rationale –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, I – yeah, I mean, at that point I thought we’re in a bit of a doom loop of fatalism: we can’t help the children because we can’t get them – they’re not going to be in school, they’re not in school because we haven’t helped them get there.

So, you know, all of those things would have been possible with the determination to make it happen. It’s that determination and will that I think was missing, along with that creative energy needed to make this a priority. But it seemed that, you know, the solution that was put forward was a kind of administrative solution that didn’t have the ambition needed for those children, nor did it reflect the clear evidence of the vulnerability of those children in their context.

Lead 8: I’m going to move to a completely different point, if I may, Lady Longfield. One of the issues that you raised throughout the pandemic, and it’s well documented in the evidence that the Inquiry has, is your concerns about where children’s interests fitted into the decision making. And I think you reached a point, didn’t you, where you wrote to Professor Vallance or Sir Vallance, as I think he is now –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes.

Lead 8: – and to Professor Sir Chris Whitty as well, setting out your concerns.

I’m going to jump to that if I may, and that’s at INQ000588094.

Baroness Anne Longfield: We’re in June now.

Lead 8: Yes. So I think we can see that before this point you had raised –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes.

Lead 8: – questions about where children fitted in. And I think if we just scroll, please, through this letter, you set out, and it’s the third paragraph, “Despite this”, and you set out number of steps that were affecting children. So the closure of schools –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah, that’s right.

Lead 8: – closure of sports and summer play, closure of youth clubs, isolation of children from 7-14 days when they arrived at a children’s home?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: Children in hospital, youth custody, children’s home, and foster care being denied visits. And then the confinement of children in their cells for over 20 hours a day.

And I think if we can scroll down, please, thank you, and carry on, you say to Sir Patrick Vallance that you appreciated that these weren’t his decisions –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Mm.

Lead 8: – but that you understood in effect that they were being informed by scientific advice; correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Mm.

Lead 8: And then you set out three questions that you wanted to – you were asking about what considerations SAGE gave to children whenever it arrived at the advice that it was providing; is that correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: That’s right.

Lead 8: And if we could go to the reply, please, at INQ000239696.

You have a reply. In fact it’s from Professor Sir Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance, where they –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, a very swift reply, actually.

Lead 8: Yes, from two very busy people.

So if we just scroll down that, we can see, first of all, they set out in the first paragraph they explain that there was a Children’s Task and Finish work group.

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes.

Lead 8: So, in other words, there was a group of individuals who were providing advice –

Baroness Anne Longfield: That’s right.

Lead 8: – that was specific to children.

And then in relation to your first question, they explained that SAGE had considered the difference between adults and children and had given some recent advice.

Baroness Anne Longfield: That’s right.

Lead 8: But I think saying that the position wasn’t quite so clear when it came to transmission about children between 14 and 18.

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: And then if we could just scroll down, I think explaining the fact that when it came to schools, it was – there were issues around schools as well that make the issue of transmission slightly more complex; correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: And then if we could carry on, please. It says:

“Whether SAGE has explored the potential for differential social distancing requirements for adults and children …”

And it set out, I think, in summary: no, that hadn’t been given consideration.

Baroness Anne Longfield: That’s right.

Lead 8: Just that they had considered families as a group.

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: Rather than children specifically.

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: And then whether or not they were recommending that children were treated in the same way.

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: But I think they go on to explain that in schools they just assumed that social distancing wouldn’t be in place. Correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: So can I ask you some questions about that?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Of course.

Lead 8: You were worried that children weren’t being given adequate consideration in the decision-making process?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Lead 8: SAGE is effectively a body of scientific advisers who provide advice to government. Did you come to any conclusion as to whether or not the concerns you had, which were the societal concerns, whether that was actually for SAGE or whether or not these were considerations that fitted into another part of the decision-making process?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, it was clear to me that they hadn’t been asked to do this by government because I think if they’d have been asked to look at this question, they would have responded. And it was me asking the question, and the answer clearly, as you say, is: no, we haven’t done that.

If you remember, lots – you know, the decisions were made, there was lots of comments on “following the evidence”. It was clear that, as you say, with younger children, there was less likelihood of infection or transmission, so, for me, that was an argument why primary schools should open much earlier in this country, which is something they did in many European countries, way back into April, beginning of May.

But I think this fits in with a wider aspect of government’s response, which is the attitude and priority given to children, or the attitude to looking at issues which impacted on children really started from a starting point of what do we do for adults? So you saw it in the criminal justice system, you see it in terms of social distancing. You know, in many different aspects it was: let’s define – let’s decide what we do about social distancing for people, and then – and what the practice is, and then let’s not look at anything different for children.

And, you know, when you – when we looked at children who are in custody, they were being kept in their rooms for 22, 23 hours a day, even though the level – the likelihood of infection was much lower. With this, clearly it hadn’t been something which had been looked at, and this, for me, had a direct relevance in September when the rule of six came about.

Lead 8: Yes. And I think that’s at a point where you were calling for children to be exempted from the rule of six; is that correct?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes. You know, these are children who had been isolated, cooped up at home for many, many months. We knew that their emotional and mental health was suffering as well as their wider health. They weren’t outdoors playing. And whilst the – there’d been an hour for exercise, as I said before, children don’t generally, you know, exercise for an hour. They play with each other.

So other countries, Scotland and Wales, exempted children under 12 from that rule of six, partly to allow them to go out to play with each other, partly so they could see, you know, wider groups of their families, grandparents and the like. And that was seen to be a no-cost, very empathetic response, which would really give children a bit of a break, if you like, in every sense.

And it was seen as too difficult. The decision was made not to do this in this country. So children were restricted for a much longer period of time.

Lead 8: So you did think there was greater scope for the government to seek more scientific advice about children; is that right?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Oh, I think there should have been, as part of – I mean, clearly I’m saying that I don’t think there was an adequate plan to support children or for children during the Covid pandemic. And as part of that plan, not only would you have the good data, you would also make sure that you looked at every different lever you could to bring about an enhanced situation for kids. And that would have been one where you’d have relaxed those requirements and, at low health risks and very low cost, if any at all, allowed children to socialise with their friends, get contact, get some exercise, and start to rebuild what had been a very difficult few months.

Lead 8: I’m just focusing at the minute just on the structures for decision making and SAGE provides scientific advice. You were concerned about societal, broader societal consequences for children: exposure to abuse, effects on their education. So those have to be weighed in the decision making –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Of course.

Lead 8: – I think you’re saying somewhere. Were – within government, were you satisfied that that voice or those considerations were being articulated by someone or some part of government when the most significant decisions were being made?

Baroness Anne Longfield: No, I wasn’t. I felt that there wasn’t anyone at the senior – at senior level that took responsibility for having – for measuring and assessing those impacts. There was no one in the decision-making quad or in the cabinet table that were looking particularly at children’s best interests. The nearest was the education secretary who, I believe, wasn’t involved in many of these decisions. So children had no voice within it, which is what I believe led to a series of confused responses to children’s needs, but also whilst they, on occasion seemed to come into view, on many, many occasions they weren’t and came behind in the queue to pubs, shops, theme parks, but also adults throughout.

Lead 8: Do you accept that, for example, within the Department for Education there are many senior officials with expertise in children’s lives in how schools work, the sorts of risks that, you know, to children that you would be familiar with?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, I think that within the department there are officials with access to good data, with responsibilities around some of those aspects, but there was often not seen to be the political will or agency to be able to make these decisions. I talked in my submission about a time where there was an impasse in schools opening where the department said that they weren’t allowed to open because Public Health England wouldn’t let them. And when I spoke directly to the CEO of Public Health England, he was aghast that this might be the case, and described a set of guidance which provided a framework, but enabled individual departments to make that decision.

So I ended up with a brokerage role to bring those two together, to come to a better place, but also to introduce some urgency and momentum behind it. But I think it’s very clear that throughout the process that mistakes were made, children were overlooked, and there were mistakes and decisions that went against children’s best interests.

Lead 8: I want to just come to a linked issue, please, and this goes to paragraph 20(d) of your statement. And it refers to a point in time, I think, when you called for government and unions to stop squabbling about the reopening of schools. Can you just explain what your concern was as to who was squabbling and what the impediment was at that point in time to these decisions being made?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, it comes – yeah, it comes on the back of the conversation at the same time with Public Health England about who was telling who that things couldn’t happen. And my worry was there was an impasse, and that there wasn’t a momentum from government to break that impasse. There was the potential to have more socialising, more social activity, in the community. So the decision then could have been that schools could reopen from the beginning of June, but instead, they remained closed and as I said, other elements and other sectors – it happened, bizarrely, that children were often with their parents on some of those shopping trips but nonetheless they weren’t in schools.

But the impasse was allowed to happen. In my view, unions were and local authorities were working hard to get solutions, and I was working alongside several of the union leaders in this. There wasn’t a good, trusted relationship, I don’t think, with government, or from either side, and I think that came, from some cases, way before the pandemic.

But in my view it was the government’s responsibility to break through that impasse and to find a solution that meant that children can return to school as swiftly as possible, schools being the last to close and the first to open, was the mantra throughout. And the Prime Minister by that point had started to talk about that mantra too. But it wasn’t followed through with action.

So in my view, there were things that could have been done differently about the physicality of the buildings which could have made it safe for children and for staff. There were things that could have been done about some of the timing, about PPE, about vaccinations, as we moved on, that would have really reassured but ensured importantly, at the end of the day, that children were able to get out of the lockdown and into the school environment and I don’t think that that leadership or determination was in place.

Lead 8: I’m just going to touch again, this is coming to the end of the sort of decision-making framework. In your view and from your experience at the time, is the vehicle of an equality impact assessment adequate for taking children’s rights into consideration when it comes to significant decisions?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, clearly it was, you know, it was completed and has its role but it wasn’t enough to mitigate the avoidable mistakes that were made.

Children’s right impact assessments are crucial and in Wales and in Scotland we saw much more prevalence of their usage, as indeed you saw much greater engagement, especially in Wales, with the Children’s Commissioner, a much more collaborative approach. But if there had have been a thorough children’s right impact assessment across all of the aspects of the strategy which, in my view, was lacking but should have been there, for children and for vulnerable children within that, across the pandemic, then that would have been an ability to be able to consider those vulnerable children, to ensure that the impacts were proportionate, and ensuring that the measures that were put into place didn’t put any children at greater risk than they were, and in fact that those risks were ameliorated.

That was a huge gap in the machinery of government that should have been there, and in my view should be there in the future. But although there were occasional impact assessments, they didn’t have the status or the depth or weren’t given the importance by ministers and government leaders that would mean that they would have the teeth to ensure that the resources followed.

Lead 8: Just almost coming full circle, whenever the second decision or the announcement was made on 4 January in England that schools would again close to most children, had you been consulted about that decision prior to it being made?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, I think that was all very rushed and chaotic. So there was very little time for any consultation, because I think decisions were being made at the very last minute for that. No, there hadn’t been a consultation. I’d been very clear that I thought that there’d been, broadly, success in children returning to school over the September months. Children were benefiting from that and recovering, even though they didn’t have the kind of resources in the recovery programme that I really sincerely think they believed. But that had gone relatively smoothly.

When it got to January and the close, I thought that was avoidable, with better planning. The Institute for Government were clear that one of the biggest mistakes that government had was that they didn’t use that period over the summer to prepare for a future lockdown. They didn’t do that in any way.

Online education was slightly more developed because there’d been some lessons learnt during the first half but for most parents they were aghast that their children would yet again be out of school, and most stayed out of school for those two months.

So I wasn’t consulted.

I put forward alternatives, roadmaps and the like, and asked the Prime Minister to take a lead in making sure that children’s best interests were taken into account. But at that point I think that, yeah, the – it was a very reactive situation and things were being – government was making decisions very swiftly on the hoof.

Ms Dobbin: My Lady, there was one question from a Core Participant.

Lady Hallett: Well, we’re running out of time, I’m afraid, Ms Dobbin. I’ve made it plain that we’re very tight for time today so I have to complete this witness’s evidence by 12.50.

Ms Dobbin: Yes.

My Lady, I will let the Core Participants then ask their questions.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

Ms Iengar.

Questions From Ms Iengar

Ms Iengar: I ask questions on behalf of Long Covid Kids and Long Covid Kids Scotland.

In Module 2 you gave evidence that you have had conversations with families suffering from Long Covid and you acknowledged that Long Covid is, and I quote, “very real, it’s a reality for families and needs to be much more part of not only the debate but also policy-making decisions.”

Why, Baroness Longfield, when you recognise the impact of Long Covid, did the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, that’s both you and your successor, take no steps to support or advocate for children and young people with Long Covid?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, obviously I can’t speak for my successor in this but I think from my point of view I left the office at the end of February in 2021, which was around the time where I was becoming much more aware of the condition of Long Covid. So I held a number of conversations with groups of families and young people themselves, and sought to include those discussions within the wider kind of advice I was giving about long term. But for me, that came towards the end of my term, and so at that point I was looking at ways that we could build back from Covid, and learn the lessons from Covid, and this was the group’s – so they’re vital of importance – were just starting to gather their evidence at that point.

Ms Iengar: Very quick follow-up, if I may, my Lady. You said this morning that the children were at the least risk of the virus itself, but this is, of course, not correct as you acknowledged in Module 2. There are thousands of children and families in the UK for whom Long Covid is very real, to use your words. Do you agree, and I think you do, from the answer to question 1, that advocacy for the interests of the group of newly disabled children should – must evidently form a priority for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, the Children’s Commissioner makes their own decisions about what they see as a priority. What I say in broader terms, then those children who are suffering from the impact of Long Covid clearly have health needs and support needs that should be considered as a priority. And when we’re looking about – looking at how we follow up, given the whole plethora of different groups that have increased in vulnerability, they need to be part of those groups and they need to be a priority in policymaking going forward.

Ms Iengar: Thank you, Baroness.

My Lady.

Lady Hallett: Mr Twomey, he’s over that way. Can you see him?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, hello.

Questions From Mr Twomey KC

Mr Twomey: Lady Longfield, on behalf of Article 39, your primary children’s rights recommendation is for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to be fully made part of domestic law. What are the likely tangible benefits for children of the incorporation of the UNCRC in the event of another pandemic?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yes, I mean, I think it’s very important to have that certainty that the incorporation of UNCRC would bring to children’s rights in this country. I think what we saw was that the pandemic gave – was one of the biggest tests, if you like, to how prepared as a country we were for an emergency of this kind for children, and I think in many, many ways we failed that.

What incorporation would do and make it very clear that the commitment to children and children’s rights, was a core consideration, was a core element of our legal system in this country, then backed up by impact assessments, we would be making it absolutely crystal clear that we took these issues very seriously. It would mean that we’d be asking people to uphold a greater importance to children’s rights, and it would be seen, rightly, as part of domestic law in this country.

Mr Twomey: I’m grateful. Thank you.

Lady Hallett: Thank you, Mr Twomey.

Mr Broach, who is also over there.

Questions From Mr Broach KC

Mr Broach: Thank you, my Lady.

Lady Longfield, I had three questions to ask, but two have been asked and answered, so I shall only ask one.

So, Lady Longfield, from your experience of engaging with the UK Government during the pandemic, how easy was it to find the relevant person to discuss issues concerning children outside of schools? For example, issues concerning children being allowed to play or safeguarding concerns?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, it was virtually impossible. And impossible before the pandemic, but also during it. There was no lead for anyone looking at issues around children’s play. Clearly if you’re looking at specific health issues, then you know that there’s a Secretary of State for Health, but no one in the round took responsibility for children’s best interests.

My view, and I’ve advocated this for some time, is that there should be representation at the cabinet table for – with a specific responsibility for children, someone that can advocate for children. Not for the institutions around children, not for schools, not for hospitals, and the like, but actually for children.

And I think that, you know, what that brings you to is of the machinery of government that is ill suited to the lives of children and makes it too easy for children to be overlooked. And there were avoidable mistakes that happened at the time. And I do believe that as a country that we – and the Prime Minister – should, at the end of this Inquiry, offer an apology to the children for the experience they had. And with that, a commitment that it should never happen again. And with that, a promise that children’s rights and children’s best interests should be enshrined at the heart of our government and our society more generally.

Mr Broach: Thank you, Lady Longfield.

Thank you, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Thank you, Mr Broach, and apologies to you and apologies to Ms Beattie, I took you out of turn.

Mr Broach: Not at all.

Lady Hallett: I’m sorry. Right, back to Ms Beattie. Ms Beattie is there.

Questions From Ms Beattie

Ms Beattie: Thank you my Lady.

Lady Longfield, I ask questions on behalf of national Disabled People’s Organisations.

You’ve covered with Ms Dobbin KC local authorities’ very important safeguarding and child protection responsibilities and duties, and Ms Dobbin took you to the 3 April 2020 guidance for local authorities on children’s social care. In your statement you say that the guidance focused disproportionately on those responsibilities and that child protection role and did not provide adequate guidance on the minimum expectations in relation to local authorities’ broader statutory duties to help and support children and their families where child in need plans are in place that might relate, for example, to a disabled child.

Did the guidance’s focus on safeguarding and child protection, to the exclusion of those broader duties, in your view – those broader duties which cover help and support for children and their families – create a risk that those broader duties of local authorities would be overlooked?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, I think they did – there was a risk with that. And I’ve already said that I thought that, even within the safeguarding realm, that the guidance wasn’t adequate.

What was very clear to me throughout, and partly through discussions with families and young people themselves, was that the pandemic was very difficult for families with disabled children. A lot of the support that they would normally receive suddenly disappeared. They would have had much more pressure in terms of their own situation at home, and I think that local authorities, given that they were already struggling to kind of meet the needs in terms of safeguarding, would have found it very difficult to meet some of those children and families’ needs without additional resources. But I would say that I think this was another occasion where it should have been anticipated, it should have been planned for, and additional help should have been put into place.

Ms Beattie: And it should have been covered more expressly in that guidance?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Absolutely more expressly in the guidance, and in terms of the action taken.

Ms Beattie: My Lady, I’m in your hands as to whether there is time just for the –

Lady Hallett: Yes, you can – (overspeaking) – quite swiftly on this.

Ms Beattie: I’m grateful.

In answer to Ms Dobbin, Lady Longfield, you made some comments on the factors relevant to what appeared to be higher attendance by vulnerable children in the second set of closures starting in January 2021, and you made some observations about that.

And Ms Dobbin had previously asked you about the earlier bits of guidance in March, April, 2020 –

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Ms Beattie: – and the requirement for education – children with education, health and care plans to undergo risk statement?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah.

Ms Beattie: When we come to that second set of closures in January 2021, the guidance no longer required that children with an education, health and care plan undergo a risk assessment to be eligible to attend school/So my question is: did the removal of that prerequisite also attribute to higher attendance in that later period of second closures?

Baroness Anne Longfield: So I don’t have that data to that on hand. I would expect that there would have been some increase in attendance, but I also know from conversation with parents at the time that there were particular worries for some disabled children about returning to school, particularly levels of anxiety, and that for some families it was a slower process. So I would expect an increase, but I would also expect there would be a need for additional support for some families to be comfortable.

Ms Beattie: Thank you, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Thank you, Ms Beattie.

Ms Douglas.

Questions From Ms Douglas

Ms Douglas: Thank you, my Lady.

Thank you, Lady Longfield. I have two questions on behalf of CVF. CVF represents clinically vulnerable, clinically extremely vulnerable and severely immunocompromised children and their families. These children have underlying health conditions or other risk factors which place them at a higher risk of severe outcomes from Covid-19.

Your witness statement doesn’t mention the experience of clinically vulnerable children or children in clinically vulnerable families or the impact of the pandemic on them. CVF have attempted to raise their concerns with the Office of the Children’s Commissioner but have not received a substantive response.

Would it be fair to say that these children were not a priority concern of the office of the Children’s Commissioner?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, again, I left role in that office at the end of the six-year term in February 2021 so I can’t speak to anything that’s happen since. The families were – the families were, of course, a priority, but we hadn’t – we hadn’t focused on those families as part of any of our areas of work. So they weren’t part of our reporting in specific terms but would have been more generally.

Ms Douglas: Thank you.

My second question, my Lady, is – and we appreciate that this was launched after your tenure as Children’s Commissioner, but The Big Ask survey launched in March 2021 which aimed to capture the views of children mid-pandemic, it was cited as the largest ever study with half a million responses, and CVF encouraged its members to participate in that study. However, there were no questions included to determine household vulnerability and as a result, the experiences of clinically vulnerable children and children in clinically vulnerable families were not accurately reflected in the findings.

In broad terms, do you consider that this national, major national evidence-gathering exercise, as a result, overlooked one of the cohorts which were most affected by Covid-19 as a virus, and most impacted by pandemic policies?

Baroness Anne Longfield: Well, I mean, I think it’s very welcome that you encouraged your network to be part of that, and other evidence gathering of this kind. Again, I can’t speak to anything, any decisions in the Children’s Commissioner’s Office, including their service, beyond that. But I think it’s really important that the voices of the families and the experience of the children in your network are heard, and that’s something that I think needs to be put to government, but also, in more general advocacy, yeah. There’s an important case to be had and it’s an important experience to be heard.

Ms Douglas: Thank you.

Thank you, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much, Ms Douglas.

Well, after my sharp words, we finished before we had to finish. I apologise if I sounded too sharp.

Questions From the Chair

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed for your help, Lady Longfield. You’ve given me a great deal of food for thought, as ever, and I will of course go through your written statement with great care, and I’ve been making a note of the recommendations.

Baroness Anne Longfield: Thank you.

Lady Hallett: So thank you very much for your help.

I was just thinking about one of them, the one about making somebody at cabinet level have responsibility. Looking at some of your reports, just off the top of my head, a number of government departments were immediately involved. You’ve got Justice, obviously something in which I’ve got an interest.

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah, all of the – (overspeaking) –

Lady Hallett: Home Office, Work and Pensions, whatever they call the government department for local authorities these days, they’ve all –

Baroness Anne Longfield: That’s right.

Lady Hallett: So you basically – you’re sponsored by the Department for Education, or sorry, you were.

Baroness Anne Longfield: Yeah, so the children’s – the umbilical cord into government, the docking place for the Children’s Commissioner is Department for Education, some of that as well as historic. Remember the role was created when it was the Department for Children’s Schools and Families, but it remained there, answerable to Parliament and it is the Education Select Committee again, but if you ever get to the point where you have time to look at any of the letters, you’ll see that I’d write to the local government, Secretary of State, it would be answered by someone over here because they would have responsibility for that aspect, and, you know, what families ultimately need near, you know, as part of their support near to home is people that are joined up. And it’s the same at government level.

So the answer was always, when it was asked, that the Secretary of State for Education was the person at the table that was responsible for children, but during the Covid pandemic, that person wasn’t at the table of decision makers.

So there is a disconnect there, and that is one of the avoidable mistakes I’m talking about, and I think that the machinery of government, you know, it’s not – everyone’s life, you know, all our lives don’t fit neatly into the machinery of government, even within a mission-led government which, of course, we’re seeking to get, but for children in particularly – particular, they fall between so many different aspects. And if you take into account the fact that children so often – and I think the pandemic has shown it – were considered in a way that was almost secondary to adults. So it downgrades them again within departments.

And there’s just too many – just too many gaps and holes that open up, whereas if – what you really need is a strategy across government which is for vulnerable children which is driven from the front – from the front, but from the middle as well, from the centre. And then different departments take their role.

But someone advocating for children, you, I’m sure

will have seen it in lots of people’s submissions, and

that’s not to decry anything around the – you know, the

arrangements we have, but when it comes to an emergency,

in so many aspects of vulnerable children they just

don’t work enough.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed, Lady Longfield.

I’m really grateful, as I say.

The Witness: Thank you.

Lady Hallett: You remain a very passionate advocate for a very worthwhile cause, so thank you for all you’ve done.

The Witness: Thank you.

Lady Hallett: I shall return at 1.45.

(12.42 pm)

(The Short Adjournment)

(1.45 pm)

Ms Dobbin: My Lady, please may I call Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado

DR TAMSIN NEWLOVE-DELGADO (affirmed).

Questions From Lead Counsel to the Inquiry for Module 8

Lady Hallett: Thank you for coming to help us, Doctor.

Ms Dobbin: Can I ask you to give your full name to the Inquiry please.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Tamsin Newlove-Delgado.

Lead 8: Dr Newlove-Delgado, you should have in front of you a 69-page report that you prepared that bears the number INQ000587958. Can you confirm that that’s a report that you prepared with Professor Cathy Creswell?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, that’s correct.

Lead 8: And can you confirm that any facts that you stated in that report are true to the best of your knowledge and belief?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, I can confirm.

Lead 8: And can you also confirm that within that statement you’ve set out any opinions that you have set out represent your true and complete professional opinion on the matters to which they refer?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: Dr Delgado – Dr Newlove-Delgado, I think it’s right that you are the Director of The Children and Young People’s Mental Health Research Collaboration unit at the University of Exeter; is that right?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: And you’re also an associate professor in children’s public mental health medicine as well; is that correct?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, that’s correct.

Lead 8: And you’re an honorary consultant in public health medicine, as well, with the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: (Witness nodded).

Lead 8: And that you have a research (sic) in the public health

aspects of the mental health in children with

a particular interest in time trends; is that correct?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: Does that mean, in essence, that you have a particular

interest in how children’s mental health as a population

changes over time?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, that’s correct.

Lead 8: And specific to the pandemic, I think it’s right that you were an academic co-lead for the survey consortium that delivered the NHS survey, England Mental Health of Children and Young People between 2020 and 2024; is that also right?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: And that you were also either the lead researcher or a co-lead researcher on specific projects that were examining children’s mental health during the pandemic?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: And in terms of Professor Creswell, I think for our purposes, she was one of the lead researchers on a number of projects as well during the pandemic; is that correct?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: Your report refers to a number of different concepts related to children’s mental health and I wanted to start, please, if I could, with wellbeing, because I think a point you make is that wellbeing is a very specific concept that should be treated distinctly from children having mental health conditions; is that right?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: And when we discuss children’s wellbeing, very broadly, what does that refer to?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, so wellbeing is quite a – it’s a broader concept that will refer more holistically to how children and young people are doing, so, how they are flourishing, their quality of life, and really their ability to contribute and participate. So it’s a much broader concept than when we talk about mental health conditions, which refers more specifically to, I suppose, difficulties or symptoms relating to mental health.

So I’m happy to say more about that if –

Lead 8: Yes, I think it was just that we can establish from the outset, when I must have to asking you about wellbeing, something very distinct.

It is possible, though, isn’t it, to measure wellbeing in children as a population?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, that’s right. I mean, measures are never perfect, and obviously at a population level they give us a general overview, but yes, there are certain measures which we use to measure wellbeing in children and young people that will ask them about things like their satisfaction with different aspects of their lives, how they feel they’re contributing to their community and so on. So, yes, there are measures of wellbeing.

Lead 8: And we’ll come back and I will ask you questions about how those measures may have changed but it’s also correct, isn’t it, that there are a series of surveys that are carried out in England that are intended to assess the prevalence of possible mental health conditions in children and young people as well?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, that’s correct. So we also have, in England, a series of national child mental health surveys which measure both mental health difficulties more broadly but also mental health conditions or diagnoses, whichever language you prefer to use, and in the past those surveys have also included the whole of Great Britain but the most recent one was only for England.

Lead 8: So if I can just ask you then, in terms of the regularity of those, I think it’s correct that there were surveys carried out on a national basis in 1999, 2004, and 2017, prior to the pandemic. Is that correct?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. So the 1999 and 2004 surveys covered the whole of Great Britain.

Lead 8: Yes.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: And the 2017 one just for England.

Lead 8: Then, during the pandemic, surveys were carried out in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023; is that correct?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: And were those surveys carried out at a more frequent interval because of the pandemic?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, absolutely that was the case. I think particularly once the findings of the first survey in 2020 were known, it became apparent that we would need to monitor young people’s mental health much more frequently throughout the pandemic.

Lead 8: And may I also just check with you, and I can take you if needs be to a statement that helps us establish this, but you may know, broadly speaking, is the profile of children’s mental health similar in each part of the United Kingdom?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: I think that’s – I think on a very broad level I think it’s fair to say it would be similar. There are some differences potentially between the way that risk and protective factors might look like between some of the different nations of the UK, and we also, it’s probably fair to say, have more research that has been done into children and young people’s mental health within England, Wales and Scotland than in Northern Ireland, simply due to the fact that the national surveys previously included Great Britain and not Northern Ireland.

Lead 8: So, taking the position up to 2017, there’s a fairly clear picture of what the position was in Wales, Scotland and England; correct?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Sorry, do you mind repeating that question.

Lead 8: I will repeat it.

Because the earlier surveys covered the whole of the United Kingdom, prior to 2017, that gives a fairly good indication as to consistency in England, Scotland, and Wales?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. I think on balance it’s probably fair to say that it does. But, of course, we can also draw from the other surveys, such as Understanding Society, which covered the other nations of the UK, including Northern Ireland, and we also have other research from Wales and Scotland. So I think when we take it all together we can see a fairly consistent picture.

Lead 8: Yes, I’m grateful. And I’ll come and ask you about some of the work that was done specific to Northern Ireland in any event which you draw attention to.

So just going back then, please, to wellbeing, you’ve pointed out that prior to the pandemic there was some assessment of children’s wellbeing, and you have that at paragraph 21 of your report if you needed it, but I think in broad terms 12% of children who had been surveyed between age 10 and 17 had low wellbeing; is that correct?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, that’s prior to the pandemic, with the Understanding Society data.

Lead 8: Thank you. And in terms of the Born in Bradford study, as well, to which you refer at paragraph 23, you set out there that fewer than one in ten children said that they were never happy; is that correct?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: And in terms of the ages of that children, are you able to help us with that?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. So the Born in Bradford study is particularly valuable, because although it isn’t nationally representative – it’s regional – it’s a good source of information about primary school children, and particularly in a more ethnically diverse area. So that would have covered younger primary school age children, whereas the other data that I referred to was in older adolescents, so – I’m just checking – 10-17-year-olds.

Lead 8: Yes. So that Born in Bradford study is useful for these smaller, younger children, about whom a bit less is known; is that right?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: Then just moving on, please, to mental disorder. In terms of the results that emerged from the survey work that was done in 2017, I think you set out that that provided an overall estimated prevalence of 12.8%; is that correct?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: And that’s a figure of approximately one in nine?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: And can you just explain, in terms of – and I think it’s probably important to make clear, that this survey was estimating probable mental disorder in children; is that correct?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: So just to clarify, and hopefully this won’t be too technical, so the 2017 survey used a standardised diagnostic assessment, which means when we refer to those figures from 2017, they actually refer to not probable disorder but disorder, because of the instrument that was used.

When we talk about the follow-up surveys, which I think you’ll come to talking about when we talk about the impact of the pandemic, there we use “probable disorder” because we use a slightly different instrument. But it’s also the case that that same instrument was used in 2017, which enables us to compare 2017 and 2020 in the follow-up surveys. But that specific figure that I provide there on page 10 is a figure of any disorder rather than probable disorder.

And I’m happy to explain more about how that’s measured if it’s useful.

Lead 8: I think for our purposes probably what is really important is just understanding the extent to which the results in 2017 provide a reliable basis for ascertaining whether or not children’s mental health declined during the pandemic.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: In other words, is it a sufficiently robust comparison?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, I would say so, yes.

Lead 8: I’m grateful. And in terms of the conditions that were most prevalent in 2017, I think it’s correct, was anxiety the disorder that was most common in children at that point?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, so the most single type of disorder that was most common in 2017 was types of anxiety disorder, yes.

Lead 8: And in terms of – you also make the point, then, I think that disorders also increase with age, as well –

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Mm.

Lead 8: – in your report. And I just wanted to clarify: does that mean that if you take a child with a mental disorder at 12, that their condition is likely to become more severe, or is it that, as a population, children just become more mentally unwell as they get older?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, that’s a good point. So it’s more the second point than the first. So it is the case that, as children move into adolescence, they are – become more likely to develop a – we’re using “disorder” here – condition such as anxiety or depression, but it could also be that if a child has one of those conditions, when they’re younger that that may also worsen over time for them individually, but when we talk about mental health problems being more common in adolescents than in younger children, we mean that a 15- or a 16-year-old is more likely to have a condition than a 6-year-old. Particularly when it comes to these kind of anxiety and depression.

Lead 8: Just, then, turning for a moment, if I may, to Northern Ireland, in your report you make the point that there was survey work done between 2019 and 2020 in Northern Ireland, but it’s not quite – it’s not the same as the study that was done in 2017, and it was using a different measurement; is that correct?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, that’s correct. So there was a large sort of youth wellbeing study conducted in Northern Ireland as you say, and it used a whole range of different, quite well-validated measures of mental health but not the same measures as in the English 2017 survey.

Lead 8: I think because those results may have suggested that there was a greater prevalence in mental health conditions in children, or diagnoses, sorry, in Northern Ireland, and I think that in your report you maybe suggest that that needs to be treated with caution.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. I think it’s because the measures that were used in the Northern Ireland survey are, not strictly speaking, diagnostic measures, but they indicate children that might have a higher likelihood or probability of meeting criteria for a diagnosis or having very significant difficulties, so they can tell us a lot about the levels of difficulty, but it’s not quite the same as saying that they would meet criteria for a diagnosis, which is what we could say in the 2017 survey and from England.

Lead 8: All right. So stepping back from all of that, and just looking at some of the things that may have been important during the pandemic, you say in your report that there is a key difference between adults and children when it comes to the development of mental illness, and that the critical point is that children are going through sensitive stages of development; is that correct?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: Could you help the Inquiry to just understand a bit more about that and why development should be – why that concept of development is so important when it comes to children developing specific conditions?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. So I think, briefly speaking, when we think about children and young people, they are constantly developing, you know, socially, emotionally psychologically, the architecture of the brain is changing, and they’re going through periods which are, I suppose, sensitive. So influences on their environment at that time may have a greater impact on them than they would do on an adult, for instance, and it’s also the case that a period of a few months or six months, for example, may be very significant to a child’s development, whereas in an adult’s life that is perhaps to us more of a blink of an eye in time, if that makes sense.

Lead 8: Dr Newlove-Delgado, can I ask you, this concern, or this difference in children that it’s because they’re going through stages of development that means that they’re different to adults, are there specific ages within that period or during a whole child’s development that are particularly important?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. Perhaps if I can also just say, before I answer that, that it is the issue of development and time-sensitive experience is one of the differences between adults and children and why development is so important, but it’s also not the only difference, I suppose, in that children’s roles in society are different, psychologically and socially, their environments after different, and also the way in which their problems might present are different.

So there’s quite a range of differences as well as the issue of development, but just to answer your – sorry, I’ve now, having answered a different question, lost the thread. Do you mind reminding me?

Lead 8: I’ve probably lost the thread, as well.

Yes, I was asking you whether or not, if the Inquiry approaches childhood on the basis that the entirety of childhood is a period of important development, whether within that band, there are specific age groups, for example, or specific periods of development that are more sensitive than others?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Thank you for reminding me. I got sidetracked. So yes, so broadly speaking, given what we know about child development, we know that the very early years, you know, the first thousand days, the period of zero to five, are, whilst all of childhood and adolescence is sensitive and important, those periods are probably particularly important because of the very rapid development that’s going on, and the different influences at that time.

I would also say that sort of older adolescence and transition to adulthood is a sensitive period in slightly different ways but because of the multiple transitions and the becoming more independent that are going on at that point, and it’s also a very sort of peak time for the emergence of new mental health problems.

And I think when we think also, perhaps, more about a child’s wider environment, transition points are always sensitive for children and young people. So being able to kind of make a safe transition from primary to secondary school and land kind of safely there so they can make good progress, so – and beginning primary school is another one. So transitions can also be sensitive periods.

Lead 8: Forgive me, when I asked you the initial question about this, I focused on development as being an important distinguishing factor –

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: – and you’ve said well, there’s a lot more.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Mm.

Lead 8: Are there other particular points that you would draw out as being important in distinguishing adults and children in terms of mental health?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. So I think there’s something about differences in the way that problems might present. So they might be harder to notice in children. So, for instance, anxiety and depression in younger children might present itself with, you know, children complaining of tummy aches or having quite physical symptoms, which might mean they’re harder to pick up. And that really does mean that you need the right expertise in people dealing with children and young people. So that’s one difference I think that’s quite important to emphasise.

I think there is also something about the influence that the immediate family have on younger children that’s somewhat different to adults. Because, as adults, obviously our families, our close relationships are important to us and influence our health, but they are so critical for younger children.

And perhaps related to that, and I hope I’m not straying from the point, but I think the other issue is to do with children’s autonomy, or lack of it. And I think this is pertinent to the pandemic because children generally will have less control over their lives, less ability to escape a situation or change a situation, particularly at home, than adults will do, and that again can be another impact on – or difference when we’re thinking about their mental health.

Lead 8: And is that particularly important, perhaps, when it comes to teenagers, who might be a point when they want – in ordinarily times, want to challenge barriers or assert themselves away from their families –

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yeah.

Lead 8: – a bit more?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Mm.

Lead 8: I think we can touch on this very briefly. One of the points, when it comes to the sort of – to the systems that supported children’s mental health across the different part of the UK, I think it’s your opinion that, in broad terms, the systems in each part of the UK were equally under pressure prior to the pandemic; is that correct?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: I think probably, in broad terms, I would probably refer to some of the other witness statements for some of the details of the services and the differences that there might be between the systems. But I think generally, evidence from all of the four nations suggests that services were under pressure, with increases in referrals and waiting lists before the pandemic.

Lead 8: All right. We’ll turn, then, to the pandemic, and some of the things that you’ve set out in your opinion. But if I can take your overarching starting point, you’ve incorporated into your opinion the observation that the pandemic was a “systemic shock” to children’s mental health.

Can you just explain what you mean by a “systemic shock”?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. So that is – I think is a quote from another researcher –

Lead 8: Yes?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: – but it’s one to which – I think is a useful phrase.

So when I refer to it as a “systemic shock”, I think we would mean that almost all of the systems around the child – and a child is part of a system, you know, the family, the community, the school, et cetera, experienced, you know, a shock or a change or a disruption. And so, given everything that we know about the determinants of children’s mental health and wellbeing, that these, for many children, were sort of being systematically disrupted in some way.

Lead 8: Just turning to one of those, as it were, system shocks, that most children were not attending school, in your opinion, to what extent was that, of itself, a significant or large shock, as it were, capable of impacting children’s mental health?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. I think, as in the way that you’ve set the question up, it’s true that it is quite difficult to disentangle it from all of the other things that were happening at the same time, because this wasn’t set up as a sort of perfect experiment to test that, but when we think about the role that schools have for children and young people and the fact that they are there for however many hours a day for five days a week for this period of time, they are very central places. So I think, in terms of all the different rules – roles that schools play beyond education I think it’s fair to say that the closure or partial closure or however you want to term it of schools for in-person learning would have been a substantial part of that shock.

Lead 8: Can you also assist just in terms of understanding the potential of the pandemic to impact across all children in society, having regard to those sort of systemic shocks that you have pointed to in your evidence. I hope that makes sense?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Sorry, would you mind just rephrasing that.

Lead 8: I will. When I finished I realised it hadn’t been clear.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Thank you.

Lead 8: To what extent was the pandemic and the systemic shocks that you consider in your report capable of impacting the mental health of all children across the board?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, so, in answer, I think it was capable of reaching all children. I find it hard to think of a group of children and young people that wouldn’t have been impacted in some way. But as we’ll no doubt draw out, it wasn’t a uniform impact, of course. But to a greater or lesser extent, I think all children and young people would have been impacted.

Lead 8: And is that because some children would have been in a situation whereby there were more compensations, perhaps, for school closures as compared to other children?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. So I think if we think of it in terms of risk and protective factors, that some children would be in a situation whereby maybe – that first of all they had fewer existing vulnerabilities, but also they had more protective factors around them, so that might be a financially secure household or a household where everybody was in good health or where parents were sort of – were able to, you know, give that particular care and attention to the child in those circumstances, or, you know, access to the resources they needed, or creative approaches to play, or access to green space. I mean, I could go on. But you can see that there are – some families would have access or be able to provide those protective factors and buffers for their child, whereas for other families that would be much more difficult.

Lead 8: All right. And just turning then to perhaps consider that in a bit more detail but just turning to the principal findings that you came to, having regard to the studies that were carried out throughout the pandemic, may I check one thing, please. The study that was carried out in 2017, and then the repeat of that study during the pandemic, did that follow the same children from 2017 onwards or was it looking at different children over time?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: It was the same children. So the children that were included in 2017 were followed up in 2020.

Lead 8: And that – is that what gives you the ability then to say these rates of probable mental disorder increased, because you’re looking at the same child and deterioration –

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Not quite. What it enables us to do is to compare cross-sectionally. So, by which I mean that we can look at what was the rate of probable disorder amongst children aged 5 to 16, for example, in 2017, and then we can look at the sample in 2020 at the children in that same age bracket then and say the rates of disorder were higher.

Lead 8: I see.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: So we are comparing, we are able to compare the same age groups in 2020 and 2017, and that’s really important because, if you might remember, I referred to the fact that as children grow older, they are more likely to develop a mental health condition so it would be – it means that it’s a better comparison.

Lead 8: So can we just pick up then, and I think this is really the crux of your evidence, what you found about what happened to children’s – to the prevalence of possible mental health conditions then during the pandemic period?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. So the evidence from the – from the England Mental Health of Children and Young People survey showed an increase from around one in nine children with a probable disorder in 2017, to one in six, in 2020, which is a very sharp jump, particularly given what we had previously seen in terms of pre-pandemic trends which suggested a very slight increase over time. So we saw that a very slight increase prior to the pandemic and then between 2017 and 2020, this very sharp increase.

Lead 8: And just in terms of what happened then during the pandemic, and how – and what happened to rates of possible mental disorder during the pandemic, can you just explain that?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. So thinking about, again, that same survey series, we followed up those children in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023, and what we found is that after that sharp rise between 2017 and 2020, that rates of probable disorder remained at that elevated level, so we did not see a decrease in problems, there was sort of no evidence that things were improving after that initial deterioration. And in fact, for 17- to 19-year-old age group, we saw a further rise in the prevalence of probable disorder between 2021 and 2022.

Lead 8: So I think what you’ve said in your statement was that in terms of those aged 17 to 19, there was an increase in prevalence from one in six in 2021 to one in four –

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: – between – of those aged 17 to 19 in 2022, and we’ll come back to the possible reasons for that, but I wonder if we could just look at the – this is just a single graph, just to see the visual illustration of this, which is at page 26 of your report. And I think the first graph is prevalence of all children, so one can see the visual representation, but I just wanted to ask you about that leap between 2017 and 2020.

To what extent are you able to explain that leap by reference to the pandemic as opposed to other factors?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. So I think it’s important to stress that we can’t make a definite – we can’t definitely infer that the pandemic caused that leap, because the study isn’t set up to allow us to do that. But when we look at the trends we saw before the pandemic, which were for a very gradual increase, if those trends were to have stayed the same between 2017 and 2020, we wouldn’t have had such a sharp increase, and that is to say, probably a bit more concisely, that that increase does not represent just a continuation of the pre-pandemic trend, that it seems to represent something different that has happened between 2017 and 2020.

And whilst there are other factors that might explain some of the more gradual increases over time in mental health problems, and I think many people here will be familiar with some of the things that are discussed in terms of the digital environment, or inequalities, or school pressures, we wouldn’t expect those things to have had such a dramatic increase as this had. And given what we know about the risk and protective factors for child mental health, then that leads us to conclude that, I think, the pandemic would have been a – really the substantial reason behind that sharp rise.

Lead 8: And if we just look, please, at the second part of this page. This enables the Inquiry to see the difference, and this is specific to those aged between 17 and 19, so I think, even more stark when you see it visually represented in this way.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: And from your perspective, is it of particular concern that the graph in 2022 should look like that, as opposed to how it looked even in 2020 or 2021?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. So I think it is concerning, and this was an unexpected finding when we first saw the findings to the 2022 survey. So just to be clear, what we’re doing here is comparing those who were aged 17 to 19 in 2022 with those in the same age bracket in 2021 and 2020, et cetera.

And I think, if we are to look at why that might be, it is because this is – these young people who were 17 to 19 in 2022 are those that would have been sort of 15 to 17 around the time of the pandemic –

Lead 8: Yes.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: – and obviously, we can expand on why, therefore, they might be particularly impacted.

Lead 8: I think that can come down.

And if I can ask you about that, because that’s a good point too. In your opinion, what is it that happened to those children during the pandemic that might account for this, recognising there may be other factors, too, of course, but what is your opinion as to that?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, I think our view would be that these young people were, as I say, those aged 15 to 17 at the time of when the pandemic started would have been those that were going through one of those quite critical transition points that we talked about earlier in the evidence. So they would be, you know, beginning to sit, potentially, important exams, they might be moving from school to college, they might be thinking about apprenticeships, new relationships, all of those transitions that sort of older adolescents are going through, and sort of concentrated into that particular period of time, so many of their major milestones and life events for this group in particular were impacted.

Lead 8: And may I go back to something you said just a little while ago about how I think you were suggesting that having regard to everything that happened during the pandemic, it would be expected that there would be an impact on children’s mental health; is that correct?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: First of all, in terms of the general population of children, are these statistics related to possible mental health disorders? Do they accord with what your expectations would have been, having regard to the sorts of systems shocks that you referred to?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Um … I’m – so by that, do you mean that given the impact of the pandemic, would I expect those figures to be as they are?

Lead 8: It’s probably a slightly different question.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Oh, right.

Lead 8: Given the sorts of shocks that you’ve referred to in your report, things like children not going to school and being at home, is this outcome or are these statistics broadly in accordance with what you would have expected to happen to children’s mental health?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: I think that’s a very hard question to answer, actually, because – I mean, I do remember being very surprised by the findings of the survey in 2020, although I was part of the team that conducted it. So I don’t know that I expected the impact to be quite of that scale or as sustained. But at the same time, I would certainly have expected some degree of very significant impact, and that is what we’ve seen. So I think, on balance, yes.

Lead 8: And in terms of those children who were 15, 16 and the impact that’s reflected, was that – was that a greater impact than perhaps you would have anticipated on young people of that age?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: I think again, it’s very hard to say, if you’ll excuse me not being able to come to a definite conclusion on it, because I know the word “unprecedented” has been used a lot in relation to this, but I think genuinely, it was unprecedented. So it’s – it would be quite hard to know the scale of what we might expect, but I still think that these are the kinds of impacts that we would expect given what we know about the risk and protective factors.

Lead 8: And I think it’s right to say, as well, that the most recent figures – because this brings us up to – those graphs brought us to 2023 –

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: Have the figures stayed broadly the same?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, they have, yes. So the last week of that – those follow-up surveys in England was in 2023, and there was no improvement, they were broadly the same as they had been for the previous year.

Lead 8: And can you, this is a very simple question, but given that the pandemic ended five years ago and children’s lives hopefully would have returned to normality, is there an explanation as to why the figures remain elevated at that level and consistent with the pandemic period?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: So I think firstly to say, those figures or the most recent figures that we have from that survey are from 2023, so it’s only maybe from 18 months after the pandemic ended. So I think, given what we know about the potential for impacts on children and young people’s mental health at sensitive stages can be long lasting, so, you know, if children develop a mental health condition, you know, we – and they have then therefore become more vulnerable as a result of that, we wouldn’t necessarily expect that they would just bounce back to normal.

Lead 8: Yes.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: So I think there’s that to consider. And there may be a whole group of children and young people who perhaps pre-pandemic were maybe just about managing, they had some difficulties, but probably nothing that would be diagnosable, or require higher levels of support, but the pandemic may have been enough to just tip them over into that and then those difficulties may have continued. And I think there are probably some other factors that have contributed to the ongoing high levels because even before the pandemic we were seeing this slight increase, in particular, in emotional difficulties, so it could be that other societal factors might have contributed to that staying at a high level.

So there are potentially issues around, you know, access to services, around inequalities, around digital environment, around school pressures. There are a whole range of, kind of, theories as to why we might be seeing continued high levels.

Lead 8: Yes, so does that mean that the pandemic may possibly have accelerated or exacerbated trends that were starting to emerge prior to it?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yeah, I think that’s possible. I think we are a little bit in the dark, though, because of that latest data being from 2023. And I think the other important thing to say would be, although I think those surveys probably give us the best snapshot from England, over time, the proportion of children and young people that were taking part in those surveys did decrease.

So I think that we probably still need some new and better data to understand what’s happening right now at this moment.

Lead 8: I just want to ask you, then, about some very specific disorders that increased during the pandemic. And I think that in your report you point in particular to there being a very marked increase in eating disorders; is that right?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, that’s correct.

Lead 8: And I think, in fact, if you need this, I think you have it at paragraph 19 and 53, as well. If you need it. But you point to what the survey results say about that, and I think what you say there is that there was a rise from 6.7% in a possible eating disorder in 2017 to 13% in 2021 in 11-16-year olds; is that correct?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, that’s correct. That is possible eating problems rather than eating disorders.

Lead 8: All right, you might need to help me with the difference.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, I’m happy to explain that.

Lead 8: And that also increased in 17-19-year olds from 44.6 per cent to 58.2%.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: That obviously sounds very high but is that explained by the fact that it’s a possible eating problem, rather than disorder?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. I think it is, because the figures that we’re talking about there come from, sort of, a screen – a set of screening questions, which are designed to be sensitive. That is, to pick up any indication that a child might possibly have an eating disorder. And so what those figures refer are to the proportion of children that may have a possible problem with eating. Only a small proportion of those would be likely to have a clinically diagnosable eating disorder.

And I can talk a little bit – because we also studied changes in eating disorders between 2017 and 2023, so I can talk to that if you would like.

Lead 8: Yes.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: But just to say that, regardless of the instrument, we still see a rise, yes.

Lead 8: Yes. And I think it’s a rise that’s borne out by other evidence that you point to in your evidence as well, so, for example, the rise in hospital admissions –

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Mm.

Lead 8: – for children but who have an eating disorder as well; is that correct?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: And I think, as well, that we know – this was included in your bundle but I won’t take you to it – we have evidence from a Professor Chitsabesan that admissions to paediatric wards had increased, particularly due to eating disorders as well.

So, just coming back to the point, is that broadly consistent with the evidence that you were seeing in the survey results as well?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, so both the results that you took me through about possible eating problems, but also the research that we did looking at specifically eating disorders, all indicate a rise in eating – possible eating problems but also eating disorders. And the evidence from services that is presented in the other reports also corroborates that, in terms of presentations to services, crises, et cetera.

Lead 8: And again, does that give a clue as to what might have been causing some children distress during the pandemic to produce this sort of increase?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, I think it does. I think it does suggest that there was a link between the pandemic and the rise in eating problems and disorders. And I can talk to a bit about why we think that might be.

Lead 8: Yes, please. What is your opinion as to why that might have happened?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. So there’s been, sort of, a range of papers from eating disorders experts that have discussed this – so, myself, I’m not a specific expert in eating disorders, but firstly, if we think about it, young people who might have a vulnerability to an eating disorder will use certain coping strategies or daily routines, really, to try to keep themselves well. And when you think about the huge change in young people’s lives that the pandemic brought, it’s natural that that would have disrupted their coping and their daily routine.

Also, if you think about the sense of uncertainty and, yes, just a loss of control that many of us felt, young people may have turned to controlling their eating or exercise habits or whatever as an attempt to exert control, and that may therefore have led into, I suppose, colloquially speaking, a bit of a spiral of disordered eating.

In terms of eating disorders, we also know that if children are going to be in quite a high pressure environment of the home, in the context of the pandemic, they lose a lot of privacy, they may be eating, you know, with family, whereas previously they’d be eating in all kinds of different places, again that might affect or increase eating disorders.

And then there’s the influence of spending potentially more time online or in virtual environments where children may be exposed to harmful material, for example around sort of pro-anorexia websites, or even just more content around body image. And I think some of the concerns around obesity in Covid-19 might also have prompted children to be more concerned about maintaining a healthy weight.

And then there’s obviously the access to support and services which would have been disrupted. So I think those are probably the key reasons.

Lead 8: And in terms of exposure to what’s on the Internet, is the concern there that because children were at home and online, they were consuming potentially more harmful content, or is it a different problem?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: I think that is probably the crux of the problem, because they would have been spending more time online. They would also be seeking out connection more online because of the lack of in-person connection. And whilst virtual connection can be really helpful, and in fact it sounds from the testimony of many children that it was helpful for them, but the fact that they were spending more time looking for those connections might also mean they were more drawn into those online communities, as well as spending more time online.

And, of course, it would be very difficult for them to be supervised at all times doing that, given the pressure on parents and families and so on.

Lead 8: All right. I’m going to move on then, if I may, to deal with some of the differential impacts of the pandemic on children, and I wanted to start with younger children who you’ve already mentioned.

Did the pandemic – you’ve said that it may have presented particular challenges to them. Is there evidence that their mental health declined during the pandemic as well?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. So I think, in general, when we look at the different age groups and the various studies that are out there, there are some studies which suggest that the younger age groups were possibly slightly more impacted than, say, children of secondary school age, for example.

I think it is, however, fair to say that there were probably fewer studies done of very young children, although my colleague, Professor Cresswell, who co-authored this report with me, had done some work with that group. But yes, I think there was some evidence to suggest that there they were more impacted.

Lead 8: I think you say in your report that you think it’s a concerning gap that there isn’t more known about children of that age. Is that a general concern that there isn’t sufficient research on younger children under 5 or is it specifically related to the pandemic?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Possibly both, although I will say that recently there have been several, at least one or two that I’m aware of, new cohort studies that have been set up, which will examine the health of babies and younger children, so I think that gap is being filled, actually.

But when we look at the time of the pandemic and in particular to one of the main sources of data which is the Mental Health of Children and Young People surveys, the children in those surveys were five in 2020, which meant that we didn’t have data on the sort of 2- to 4-year-olds. So I think that was a bit of a gap at the time of the pandemic, in my view, one which is gradually being filled.

Lead 8: And then turning to socioeconomic disadvantage as a factor in children’s vulnerability to developing mental health conditions, can you explain in relation to the pandemic how that might have had an effect?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. So I think the evidence on here – on this is – there is some mixed evidence around here, but we can see that children living in more disadvantaged circumstances would necessarily have been probably exposed to more risk factors and probably have fewer protective factors to kind of bolster them or buffer them against the effect of the pandemic. And obviously, those would include things like financial stresses, as well as, perhaps, living in, you know, less suitable accommodation, access to green space, and access to other resources.

Lead 8: And I think you do say in relation to younger children, as well, that the Born in Bradford study helped on children who were aged between 6 to 11 in terms of understanding the impact on them –

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Mm.

Lead 8: – of socioeconomic disadvantages; is that right?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, that’s right. Yes, I think I refer to that in this section as well.

Lead 8: You do. It’s at paragraph – you deal with it at 77 to 80 but I think, in short, that children in the most deprived quintile were most likely to experience worsening of mental health difficulties; is that right?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: But I think importantly for our purposes, that was in relation to this younger – I mean, they’re still aged 6 to 11 but nonetheless, provide some sort of insight into impact on this younger group of young people, as well; is that right?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, it does.

Lead 8: And then if I can turn to another group, and I think it’s at paragraph 83 onwards, and just to try and understand a bit more about this. But that children with special educational needs may also have a particular vulnerability to developing a mental health condition, as well; is that correct?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. So even, and putting aside the impact of the pandemic, we know that children with long-term health conditions and/or those with special educational needs and disabilities are at higher risk of having mental health problems as it stands. And then, during the pandemic, they certainly were a group that we were concerned about, partly because of disruptions to their support, but also perhaps because of the nature of some of their difficulties.

Lead 8: And was another concern in relation to that group that having an unmet – having unmet needs may be a contributor towards the development of a mental health condition, as well?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. So I think it’s certainly possible that if those children’s needs for therapy or support, or whatever other needs they might have, were not being met, that that could have an impact on their levels of distress and their mental health but also very much so on the families around them, which again, would impact also the child.

Lead 8: And another specific group that you refer to in your report, as well, is children who had a parent who had a mental health condition, as well, that that might have made them more vulnerable. Is that a particular concern in the context of a national emergency or a pandemic situation?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: I think it is always, you know, it is always something that we are conscious of, you know, in terms of thinking about the family as a whole that where a parent may be struggling with their mental health, that that may impact on the child, but also that children’s mental health can impact on the parents, too. So it’s a complex relationship.

But in the context of the pandemic when the parent may be experiencing increased stresses themselves which might make it more difficult for them to manage their own mental health and the parent may be experiencing disruption to their support system, then really, yes, you know, that is a concerning impact on the family as a whole.

Lead 8: Yes, forgive me, I really meant it at a sort of population level –

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: – whether that is something that needs to be borne in mind in terms of the impact?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, I would say so, and I think it’s relevant to note that – I think some studies of adults suggested that parents of children or parents who had children living at home might be more likely to be experiencing mental health difficulties. So it’s certainly something that’s very relevant when we’re thinking about the whole population.

Lead 8: And then another group who you discuss in your evidence, as well, is those children who lived in clinically vulnerable families, as well, and I think that just looking at this from the context of the child within that situation, I think that you came to the opinion that those children were also likely to be experiencing distress or difficulty as well that might make them more vulnerable to developing a mental health condition; is that right?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, I think absolutely, they may already be more vulnerable to experiencing a mental health difficulty, and then when you add into that, perhaps, the additional distancing or isolation measures that might be needed, along with the concern and worry about their health, then that would be a group that we would be concerned about.

Lead 8: And equally, those children who have Long Covid as well, I think that you also came to an opinion, also about those children too. I think you’ve got that at paragraph 96 of your report if you need it.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, thank you.

Lead 8: That they may also, because of the consequences of having a post-infection syndrome, also be susceptible or vulnerable, as well; is that right?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, that’s right. I mean, having a post-infection syndrome can affect a child’s physical and mental health, and when they might be living day-to-day with symptoms of tiredness or fatigue or pain or whatever that might be, that can have an knock-on impact on their mental health. So, yeah, that’s another group that would need appropriate support and monitoring.

Lead 8: The Inquiry has heard some evidence about children who were being cared for during the pandemic and about their experiences, and one of the things that you set out in your report as well is about the particular prevalence of mental health conditions in those children as a population as well. Is that correct? And is it right that – I think you say that it’s one in – is it one in two children?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, I think that’s correct. In terms of the studies that have been done of children in care, that they are likely – they are more likely than children in the general population to experience a mental health problem. And yes, I think the figure that I present in there – pre-pandemic I think is one in two. But you might need to direct me to the paragraph.

Lead 8: And you’ve got it at paragraphs 99 to 101.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Thank you, yes, that’s right.

Lead 8: But I think what you go on to point to is that there were studies carried out during the pandemic as well that focused on those children and what they were experiencing also, and about feeling more lonely, and anxious than they would normally feel; is that correct?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, that’s right. So there are various surveys that have been done with that group, where children report feeling more isolated or feeling more anxious. And there’s also qualitative studies as well of their experiences.

I think it’s fair to say that some do report more positive experiences, of feeling well supported, but for others that wouldn’t be the case.

Lead 8: I’m just going to deal with one final group and then come to some headline points about this.

But another group of children who you consider in your report are those children who are detained, in various forms of detention as well. So, for example, children who are detained in the children and youth estate. And I think first of all, the question as to whether, as a population, those children prior to the pandemic would have had a higher incidence of mental ill health or be more vulnerable to developing one?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, absolutely. And actually probably a point I should have made earlier in relation to all of these groups, I think, is about the compounding of disadvantage and risk.

So usually it’s possible that a child who belongs to one of these groups may also belong to other risk groups or they be experience – they may be – have, sort of, intersectional inequalities. You know, as in they may be from a minoritised ethnic group and also have a certain sexuality or also be living in economic disadvantage. And all of these risk factors can compound themselves.

And so when we think particularly about young people in the custody of the state, that they may have background grounds where they are perhaps more likely to have been exposed to trauma or abuse or other factors, so they would already be a higher risk group.

Lead 8: Just having regard to that and the fact that would have heard evidence that some of these children were being kept in their cells for over 20 hours a day and perhaps up to 23 hours a day, can you assist or provide your opinion as to the sort of impact might have on children with that background or vulnerability?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, I think I would say that could potentially have a very severe impact, because these children already, potentially, have experienced traumatising experiences previously, they would be vulnerable. And so being exposed to that type of isolation, you know, when they’re already vulnerable, could have quite a severe impact on them, potentially, yes.

Lead 8: And I think we’ve seen some evidence as well about children, and I don’t need to take you to it, it was in your bundle, that children who were also in residential mental health care during the pandemic as well, that some of those children weren’t able to have access to their families; is that correct? In other words, they weren’t allowed – that’s probably putting it too widely – they weren’t allowed to have in-person visits; is that right?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, I think that’s my understanding from the witness report, that in some cases, due to infection prevention and control measures, that seemed to be the case.

Lead 8: And is it a surprise to you, as someone expert in this field, that children who are in hospital because of mental health disorders should be unable to see their family whilst they were there during a pandemic, or …?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: So I certainly think it’s concerning, given the impact that that might have on them and the fact that they’re vulnerable. I do acknowledge, of course, that there were infection control guidance in place and procedures, and that people were doing their best to work with those. And I think that’s laid out quite well in some of the other witness statements. So it was a complex situation. But certainly, not being able to see their family in person would have contributed, very likely, to increased feelings of isolation and potentially detrimental impacts.

Lead 8: So just coming back, then, you’ve considered in the course of your evidence different groups of children within society who might be particularly vulnerable to developing mental health conditions. I mean, in your opinion, does that mean, for the purposes of pandemic planning or responding to a pandemic, that very specific consideration needs to be given to the fact that there will be these children who require perhaps additional levels of protection or additional levels of intervention?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, I think absolutely so. And that those groups would need to be very explicitly considered in planning and mitigation. And I think probably another point is that I think this is – this is probably not a completely exhaustive list of children that might be differentially impacted –

Lead 8: Of course.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: – and so that is why listening to the voices of children and young people and families and organisations representing them is key because they may be aware of other groups. I think we’ve probably covered the main ones in this report but there may well be others.

Lead 8: And have you come to any conclusions in the course of all of your work, not just in preparing your report for this Inquiry, as to any really practical things that you think could have been done better during the pandemic period to help some of these specific groups of children and perhaps children more broadly?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. So I think it’s a very good question. I think one thing that, you know, we’ve discussed doing is an approach that would be, I suppose, more flexible and creative in enabling opportunities for connection for children and young people. So, you know, we’ve heard a lot about the different restrictions on in-person gathering and obviously the balance of risk is really important here, but it does seem that there may have been opportunities to enable more in-person contact for younger children, for example, opportunities for outdoor play and connection that might have been able to have been done relatively safely, obviously balancing up risk, and/or creatively.

So, you know, there were lots of professionals in creative industries, for example, who might have been on furlough or out of work who might have been able to work with children. There would have been outdoor spaces and places where they could potentially play, where the risks may have been lower. So I think just putting things in place or an approach that is maybe more enabling and facilitating of those things would have been helpful. I think there are probably others as well, which we can talk through.

Lead 8: So the key – but the key thing I think you’re saying is it’s – for children, it’s being able to see other children –

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lead 8: – is that the key thing?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: I think so. I think being able to connect with peers, with other children, to be able to play and to be outdoors as well, and to have that sense of sort of support and structure and routine, as well. So obviously, thinking about how school closures might be able to be done differently or more flexibly, or more partially is obviously another thing that’s related to that.

Lead 8: And in terms of any of the other really practical things, you said a moment ago, that you had other ideas, as well, as to what could be done. What are the other main things that you think might possibly make a difference?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, so I think one of the others that we mention in the report is around support for families, and how, particularly for families with younger children, I make reference in there to the Scottish model of closed childcare clusters which would enable families with younger children to sort of bubble together, if you like, which enables support for the parents in terms of childcare and sort of parent-to-parent support but also for those children to be able to play together relatively freely.

And there’s a – sort of a whole paper that’s been written about it in the way that there are different options which you could do it, which would have different, obviously different risks of infection, depending on the one that you chose, but maybe offering families more of a – or co-producing a kind of menu of these are some of the ways in which you could maintain contact depending on, obviously, the risks of whether you’re in contact with elderly grandparents or you have other people at risk in your family.

So something like that, I think, would be practically helpful.

Lead 8: But again, in terms of extrapolating that to a broader principle or idea, it’s about finding ways of enabling families to have some sort of support, children to have more contact with other children, balanced against the risk of transmission?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, I think that’s what it boils down to. And hopefully, with the benefit of learning from this pandemic, that we might be able to put forward some ways in which that might work. Obviously we don’t know what form a future pandemic might take or who the risk groups might be in such a situation –

Lead 8: Yes.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: – so obviously that might change.

And I think also just to mention young people, as well. So I’ve talked there quite a lot about families with young children but there may be a sort of older adolescents or young people who are living on their own, for example, care leavers or young people just starting a family themselves, or the 18-year-olds that might be living on their own.

So I think we would also need options to support that group of young people too. But in short, it would be about just some more creative and flexible enabling of some degree of connection that’s balanced with risk.

Lead 8: And turning, then, to the sorts of support that was available to children during the pandemic, you’ve set that out in quite a lot of detail in your report, and I just wanted to ask you about the sort of remote forms of contact for children to help them with their mental health, for example being able to speak to a counsellor or a psychologist online. Can you just explain a bit about your understanding as to what children thought about that sort of provision?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. So I think it’s fair to say that some children or young people did find it beneficial to be able to talk to somebody online. They might have liked the flexibility. In some cases they may have found it a bit less intimidating or more easy to be able to speak freely to a screen than in a room with somebody. So for some children there are advantages. But for a number, when we listen to them talk about their experience, they didn’t find that it suited them so well. So they may not like seeing themselves on camera, they may find it more difficult to strike up a rapport with the therapist or counsellor, and some may also find that it’s more difficult to engage in a kind of more creative therapies in that environment.

And then, for those that might have communication difficulties, or those with special educational needs and disabilities, that online environment might be difficult.

I’m thinking also privacy as well is a really important consideration for young people, and there is evidence that some of them felt uncomfortable, potentially, having counselling or online sessions, because they could be overheard by other members of the family. And of course, in more extreme cases, there are potentially risks there around safeguarding if a young person is not in a safe environment at home.

Lead 8: And I think, in terms of just of your overall conclusions, about the extent to which provision during the pandemic was able to meet the needs of children who were developing or who had mental health conditions, can you just explain what your overall view is, so in other words the adequacy of services during the pandemic.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. I mean, I think it’s important to say that there were some real efforts being made to meet those needs, and that staff in services and those organising services were able to move quite rapidly in terms of putting together an online service or pivoting services to meet those needs. There was a lot of funding that went to organisations to provide online counselling and therapy and training for teachers. So there was a lot of support that was put in place. But I think, given the – I suppose the nature of the impact, that I still think that that, to some degree, fell short of the need, because the level of need was such.

And I think I’d also say that it’s – quite a few of the efforts that I’ve described are more – are less preventative and are more about mitigating an impact that’s already there. So, thinking about things like online counselling, that is more about attempting to meet a need that has emerged, but it’s not necessarily preventative. And so some of the things that we’ve talked about, in terms of, you know, enabling connection, also things like financial support, those things would be more about preventing problems from emerging or getting worse.

So I think, whilst there are some really good efforts being made, particularly as the pandemic progressed and we learned more, I think an improvement would be if those were pivoted both to prevention as well as intervention.

Lead 8: You say at paragraph 119:

“Given what is known about the key influences on children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing, the impact of Covid-19 and the pandemic restrictions could arguably have been foreseen, and preventative measures undertaken at an earlier stage.”

Are you able to identify any preventative measures that you think could have been put in place a bit earlier on?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. So I think some of those measures might be ones that we have talked about. So they might be things like enabling more mixing for younger children in a safe environment. They might have been more of a menu of options for families. They might have been around enabling some connections for older children or thinking about different models of school attendance, for example.

So I think those are all – and I think, arguably, the school attendance one is tricky. I think they are all tricky, but I think a lot of the mitigation measures that were put in place were more thinking about children who are presenting or they’re having more mental health problems, how do we address those. And we also should have been thinking about how do we prevent those from arising in the first place.

Lead 8: Do you think that families knew enough about the potential risks to children’s mental health from the pandemic? In other words, could more be done to help families to support children?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, and I think – thank you for raising that, because I think that is another point in the recommendation, is that one of the things we highlight is, if we’re able to give families and parents the tools, then they are able to better support their children. And there’s good evidence that that works. That does have to be balanced, of course, with putting additional demands on families or making them feel as though they are fully responsible for providing a therapy or support for their child’s mental health. But I think, yes, giving parents the tools and the information so that they can support is important.

But I think at the same time, we probably also need to be careful in a pandemic situation not to add anxiety to parents as well, so I think it’s about clear messaging and provision of careful information.

And that, I think, also brings me to a point I forgot to mention earlier, is about communication with children and young people themselves as well, and the messages that they were receiving. So I think also making sure that they were well informed would also be important.

Lead 8: And is that a concern again – I mean, does that also relate to the sorts of things that maybe children were picking up online, as well, or is that – or are you talking about different types of messaging?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, so I think it probably relates to all different kinds. They would both be the kind of messaging that they might be exposed to online, but also public messaging around the pandemic would, I think probably unavoidably, be anxiety-provoking to children. But there may have been some ways in which better communications tailored towards children and young people could have been made.

Lead 8: And finally, I just wanted to come to provision as it stands at the moment, and whether or not you’re able to say whether or not the provision of mental health services at this time have managed to – have they caught up with the level of demand that now exists?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: I think there have been improvements made. If we look at the data, it looks as though more children are being seen, and in some areas more targets are beginning to be met. But at the same time, we still experience more children, there are still significant numbers of children on waiting lists and there’s a lot of variation, as well, from what we hear around the country. So there is still some way – there are efforts being made and there is some progress being made but given the scale and the nature of the problem, there is much further still to go.

Lead 8: And then, just drawing back overall into your overall conclusions that you’ve set out at the end of your report, I won’t go through all of them, but is a key conclusion that you’ve reached that there is a real need on the part of policymakers to understand more about children’s development and how interlinked it is to their mental health as well?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, I think that would be fair to say. I think there are a lot of really good efforts being made by a number of organisations to make the case for children and young people and I think that was the case during the pandemic, as well, but I think there is obviously further to go in terms of recognising the importance of children and young people as a group, the importance of prevention, and, I suppose, proportionate investment in them, particularly given that they do seem to be a group that has really experienced these very significant impacts.

Lead 8: And I think one of the things you say, as well, is that there is a need for ongoing research to understand, in particular, young people who were children during the time of the pandemic as well, and to carry on tracing, as it were, any trends or developments in relation to them; is that right?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. Yes, so we’ve recommended that continuing to follow up these children if possible would be really important. And I think also being sort of ready or having research in a state of readiness so that we could mobilise quickly again, if needed, in the case of another pandemic. So in the case of the national child mental health surveys in England, we were quite fortunate in that there was this large survey done in 2017, and actually a lot of the infrastructure and expertise was there ready to move into the field in 2020. But without that existing cohort in place, we wouldn’t necessarily have been able to do that.

And I think that’s also relevant to thinking about the importance of evaluating measures that were taken and how helpful or unhelpful they were, is that we also need research which can evaluate mitigation measures or interventions. So for example, you mentioned remote consultations for children and young people. So having research that’s able to quickly evaluate those and say what’s working, what’s not working, that’s also really important, and again, having that research infrastructure in place.

And if you will excuse me making another point, I think that the involvement of children and young people in the design of that research and the research questions that we’re asking, obviously throughout the report, and in everything we’ve said, their voices should be central, but the same goes for research, because they may have – they may – and I often find this is the case in children and young people’s research – is that they come up with something that I haven’t thought of. So it’s really important that we involve them in the whole process.

Ms Dobbin: Thank you, I’m grateful.

Dr Newlove-Delgado, those are all my questions.

Questions From the Chair

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

I have got one question before Ms Iqbal asks her question.

You talked about, as opposed to closing schools – and I am using that word, because they were, as far as most people were concerned, closed – apart from closing schools to virtually everybody apart from the one or two who attended, you talked about adapting. Did, by that, you mean things like considering staggered attendance, the use of what I’m going to call “Nightingale schools”, for want of a better word, is that the kind of thing you had in mind?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, I think so. I think because schools are so central and – schools and childcare settings are so central to the lives of children and young people, that I think being able to be as creative and adaptable as we can be to attempt to replicate some of the functions that schools provide, even if it doesn’t look like the traditional school day when children are in from 8.30 until 3 .00 – so I think something along the lines of, you know, there could be staggered days – I think Japan had a model where different children were in on different days – Nightingale schools, or just attempts to replicate some of those functions that schools have. Because, just to make one other point about the role of schools that I think we’ve heard about, is that particularly for disadvantaged children, they can play such an important role in terms of routines, structure, trusted adults, even school meals, that being – which are not replicated by virtual online education.

So the more that we could do to have a menu of options to replicate some of those functions, if we can’t run traditional schooling, I think that would be really important.

Lady Hallett: Thank you.

Ms Iqbal.

Just – she’s that way.

Questions From Ms Iqbal

Ms Iqbal: Dr Newlove-Delgado, I’m asking a few questions on behalf of a grassroots organisation, Clinically Vulnerable Families.

Looking at the section of your statement entitled “Children and young people who were clinically extremely vulnerable or in clinically vulnerable families”, you’ve said at paragraph 89 – that’s page 40 if you want to turn that up – that findings from adult studies of clinically extremely vulnerable individuals may not be applicable to children. And you’ve cited some of those studies and their findings.

What research or data collection do you propose is needed to address this gap and gather the needed data to provide robust evidence on the experiences of clinically vulnerable and clinically extremely vulnerable children during the pandemic?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes. So, just to clarify, would you be asking me about what research is needed now or what research we would have needed to do?

Ms Iqbal: We’d be asking about what research is needed now.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes.

Lady Hallett: Better to prepare us for the next pandemic.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, absolutely.

So I would imagine that the experiences of those children who were clinically extremely vulnerable is probably still fresh in the minds of those children and family, and so I think there would be opportunities now, if that hasn’t been done – I’m not familiar with all the current research in the area – that there would be opportunities to hold interviews or focus groups or data gathering exercises now with them to learn lessons and to hear their voice. So I think that would be important.

And I think it would be important to get their recommendations and thoughts about how, if there were to be another pandemic, how we could support them better but also how we would know who they are, so that if we did have another pandemic and we needed to do rapid research with them to find out about what the issues were, that we could spring into action quite quickly.

Does that make sense?

Ms Iqbal: It does, thank you, Doctor.

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Thank you.

Ms Iqbal: And one further question. You already spoke about recommendations to help children’s mental health

generally in the event of a future pandemic via measures

such as more contact with other children, playing

outside, you noted that that would have to be balanced

against the risks of transmission. So do you propose

any specific recommendations to improve the mental

health outcomes of clinically vulnerable or clinically

extremely vulnerable children and young people, bearing

in mind their greater susceptibility to the risk of

transmission and the accompanying anxiety of said risks?

Dr Tamsin Newlove-Delgado: Yes, thank you. That’s a really good point in that

this – the recommendations that are made about enabling

connection and potentially in-person connection would

need to be tailored or adapted or certainly seen in the

light of individual risk to certain groups of children.

And so again, actually, I think that is something where

if we were to do research or simply to engage with

organisations that are supporting those children, we

could understand more about how those things could be

tailored or adapted; so are there ways in which we could

better adapt those things to be virtual, or to be more

distanced? Or again, to have some options for them so

that they would not be further disadvantaged in that –

those circumstances.

Ms Iqbal: Thank you, Dr Newlove-Delgado.

Thank you, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed, Ms Iqbal.

It’s been an extremely interesting and very helpful afternoon, Doctor. I’m extremely grateful to you. And would you pass my thanks over to your colleague, Professor Creswell, as well. Obviously, I’ll bear in mind all that you have said in your report, but I think you’ve given a very interesting summary of your findings and conclusions. So thank you for your help.

The Witness: Thank you, my Lady.

Lady Hallett: Very well, I think that completes the evidence for today.

Ms Dobbin: There’s just one thing, it’s not evidence, though. I’ve been asked to, my Lady, just set out that obviously this concludes the oral evidence for week 1 of this module, and with your permission, we’ll adduce into evidence a number of witness statements from charities, non-governmental organisations, and from Dr Alex George in his capacity as a former youth, mental health ambassador. Yes, you have those on screen, my Lady.

They set out in detail more about the impact of the pandemic on a range of children and young people across the UK. And those organisations and individuals set that out and they also set out work that was done to limit and mitigate those effects. And I understand those statements will be shortly on the Inquiry’s

website and that other key documents will be adduced,

and put on the website as well, as we progress through

the hearing.

Lady Hallett: Thank you very much indeed.

Yes, the default setting will be that obviously

everything we’re going to use should be published, so

thank you very much indeed.

Very well, I shall return for the second week of

evidence – actually, I shan’t return in the sense that

I won’t be here in person. Next week I shall be

conducting the hearings remotely and we start at 10.30

on Monday, 6 October. Thank you all very much.

(3.09 pm)

(The hearing adjourned until 10.30 on Monday, 6 October)