1 00:00:01,450 --> 00:00:05,980 Okay. So could you just start by saying your name and what your position and affiliation is? 2 00:00:06,130 --> 00:00:14,410 I'm Lucy Clover. I'm professor of child and family social work at the Department of Social Policy and Intervention and here at Nuffield College. 3 00:00:14,440 --> 00:00:14,799 Okay. 4 00:00:14,800 --> 00:00:22,930 And without telling me your entire life story, can you just give me a rough idea of how you got to where you are now and develop those interests? 5 00:00:23,440 --> 00:00:30,070 Well, I trained as a social worker here at Oxford and worked in South Africa, 6 00:00:30,490 --> 00:00:37,420 where I'm originally from, and started working on research with children orphaned by HIV AIDS. 7 00:00:38,560 --> 00:00:52,420 And that's that progressed to working on on child violence against children because those kids were at higher risk and moved 8 00:00:52,420 --> 00:01:00,399 towards developing with a whole set of colleagues on these evidence based child prevention and child abuse prevention programs, 9 00:01:00,400 --> 00:01:07,390 which which is what led to the COVID work. So what you both a practitioner and an academic at this time in social work? 10 00:01:08,260 --> 00:01:11,290 I tried I tried at first to do part time of both. 11 00:01:11,290 --> 00:01:20,410 And it was a complete disaster because you're when you're a social worker, your clients don't have their crises conveniently on three days a week. 12 00:01:21,760 --> 00:01:27,010 But I you know, I think what I do now is kind of academic social work. 13 00:01:28,120 --> 00:01:32,349 Right. Right. Yes. So you mentioned that a lot of your work has been in HIV. 14 00:01:32,350 --> 00:01:39,700 So what were the issues particularly? Just tell me a little bit more about the projects that you worked on with HIV. 15 00:01:40,410 --> 00:01:44,320 We we we did a whole set of projects on. 16 00:01:45,870 --> 00:01:53,970 Understanding the needs and what we could do to help children who had lost parents and whose parents were very sick with with HIV AIDS. 17 00:01:54,570 --> 00:02:01,860 And and it's, you know, incredibly relevant to COVID because you've got this sudden and across sub-Saharan Africa, 18 00:02:01,860 --> 00:02:07,980 we had this sudden wave of loss of caregivers and very unwell caregivers. 19 00:02:09,000 --> 00:02:15,390 And so many of the lessons that we've been thinking about for children in COVID have come from from HIV. 20 00:02:17,250 --> 00:02:24,750 But but one of the things that really came out was that when a family is under enormous stress, 21 00:02:25,140 --> 00:02:31,020 and that happens when you have a health crisis and an economic crisis and a mental health crisis, 22 00:02:31,770 --> 00:02:39,270 that and also when this bereavement in the family that you see rates of of violence 23 00:02:39,270 --> 00:02:44,310 against children go up and actually rates against violence in the household go up. 24 00:02:44,550 --> 00:02:49,620 And and that's even worse when you're trapped in a household together and unable to go out. 25 00:02:49,620 --> 00:02:54,420 And UNICEF showed, you know, 50% increases in violence during lockdowns. 26 00:02:55,350 --> 00:03:05,429 And so what we need is evidence based services that can reduce those risks and and help families to deal with these 27 00:03:05,430 --> 00:03:11,610 incredibly stressful situations without getting to the point where they're screaming and shouting and hitting each other, 28 00:03:11,610 --> 00:03:20,850 which is, you know, I think everyone who who's just made it through this last two years probably feels closer to. 29 00:03:21,030 --> 00:03:25,950 Than we ever have before, because we all saw what a huge strain it was on our relationships. 30 00:03:26,580 --> 00:03:29,790 So let's before we get to without trying not to get to go to. Sure. 31 00:03:30,450 --> 00:03:34,740 What kinds of interventions did you develop through your work with HIV AIDS? 32 00:03:34,980 --> 00:03:39,480 Well, we worked very closely with W.H.O. and UNICEF, and we continue to do so. 33 00:03:40,590 --> 00:03:49,950 And really, the and the there are a range of interventions which help reduce family stress and reduce violence against children. 34 00:03:50,700 --> 00:03:55,650 But probably the most effective one is parenting programs. 35 00:03:56,310 --> 00:03:59,750 And they are they're all pretty much the same. 36 00:03:59,770 --> 00:04:02,190 There's lots of different ones, but they're all pretty much the same. 37 00:04:02,190 --> 00:04:14,339 They're like, you know, I don't know, personal and aerial, you know, laundry liquids and and they what they do is they traditional and based programs. 38 00:04:14,340 --> 00:04:20,430 They bring families together in a group for, you know, five or eight or 12 or 14 sessions. 39 00:04:21,480 --> 00:04:26,190 And they they help families build positive relationships. 40 00:04:26,190 --> 00:04:32,310 So you do things like spending time one on one focussed time every day with your child or your teenager, 41 00:04:32,850 --> 00:04:39,670 and you learn about how to do problem solving with them, you know, when they when they stay out late at night. 42 00:04:39,690 --> 00:04:44,160 How do you deal with that? How do you how do you work out a solution that works with them? 43 00:04:44,800 --> 00:04:50,490 It teaches you about building household rules and managing problem behaviour. 44 00:04:50,610 --> 00:04:54,209 How do you how do you manage it in non-violent but effective ways? 45 00:04:54,210 --> 00:05:02,850 Because that's what parents really need. Actually they need something which works, which doesn't raise the stress and also teaches families, 46 00:05:02,850 --> 00:05:08,600 particularly for adolescents, about how do you how do you manage the risks out in the world for them? 47 00:05:08,610 --> 00:05:16,880 How do you plan with a teenager to keep them safe and online risks increasingly so that 48 00:05:16,890 --> 00:05:23,820 these sort of sets of of interventions and when we started the work in about 2012, 49 00:05:24,630 --> 00:05:30,480 all of the evidence based interventions and there were some and that there are some were commercialised. 50 00:05:31,020 --> 00:05:34,320 So they were developed by academics and then turned into companies. 51 00:05:35,580 --> 00:05:42,990 So they're really only available to families who could pay for that resource for governments in very high income countries. 52 00:05:43,100 --> 00:05:51,540 Yes, yes. So so the US in Australia, in some parts of Europe, they were using these commercialised programs, but they're very expensive. 53 00:05:51,540 --> 00:05:57,660 And so for a for a low income country, it was completely impossible. 54 00:05:58,410 --> 00:06:09,480 And so we decided with W.H.O. and UNICEF and a colleagues in South Africa in the UK to develop and test a set of free versions, 55 00:06:09,780 --> 00:06:14,860 non commercialised versions. And we spent about ten years doing that. 56 00:06:14,930 --> 00:06:21,780 You have to have different ones for different age groups. It's different strategies between a two year old and a 17 year old. 57 00:06:23,190 --> 00:06:30,540 So some commonalities there. And as we developed and tested them, they were also scaled up. 58 00:06:30,990 --> 00:06:45,030 So by by the end of 2019, they were delivered in, I think 29 countries took to about 300,000 people, which by these NGOs is global and generally. 59 00:06:45,200 --> 00:06:52,760 I either governments or buy us the US aid, but also by NGOs and some faith based organisations. 60 00:06:52,970 --> 00:06:57,530 I mean, some we didn't know about, you know, everything was free and available online. 61 00:06:57,530 --> 00:07:00,530 So you only know about the people who contact us. 62 00:07:02,090 --> 00:07:06,210 And at the time we thought that was good. But then everything, you know, everything changed. 63 00:07:07,140 --> 00:07:16,730 So yeah, so we've got to cope with now. So how, where can you remember when you first heard that something was going on in China? 64 00:07:16,730 --> 00:07:22,219 And how can you can you recall the stages of how you became aware that this was actually 65 00:07:22,220 --> 00:07:27,290 going to have a global impact and was something that way that you could step into? 66 00:07:28,490 --> 00:07:40,370 I think. I think the moment where we realised it was not about the epidemic, 67 00:07:40,610 --> 00:07:55,370 it was lockdown and there was really about a week when lockdowns hit across the world and it was must have been in the end of February 2020. 68 00:07:57,030 --> 00:08:00,750 And for me it was a realisation when my, my, 69 00:08:00,930 --> 00:08:08,459 I had a one year old and a three year old at that point and we got a message from the nursery saying 70 00:08:08,460 --> 00:08:12,450 the nursery was closing at the end of the week and it was I think it must have been about a Tuesday. 71 00:08:14,030 --> 00:08:24,680 And I woke up that morning at 5:00 in the morning with this absolute horror of thinking, how was I going to look after two children and work? 72 00:08:24,950 --> 00:08:35,270 Like, how is this going to be possible? And when I was a social worker, what you saw consistently and of course this is reflected in national data, 73 00:08:36,020 --> 00:08:42,320 is that every time there is a even a school holiday, you see rises in child abuse. 74 00:08:43,460 --> 00:08:53,270 And if you look at data on Ebola, on HIV, every time there's a health emergency, you see rises in child abuse and. 75 00:08:55,050 --> 00:08:59,340 And we also could see that these lockdowns were going to cause economic crisis, 76 00:08:59,340 --> 00:09:05,520 and economic crisis leads to rises in child abuse, also violence against between adults and families. 77 00:09:06,690 --> 00:09:22,620 And I think what I realised in this in this very sobering moment was that we were going to be seeing that on an on a global scale and that we needed, 78 00:09:22,620 --> 00:09:27,480 if we were going to we had to do something and we had to do it very, very fast. 79 00:09:29,160 --> 00:09:37,290 And that morning, I think I literally got up out of bed at 5:00 in the morning and wrote to colleagues 80 00:09:37,650 --> 00:09:41,970 at Oxford and University of Cape Town in Stellenbosch who had worked with on this. 81 00:09:42,540 --> 00:09:47,399 And then to our colleagues at W.H.O., at UNICEF, at U.S. Aid, 82 00:09:47,400 --> 00:09:54,240 at CDC and the Global Partnership to End Violence and a range of kind of partners that 83 00:09:54,240 --> 00:09:59,250 we'd worked with over the years on these evidence based parenting programs and said, 84 00:10:00,060 --> 00:10:07,420 you know, we have to do something now. And I think that email might be something that Baldwin would like to have. 85 00:10:07,450 --> 00:10:13,460 Gosh, I don't know where it is. It's a huge chain it became because, of course, they all responded. 86 00:10:13,470 --> 00:10:17,940 I mean, amazingly, you know, I've never seen the speed. They all responded. 87 00:10:17,940 --> 00:10:24,720 By midday that day, we had a meeting and and I have like three days because the nursery was closing. 88 00:10:25,110 --> 00:10:33,479 We had a meeting that day. We all decided we were going to convert these evidence based programs, in-person programs, 89 00:10:33,480 --> 00:10:39,629 into the simplest possible digital resources and remote resources that we could do. 90 00:10:39,630 --> 00:10:44,520 And everyone threw in, you know, what should they look like? We said we'd do simple worksheets. 91 00:10:44,850 --> 00:10:49,440 USAID's said, Let's do public service announcements, let's do radio announcements. 92 00:10:49,830 --> 00:11:00,140 We thought like, what can we do? That is the simplest possible distillation of all of this, and then over a whole set of other partners, you know. 93 00:11:00,300 --> 00:11:09,390 So they brought in partners like UNODC, who we hadn't worked with before and, you know, kind of KDC office for drugs and crime, right? 94 00:11:09,700 --> 00:11:16,469 Yes. So new partners within the UN and a colleague brought in a set of faith based partners, World Without Orphans, 95 00:11:16,470 --> 00:11:21,690 which is this huge global Christian network that, you know, we'd never worked with faith based partners before. 96 00:11:23,220 --> 00:11:31,740 And over a sort of ten fairly horrendous days, we wrote these tip sheets, which is what we started with, 97 00:11:32,130 --> 00:11:37,130 and then we had inputs from every single agency, but not just every agency. 98 00:11:37,140 --> 00:11:48,180 So, for example, UNICEF sent to ten teams within UNICEF, each of whom had five people in them, all of whom wrote comments and sent them back. 99 00:11:48,180 --> 00:11:54,540 And this was true of every agency. So we then had to collate this kind of massive comment. 100 00:11:54,660 --> 00:11:59,370 How many colleagues did you have working on that? It was Jamie and myself, Jamie Lachman and myself. 101 00:11:59,370 --> 00:12:03,130 Yeah. At that point, we didn't we didn't have it wasn't possible. 102 00:12:03,150 --> 00:12:08,969 Like we didn't have a team, you know, we were just starting to work and at the same time colleagues were setting up. 103 00:12:08,970 --> 00:12:14,910 So we were trying to collate and incorporate and adapt, you know, all sorts of things we had to think about. 104 00:12:14,910 --> 00:12:24,090 Like, you know, if you were going to make it global, you couldn't have you couldn't have a picture of a table. 105 00:12:25,680 --> 00:12:31,950 We had to make the people look like no one. They were blue, you know, they couldn't have clothes on them. 106 00:12:32,460 --> 00:12:35,850 You had to adapt things for COVID. 107 00:12:35,850 --> 00:12:42,870 You couldn't say when you're when your kids make you want to scream, take a step outside and take a deep breath. 108 00:12:42,880 --> 00:12:47,290 Because you can't take a step outside because a lot of places, you know, you are in your house. 109 00:12:47,290 --> 00:12:52,890 So we have to think, how do you deal with with those situations where you might be in one room with ten people? 110 00:12:54,060 --> 00:12:58,740 So we had to adapt. We adapted for some specific COVID advice as well. 111 00:12:59,490 --> 00:13:09,120 And all of this in this kind of crazy cycle, whilst colleagues led by Enga Wessels and colleagues were setting up a kind of system. 112 00:13:09,630 --> 00:13:13,620 So we were getting designers to design how it would how these would look. 113 00:13:13,620 --> 00:13:17,489 We were setting up a system for delivery, you know, 114 00:13:17,490 --> 00:13:26,060 how do you get the resources to as many people as possible and track who you're getting them to and how they're how they're reaching? 115 00:13:26,070 --> 00:13:30,720 So they could you you used the word digital earlier, but you presume you can't assume that people have got access. 116 00:13:30,900 --> 00:13:39,690 Absolutely. And what happened was and we made them open source, we made an instant decision to make it open source, which is, you know, 117 00:13:40,260 --> 00:13:47,370 sort of slightly more than we'd ever done before, because open source means people can change whatever they want and you have to trust people. 118 00:13:47,490 --> 00:13:51,270 But we didn't have time to have control. We have to trust people. 119 00:13:52,380 --> 00:13:57,330 And. And we at the same time, of course, amassed a team. 120 00:13:57,330 --> 00:14:01,920 You know, we diverted lots of our colleagues onto this work. They built a website in 4 hours. 121 00:14:02,190 --> 00:14:05,310 You know, it was it was it was an amazing piece of work. 122 00:14:06,390 --> 00:14:12,990 And, um, and then they just started spreading, you know, we had them ready and starting to go out. 123 00:14:12,990 --> 00:14:16,020 Within ten days, a colleague set up translators. 124 00:14:16,830 --> 00:14:19,950 So we had translators from the university, from Facebook. 125 00:14:20,550 --> 00:14:30,209 Um, we had an Italian insurance company called generalI got, um, did a hackathon, a staff hackathon. 126 00:14:30,210 --> 00:14:39,300 They translated into 30 languages, this faith based network world without orphans that had people all over the world did another 40 languages. 127 00:14:39,300 --> 00:14:42,660 You know, it was within two days, you know, it was incredible speed. 128 00:14:42,660 --> 00:14:49,469 And then they had to set up a system whereby you could get the translated versions into the into the tip sheet. 129 00:14:49,470 --> 00:14:52,620 So they were setting up digital systems for translation. 130 00:14:53,310 --> 00:14:59,760 I would say that the imagery was, as you say, what you tried to make that universal so that yeah, although then people started changing the imagery. 131 00:14:59,910 --> 00:15:05,430 So we saw, I mean, many of them use the these kind of blue blobs, 132 00:15:06,450 --> 00:15:13,950 but we saw in all sorts of countries they would develop their own versions and create their own graphics and change it for what they wanted. 133 00:15:15,900 --> 00:15:21,960 And I think Saudi Arabia, they put hijabs on some of the blobs which we Yeah. 134 00:15:22,100 --> 00:15:29,040 Which we were amazed at because they were kind of non gendered of how they managed to decide which ones were male and female. 135 00:15:29,040 --> 00:15:38,249 But um, and then, and then this kind of, there was just this incredible adaptation and sharing, you know, 136 00:15:38,250 --> 00:15:44,610 and people use them in all sorts of ways, I mean, ways that we could never have anticipated, you know, we would. 137 00:15:45,240 --> 00:15:50,400 And what about there's just one question in my mind. I mean, presumably some of the people you wanted to reach weren't literate. 138 00:15:51,030 --> 00:16:02,129 So. Yes, so able to. So, for example, in in places like Lao and I think Cameroon, they actually put them on loudspeakers. 139 00:16:02,130 --> 00:16:07,170 So they they recorded them and put them on data sticks and they plugged the data 140 00:16:07,170 --> 00:16:11,249 sticks into loudspeakers and people walked up and down through the villages. 141 00:16:11,250 --> 00:16:15,120 People wouldn't look down, so they couldn't come out of houses, but they walked up and down through the villages, 142 00:16:15,120 --> 00:16:20,310 blasting out the messages, and they did that in something like 50,000 villages. 143 00:16:20,940 --> 00:16:25,530 Um, in other countries they did lots of radio shows. 144 00:16:25,530 --> 00:16:30,479 They were on national TV in places like Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan. 145 00:16:30,480 --> 00:16:38,490 They made them into cartoons. And then because they were in Russian, they managed to get them right across a whole set of Eastern European countries. 146 00:16:39,120 --> 00:16:46,320 And the cartoons had these very glamorous looking mothers with high heels, which wasn't quite how we were experiencing it. 147 00:16:48,510 --> 00:16:56,700 And then doNis started coming in actually after the first couple of weeks of the OQ Foundation, the Lego Foundation, 148 00:16:56,700 --> 00:17:03,810 the Human Safety Net Foundation came and offered support and just said, Look, we've heard you're doing this, can we help? 149 00:17:04,590 --> 00:17:11,760 And we managed to get very swift. You know, within a couple of weeks they'd given us money that allowed us to continue. 150 00:17:11,760 --> 00:17:14,970 I think we probably couldn't have if we hadn't had that, 151 00:17:17,310 --> 00:17:21,780 which was amazing because we kind of weren't even thinking, you know, we got some money from the university. 152 00:17:21,780 --> 00:17:28,290 They had a COVID fund, which was incredibly helpful and quick and just allowed us to move. 153 00:17:30,540 --> 00:17:36,900 And then and then we built a whole team. We had 30 people, you know, because we had to have people with every language from every region. 154 00:17:37,230 --> 00:17:40,470 It was a completely global team. None of them ever met each other. 155 00:17:40,500 --> 00:17:50,639 You know, they would. They would. It was almost impossible to have a meeting time because it was, you know, from Indonesia to to, you know, to Kenya. 156 00:17:50,640 --> 00:17:55,860 The time difference is so huge. Um, but, you know, it was incredible. 157 00:17:56,220 --> 00:17:59,850 So, and that was called the COVID 19 Emergency Parents Parenting Response. 158 00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:03,840 Yeah, I mean, it got called lots of things. It's just who cares? 159 00:18:04,020 --> 00:18:08,520 Yes. Well, I just have to sort of document these things and. 160 00:18:08,520 --> 00:18:12,320 Oh, and yeah. So I made a note that it was cool to play. 161 00:18:12,330 --> 00:18:17,280 They were cool, playful parenting responses. Is that right? How important was the the playfulness side of it? 162 00:18:17,910 --> 00:18:28,950 I think there's there's some things that we realised very rapidly as we were working and engaging and the first one was the parents. 163 00:18:28,950 --> 00:18:35,549 You know, traditional parenting programmes focus a lot on the parent child relationship or parent can mean anyone looking after a child. 164 00:18:35,550 --> 00:18:39,140 You do have to be your biological child. You could be a grandparent or a foster parent. 165 00:18:39,980 --> 00:18:50,580 Um, but what we realised in COVID was that we needed first to support parents with their own stress and mental health. 166 00:18:51,000 --> 00:18:57,000 And our first tip sheet was all about parents. And all about what they could do to support their own stress. 167 00:18:57,000 --> 00:19:01,820 Because when you're under so much stress and pressure, you know, 168 00:19:01,860 --> 00:19:08,340 and people were trying to like homeschool their kids whilst working or they'd lost their jobs or they're, you know, desperately poor. 169 00:19:08,970 --> 00:19:13,860 You can't deal with you know, you can't deal with the kids if you don't have some strategies for yourself. 170 00:19:14,700 --> 00:19:21,960 So parent support was kind of became very much a number one, but also to, to, um, 171 00:19:22,710 --> 00:19:30,420 to just introduce some moments of time that could be enjoyable for parents and children or teenagers. 172 00:19:31,170 --> 00:19:34,950 And, you know, we often I think, you know, we weren't thinking about playfulness. 173 00:19:34,950 --> 00:19:41,940 We were thinking about, um, you know, all the horror and fear that was, was at that time. 174 00:19:42,690 --> 00:19:46,890 But there's this amazing evidence that shows that if you play with kids for 5 minutes a day, 175 00:19:47,370 --> 00:19:52,950 you know, and even the most stressed parent can probably manage 5 minutes in a day, 176 00:19:53,580 --> 00:19:59,940 you know, even if it's while you're doing the washing up together, you know, you can you can improve relationships and outcomes. 177 00:19:59,940 --> 00:20:03,510 You can reduce stress and violence really substantially over time. 178 00:20:05,010 --> 00:20:08,490 And so we really wanted to say, you know, how can you just have some moments? 179 00:20:09,390 --> 00:20:12,800 But not not not in a stressful way. 180 00:20:12,810 --> 00:20:18,210 You know, I remember reading when I was, you know, and I was doing all this for two small children at home. 181 00:20:19,410 --> 00:20:26,700 And I can remember reading this was months later. People were putting up, you know, like advice for parents of things to do, activities to do. 182 00:20:27,150 --> 00:20:31,830 And I clicked on one and it said, Find six sheets of sticky back plastic. 183 00:20:32,270 --> 00:20:36,490 I thought, Why the [INAUDIBLE] would I find that spiky but plastic, you know, 184 00:20:36,720 --> 00:20:41,530 like I'm looking after two children are working full time and all the shops are shop 185 00:20:41,580 --> 00:20:46,680 like what you know and I just thought you you've got to come at it on parents. 186 00:20:46,920 --> 00:20:50,790 So what what were some of the tips that that you did put in your resources? 187 00:20:52,020 --> 00:20:56,759 So they were really mainly distilled versions of what was in these evidence based programs. 188 00:20:56,760 --> 00:21:02,040 And that was actually how we were able to get all the and all the UN agencies to endorse 189 00:21:02,040 --> 00:21:06,840 them because they had already were already endorsing these evidence based programs. 190 00:21:07,020 --> 00:21:10,470 We hadn't had 12 randomised controlled trials showing they're effective. 191 00:21:10,830 --> 00:21:13,140 They they wouldn't and shouldn't have endorsed them. 192 00:21:14,450 --> 00:21:22,280 But things like very simple things like when you when you when you get to a point where you want to scream, 193 00:21:22,550 --> 00:21:26,180 you know, and it can happen once a day or 50 times a day. 194 00:21:27,140 --> 00:21:31,070 You take a moment, turn away and breathe in and out ten times. 195 00:21:32,150 --> 00:21:37,910 And usually at that point when you've done that, you're much less likely to, to do something you'll regret. 196 00:21:39,120 --> 00:21:47,990 Um, to take, to take one minute a day for every parent and just do a simple breathing exercise, you know, 197 00:21:48,740 --> 00:21:54,080 to at the end of every day as a parent, to praise yourself for something you've done well that day. 198 00:21:54,390 --> 00:22:01,460 You know, rather than thinking, God, another terrible day. How can I do this tomorrow to just take a moment and say, you know, it was hard. 199 00:22:01,760 --> 00:22:06,460 This one thing I did, I did well, even if the one thing was I didn't scream, you know. 200 00:22:07,430 --> 00:22:15,410 And what about the play aspects of the I mean, we. Did you have specific suggestions about how play could be introduced into interaction? 201 00:22:15,440 --> 00:22:19,910 Yeah. You know, it's actually really simple. You don't have to get you don't need sticky back plastic. 202 00:22:20,330 --> 00:22:24,980 You know, what you need to do is for five or ten or 20 minutes a day, 203 00:22:25,370 --> 00:22:31,130 you you sit or stand or whatever with your child and you let them direct what you did. 204 00:22:32,570 --> 00:22:34,219 You don't have to create something. 205 00:22:34,220 --> 00:22:43,970 You know, a small child will will want to do something with you, show you them their Lego or, you know, take you to look at something they've made. 206 00:22:44,780 --> 00:22:52,490 And an older teenager might actually not really want to interact at all, but might just want to sit with you, you know, or you might. 207 00:22:53,180 --> 00:22:58,010 And we did have ideas, you know, but, you know, with a teenager, you can say something like, you know, 208 00:22:59,030 --> 00:23:06,230 what's a country you'd like to visit, you know, and just just have something where it's led by them. 209 00:23:07,040 --> 00:23:11,800 Um, teenagers tend to be a bit less, um, they show their, 210 00:23:11,840 --> 00:23:18,680 their enjoyment in appreciation of a lot less than the younger children, but that doesn't mean they're not appreciating it. 211 00:23:20,720 --> 00:23:25,550 And sometimes with teenagers, people say, we just sat and watch TV together for 10 minutes, you know? 212 00:23:25,820 --> 00:23:29,180 But when you don't have you know, when you've got so much on. 213 00:23:29,570 --> 00:23:31,160 Parents weren't able to do that. 214 00:23:31,160 --> 00:23:37,520 Or the only time they were interacting was when they were trying to get kids to home school, which is not a fun or playful interaction. 215 00:23:37,520 --> 00:23:41,000 It's a miserable, stressful interaction for many, you know. 216 00:23:43,040 --> 00:23:50,720 But, you know, we were also trying to suggest things that would work for a, you know, a high income parent in Washington, D.C. 217 00:23:51,050 --> 00:23:59,030 Right through to a, um, you know, a parent in Nigeria in a shack with 15 people. 218 00:23:59,480 --> 00:24:03,920 And so it's pretty hard. You know, you've got to make things very simple at that point. 219 00:24:04,280 --> 00:24:09,970 Yeah. So what I mean, this is a question I meant to ask before we talked about the actual interventions, but. 220 00:24:12,470 --> 00:24:19,310 Were there specific threats to children and young people that the COVID pandemic presented 221 00:24:19,310 --> 00:24:24,740 that weren't just the same as other stressors that you've talked about earlier? 222 00:24:27,200 --> 00:24:32,770 I think what we learnt about COVID was that it wasn't that things we knew, it was that they were exacerbating. 223 00:24:33,590 --> 00:24:46,530 So, you know that suddenly at a global level, people are experiencing economic crisis and incredibly challenging mental health. 224 00:24:46,560 --> 00:24:54,680 You know, there's been lots of data on this, but, you know, the stress and uncertainty, the fear, the fear of contagion, 225 00:24:54,680 --> 00:25:01,580 the fear of death, that there was very, you know, very sharply rising levels of bereavement and severe sickness. 226 00:25:02,750 --> 00:25:06,790 Can you put a figure on that? How many? Well, 227 00:25:06,830 --> 00:25:10,840 we we know now and I've been working with colleagues that there have been now about 10.5 228 00:25:10,840 --> 00:25:16,730 million children who've lost a caregiver in the space of two years to COVID associated death. 229 00:25:17,750 --> 00:25:25,850 That many more, you know, family members and parents with COVID, with long COVID and all the stresses of trying to parent with that. 230 00:25:26,300 --> 00:25:33,950 But also, I think there's, you know, lockdown and lockdown itself presented this, you know, huge stress, 231 00:25:33,950 --> 00:25:40,910 not only trapped together, but you're also unable to access services that alleviate that stress. 232 00:25:40,920 --> 00:25:46,640 So you're not able to you're not able to send your kids to school. 233 00:25:46,940 --> 00:25:49,880 You know, you're not able to get social services if you need them. 234 00:25:50,960 --> 00:25:59,570 A lot of you know, for a lot of families, that's a that's a break that you have from your kids. 235 00:26:00,740 --> 00:26:08,210 And is there data on that, on the extent to which children were subject to increases in violence and and abuse? 236 00:26:08,510 --> 00:26:12,920 Yeah, UNICEF's done some really good evidence on this. 237 00:26:13,190 --> 00:26:20,899 It's hard because what you what you see in many cases you saw reduced rates of reports, 238 00:26:20,900 --> 00:26:26,360 of calls to things like child lines because people didn't have privacy to make calls. 239 00:26:27,020 --> 00:26:32,150 So you saw the ups and downs as mainly as you saw lockdowns change. 240 00:26:32,450 --> 00:26:40,190 But they estimate of 30 to 50% overall increase in in violence against children during the lockdown period. 241 00:26:41,890 --> 00:26:44,890 My colleague Jamie Lachman, who co-led all of this. 242 00:26:44,890 --> 00:26:46,390 You know, we did everything together. 243 00:26:46,930 --> 00:26:57,460 He did a series of really kind of amazing pre-post studies and retrospective studies on the COVID 19 resources and found, 244 00:26:58,050 --> 00:27:06,550 you know, they're not as good as a randomised trial in evidence. We couldn't do a randomised trial but found very that the parents reported that 245 00:27:06,640 --> 00:27:13,990 these resources really gave them very substantial support and that we were 246 00:27:13,990 --> 00:27:20,590 surprised by how strong we had sort of 70% reported reduction in violence and 247 00:27:21,520 --> 00:27:25,760 80 something percent reported improvements in parent child relationships. 248 00:27:25,780 --> 00:27:33,970 And so it's probably an overestimate, but at the same time you realise that that. 249 00:27:35,160 --> 00:27:39,240 Something. You know, parents needed something. Evidence base that could get to them. 250 00:27:39,460 --> 00:27:48,300 Mm hmm. And I guess even the fact that somebody had worried about them and produced these resources because they felt they needed them, 251 00:27:48,750 --> 00:27:52,560 must have been in itself supportive. Oh, I don't know. You can't tell. 252 00:27:53,190 --> 00:27:58,280 I can't tell if that was helpful or not. Yeah. Um, I'm a bit more of a fan of. 253 00:27:58,430 --> 00:28:06,660 Of the hardcore evidence, what works. And so, I mean, I think your work has always been very collaborative, 254 00:28:06,670 --> 00:28:13,740 but would you say that this project sort of increased the level of collaboration that you did with academic colleagues? 255 00:28:13,980 --> 00:28:20,760 I mean, I think traditionally academic life is regarded as quite a bit competitive and embracing to get papers out. 256 00:28:20,760 --> 00:28:25,740 But I mean, certainly what I've heard from others is that working on the projects, 257 00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:31,470 everybody was after the same goal and not worrying about the ref and all the rest. 258 00:28:32,970 --> 00:28:39,530 Um, I think I'm lucky. You know, we worked as we've been working as a big team who haven't been worrying about that for years. 259 00:28:39,540 --> 00:28:42,900 So that kind of wasn't, um. 260 00:28:44,220 --> 00:28:53,880 I think, you know, I don't think that was a concern, but what it really did was increase and strengthen our collaborations with our policy partners. 261 00:28:53,910 --> 00:28:58,020 Yes. And widened your networks. You talked about things you hadn't worked with before. 262 00:28:58,290 --> 00:29:04,559 And and and one thing that it really led to, which has been amazing is that and I mean, 263 00:29:04,560 --> 00:29:13,500 I guess I should say that to set up an interagency, um, partnership normally takes three years of careful and complex negotiations. 264 00:29:13,500 --> 00:29:21,870 And we did it in days. Had we waited two months or a month, we probably wouldn't have been able to do it at all, 265 00:29:21,870 --> 00:29:28,080 because by then all the agencies had set up covered committees which had to approve everything and it slowed things down. 266 00:29:28,440 --> 00:29:36,960 But we got in before those were created. And what would it led to actually was that, um, 267 00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:47,010 a group of UN agencies have now made a formal commitment to reach families with evidence based parenting support globally, 268 00:29:47,430 --> 00:29:54,420 and it's called the Global Initiative to Support Parents. And it's led to this kind of, you know, for the first time, 269 00:29:54,810 --> 00:30:04,080 a sort of formalised interagency partnership to to take what we did during COVID and deliver more intensive support. 270 00:30:04,800 --> 00:30:09,660 That was the big feedback we got from everyone was they said, this is great, but we actually need more. 271 00:30:10,320 --> 00:30:19,320 Um, you know, tips are helpful, but what we need is we, we really need to try and deliver the more intensive programs on a global scale, 272 00:30:19,320 --> 00:30:28,860 which presumably involves being more 1 to 1 more, a more personal interaction, or it involves really getting good at digital versions. 273 00:30:28,860 --> 00:30:37,349 And we and and Jamie Lachman is now leading a huge, huge initiative. 274 00:30:37,350 --> 00:30:46,919 It's it's probably about £20 million in total of developing these these programmes into digital and hybrid kind of interventions. 275 00:30:46,920 --> 00:30:55,800 So you might be using an app with a parenting programme, but you're also part of a WhatsApp group with other families and a facilitator and, 276 00:30:56,040 --> 00:31:00,630 you know, trying to work out how could we deliver them on, on the scale to which they needed. 277 00:31:01,920 --> 00:31:07,350 So do you think the pandemic has has I mean, that's obviously something that needed to happen anyway. 278 00:31:08,010 --> 00:31:15,400 Do you think the COVID pandemic pushed it, gave it a higher profile and made it easier to raise funds, for example? 279 00:31:15,450 --> 00:31:21,570 Absolutely. I mean, we never intended it when we started, but I think what happened was that suddenly. 280 00:31:24,470 --> 00:31:28,550 Suddenly parenting was foremost in the minds of many people who it had not been. 281 00:31:29,240 --> 00:31:35,910 And we would talk with senior government ministers and, you know. 282 00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:41,580 Senior people in UN agencies, particularly men, often men. 283 00:31:43,440 --> 00:31:52,800 And we would talk to them about the, the work we were doing and they would say, I'm, I'm stuck here with my three kids and they're driving me crazy. 284 00:31:53,160 --> 00:32:03,770 Can you send me the tapes? You know? And for many of these many of these people, they are not in in daily looking after their children. 285 00:32:03,780 --> 00:32:12,090 You know, many of these people are in situations where the you know, they're not stuck with their kids 24, seven for long periods of time. 286 00:32:12,690 --> 00:32:16,770 And I think it really did raise the profile of. 287 00:32:17,930 --> 00:32:26,990 Both the stress on parents and what parents needed, but also the the opportunities to deliver services. 288 00:32:28,720 --> 00:32:33,750 Mm. Since it's all covered. 289 00:32:33,760 --> 00:32:43,460 Yes. So you yourself were at home with two small children and you said you had those first three days before before the nursery closed down. 290 00:32:44,570 --> 00:32:51,960 How did it go on thereafter? How did it impact on your life? Clearly, you've had masses of work to do since it was pretty chaotic. 291 00:32:52,680 --> 00:33:04,650 My husband, my husband's also an academic at Oxford, and we we did about two months of kind of half days each, which was pretty, pretty chaotic. 292 00:33:04,670 --> 00:33:05,760 I can remember doing. 293 00:33:06,120 --> 00:33:19,350 I can remember once doing a big inter-agency meeting on Zoom whilst my three year old, my one year old tipped the kitchen table over together. 294 00:33:20,700 --> 00:33:29,370 Luckily, they were both fine, but and I used to have to do things like, you know, clean the bathroom while I was on UNICEF calls because, 295 00:33:30,030 --> 00:33:35,000 you know, if you're looking after kids and working full time, there's no time to clean the bathroom, you know? 296 00:33:35,190 --> 00:33:39,720 And I had to do the hoovering at 1:00 in the morning because my one year old was frightened of the Hoover. 297 00:33:40,050 --> 00:33:45,600 And, you know, it it was a pretty chaotic, you know, we just about money. 298 00:33:45,600 --> 00:33:52,800 And then because of the COVID work, I was able to get key worker status and that that really helps. 299 00:33:53,040 --> 00:33:56,100 You know, the key workers scheme was pretty fundamental. 300 00:33:56,130 --> 00:34:04,740 Yeah. So then I was, we were able to get a bit more support which took some of that maybe the first after the first four months. 301 00:34:05,600 --> 00:34:10,110 Um, but I think that was one of the most challenging things. 302 00:34:10,410 --> 00:34:16,979 And actually that's something that I think, you know, I had a huge UK or I grant and I said to them, 303 00:34:16,980 --> 00:34:24,720 can I use some of my money to pay for childcare, which I could do if I was travelling and they said No, because you're not travelling. 304 00:34:25,080 --> 00:34:31,230 And I thought that was there were some there were some decisions that could have been made better at that point. 305 00:34:31,530 --> 00:34:40,860 It would have really, really helped. But, you know, I think that's also the joy of working in a team that we were able to backstop each other. 306 00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:49,190 And did you and your family feel personally threatened by the virus itself, by the risk of catching it? 307 00:34:51,000 --> 00:34:56,640 I think we all did, didn't we? I mean, you know, I didn't say they didn't, but I think. 308 00:34:56,760 --> 00:34:59,860 I mean, I did. Yeah. Um. 309 00:35:02,680 --> 00:35:07,400 I think. Yeah. I mean, I think. There was so much confusion, wasn't there? 310 00:35:07,670 --> 00:35:10,790 You were trying to follow the rules, which constantly changed. 311 00:35:11,180 --> 00:35:18,469 And, you know, and I think you must have found that when every academic you speak to is not only looking at the government rules, 312 00:35:18,470 --> 00:35:22,310 but is also looking at the data in the evidence and questioning the government rules. 313 00:35:22,630 --> 00:35:32,900 So so we were looking at that, and that is the balance of trying to keep your children safe whilst also not leaving them as anxious messes, you know? 314 00:35:32,900 --> 00:35:39,139 And that's a real challenge. My one year old loved looking well, anything really. 315 00:35:39,140 --> 00:35:45,350 And he would lick the bollards in the street outside our house, the girls, you know. 316 00:35:47,480 --> 00:35:52,750 But but also what kind of you know. I was always having to think as well. 317 00:35:52,780 --> 00:35:55,930 What kind of advice do we give people that that can. 318 00:35:58,270 --> 00:36:02,170 That is feasible, you know, feasible for parents. 319 00:36:02,190 --> 00:36:06,010 And I think you have to be realistic. Mm hmm. Um. 320 00:36:07,860 --> 00:36:14,390 About about what you can do. And I you know, I don't know. 321 00:36:14,400 --> 00:36:17,760 It's easy with hindsight to say what we should or shouldn't have done. 322 00:36:18,330 --> 00:36:19,800 I think we all did the best we could. 323 00:36:22,530 --> 00:36:29,460 Um, but, you know, things I think things that were a real challenge with things like how do you, you know, kids need exercise. 324 00:36:29,790 --> 00:36:34,919 They need to run around. How do you do that in lockdown conditions, you know, and we we know. 325 00:36:34,920 --> 00:36:37,950 Wilks. Yes. WICKS Yeah, of course. 326 00:36:37,960 --> 00:36:41,400 And if you're in the UK and you have an Internet connection. That's right. 327 00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:49,940 And if you're in, you know, the Philippines or or Ghana, you know, what do you do? 328 00:36:49,950 --> 00:36:55,950 And we we had advice like, you know, everyone walks around the room, you know, ten times a day and, 329 00:36:55,950 --> 00:36:59,940 you know, can you like games that you could play that just got some energy out? 330 00:37:00,870 --> 00:37:07,700 Really a huge challenge. And did you do you think that. 331 00:37:09,220 --> 00:37:15,790 The fact that you were working on something that was going to help parents through the pandemic, help to support your own well-being. 332 00:37:16,300 --> 00:37:22,300 I mean, a lot of people, as you say, were stuck at home and couldn't do whatever it was they normally did. 333 00:37:23,380 --> 00:37:28,450 And so in some sense, I suppose, lost that sense of agency that is part of well-being. 334 00:37:28,480 --> 00:37:30,250 I don't know. I didn't think about it. I didn't have time. 335 00:37:33,770 --> 00:37:43,120 So, you know, we but by you know, by a couple of months and we were running a, you know, a massive program of of work and and research. 336 00:37:43,120 --> 00:37:51,880 And, um, and we were also starting to develop these digital programs, you know, which we rapidly realised we needed. 337 00:37:52,540 --> 00:37:55,839 So it was, yeah, I didn't have time. Well you exhausted. 338 00:37:55,840 --> 00:37:59,260 I mean, I think every parent was exhausted. 339 00:38:00,910 --> 00:38:09,880 I had, I had a colleague actually, um, who has five children and we used to go to university parks every day and walk around the park. 340 00:38:09,890 --> 00:38:14,140 So I used to see them with their five children. And I just think, okay, I can't complain. 341 00:38:14,470 --> 00:38:24,700 I have five. I had two. So has the experience of working on COVID changed your attitude or your approach to your work? 342 00:38:24,700 --> 00:38:30,910 And how would you like to see things change in the future? I think it definitely has in several ways. 343 00:38:30,940 --> 00:38:34,870 I mean, one way is that, you know, before COVID, I was only working in Africa. 344 00:38:35,380 --> 00:38:39,940 And, you know, then suddenly we were doing something absolutely global. 345 00:38:40,780 --> 00:38:44,739 And even I mean, I never thought I would never work in a high income country. 346 00:38:44,740 --> 00:38:52,590 But, you know, 33, 34 governments used our programs as part of their national COVID responses. 347 00:38:52,600 --> 00:38:57,550 And, you know, so we were working with all sorts of, you know, you know, 348 00:38:57,610 --> 00:39:02,409 all sorts of governments, anyone who needed or wanted it, you know, we were working with. 349 00:39:02,410 --> 00:39:08,650 And that was very different. And it really made me think for the first time, you know, can we do something global? 350 00:39:09,160 --> 00:39:14,170 You know, I hadn't thought on that scale before, but, you know, 351 00:39:14,170 --> 00:39:19,960 at the point where by the time we sort of stopped counting, which was probably about six months ago. 352 00:39:20,410 --> 00:39:24,430 And what had you do? You have these figures in your head? It's rather unfair to ask the figures. 353 00:39:24,430 --> 00:39:31,750 I can never remember numbers, but the numbers are on your website. But can you remember that the reach, the ultimate, the global reach? 354 00:39:31,960 --> 00:39:40,120 We did a low estimate and a high estimate, and we followed some guidelines about not sort of avoiding risk of double counting, 355 00:39:40,780 --> 00:39:43,900 but the low estimate was about 210 million families. 356 00:39:45,490 --> 00:39:54,390 Now there are 2 billion children in the world. So it's it's reasonably likely that we reach 10% one in ten children in the well, 357 00:39:54,410 --> 00:40:03,690 probably more because you tend to have more than one child in a family. And at that point, you start thinking if the need and demand is that great. 358 00:40:04,750 --> 00:40:09,230 Then something which we had been thinking about. 359 00:40:09,700 --> 00:40:14,110 You know, in January 2020, we were thinking about reaching hundreds of thousands. 360 00:40:15,070 --> 00:40:18,400 And you start thinking, okay, can we start thinking about hundreds of millions? 361 00:40:19,270 --> 00:40:22,450 And that is a step change. It's a real step change. 362 00:40:25,450 --> 00:40:28,510 And it's changed our perspective as we move forward. 363 00:40:29,530 --> 00:40:33,040 I still mainly carry US-Africa, but I'm willing to concede. 364 00:40:34,600 --> 00:40:43,090 And Jamie in particular has led this like so much work in in Europe, in Eastern Europe and in Asia and Francis Gardner as well. 365 00:40:43,390 --> 00:40:49,960 Really? I think you know, I think I think we there is capacity now to to reach globally. 366 00:40:52,080 --> 00:40:53,910 That's fantastic. Thank you very much.