why a lockdown would be catastrophic for vulnerable children

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I just wanted to highlight a few reasons why a lockdown would be life threatening for some children.

i work in a role where i deal with vulnerable families

A huge portion of these don't have the internet, don't have any food in their cupboards and rely on the support of social. services.

their children would not eat if they didn't get free breakfast and free school meals

their parents would not be able to survive if they did not have alcohol (withdrawal is deadly) and be very sick if they with drew fro. drugs

needle exchanges and drugs programmes are needed for face to face support daily

if social services stopped a lot of child neglect and abuse would sky rocket.

In those households an emergency removal is needed really. But then i know after 10 years of austerity there's nowhere for them to go. No homes left.

There's going to be a lot of casualties of this pandemic. The best we can hope for is that neighbours or others in the community will think of a child they know in this situation and check on them.

I totally understand and agree with all your points op.
However, there are also many people (the elderly, those with underlying health conditions, etc) for whom NOT Locking down could pose a catastrophic risk.
There are no easy answers. It’s very worrying.

Yes. DD's primary school has sent home a home working pack which relys on parents having laptops.

I did (probably rather naively) hope that they will be able to supply low income families with a tablet or old laptop to work from. They often sell off old tech equipment to raise money for the PTA so maybe some is kept aside for pupils that really don't have it.

Especially if two parents end up in hospital at the same time, with no one to look after their kids. In any household.

yes i don't have the answers but i just wanted to raise the point as i know those families won't be represented on here

Having recently completed my Safeguarding of Children level 2 (I also work with vulnerable children but due to medical reasons rather than neglect and social issues) I know where you are coming from.

I also worry about children being at risk from spending all their time with their own parents as school is often a safe place for some if these children. Substance abuse, neglect and domestic violence being the toxic trio.

Was very proud of our school who have organised a toy/book/game donation drive for families who have less if there is a lockdown and are also in contact with other services about how they can support vulnerable families over this period.

I know this goes on, and there are most probably families in my dc school in this situation, but it's heartbreaking to read.

I also work with these families and it worries me that they will go for potentially weeks without professionals having eyes on these children. Schools/nurseries are often their safe place and if that isn’t available god knows what will happen to them

There must be vulnerable children in other countries that are locking down. Have any of them got anything good going on we could copy? Whether government or community led I mean

You're right op, not to mention the inevitable esclation of domestic violence for women and children living with abusers. I wouldn't be at all surprised if we started to see "stress from isolation" used as an excuse in abuse cases. Either way it's a terrible situation :(

I work in children’s services and I’ve been worrying about this; a lot of these children need eyes on them to keep them safe and that’s going to decrease in the next few weeks

I work in drug services and I'm fairly confident that the majority of our service users will not self isolate. Of course some will but most definitely will not.

I don't know how that is going to work if our services are closed. We still use paper prescriptions so even if pharmacies were open there would be no prescription to collect. I suppose we could give a longer prescription but that would present different problems. Particularly if someone is normally on supervised consumption.

dh is a teacher and we were talking about schools maybe closing and the knock on effect for some kids, in that some kids DEPEND on school to eat. Its a safe place away from a chaotic/ abusive etc home. So for those school is needed?????? or something?

I worry about this too. There will be so many children who will go without proper meals, proper care and probably won't be isolated if Ill, I'm not in education anymore but it really worries me!

I read in the TES that part of school's safeguarding is to identify children at risk and assign a teacher to monitor them. Although I don't know how they will be able to fulfill free school meal entitlement. I guess food banks will step up.

The sad thing is OP, a lot of people aren't usually arsed, only potentially now as it might affect them. It is so sad what has been going on for years, and as has been said, having the means, resources and environment to self isolate is absolutely a privelledge.

but how can a teacher monitor a child in lockdown? they dont do it from home (which could be an hours drive from the school they work). the monitoring is done from school. plus they dont actually feed them etc.

We are trying to out some safeguarding in place, personal tutors will be attempting to check in with our vulnerable students daily but it's woefully inadequate.

The existence of so many of these families is why a prolonged shutdown can't work too. There will be looting etc. These desperate families aren't going to just sit there and die.

Our school is suggesting trying to keep the canteen open to support our vulnerable students

@lubeybooby

A vulnerable young person in China was left to starve to death.

And I bet he was one of many.

twnews.co.uk/gb-news/coronavirus-disabled-chinese-boy-16-starved-to-death-by-feckless-officials-while-his-dad-was-quarantined

keeping the school canteen open is a great idea! Maybe that`ll be adopted by other schools.

The whole thing is going to be so difficult to manage. For a start the vast majority of school kitchen staff are doing that work because the hours fit with their own school age children....

OP I keep saying this too. Many vulnerable children are facing a very bleak time and I’m not sure what the answer is. I’ll tell you what is a fucking disgrace is how as a society we have allowed this to happen before our eyes and failed to act properly. Unfortunately the old and infirm will not be the only victims of this.