Childcare and Wellbeing in Times of Covid-19: Developing crisis-resilient care solutions

高质量的幼儿教育和保育(ECEC)和课后保育(ASC)服务对于儿童的平等机会至关重要，对处境不利的儿童尤其如此。他们对支持父母的工作能力和家庭的经济安全也至关重要。新冠肺炎事件后学校和托儿设施的关闭以及其他与社会疏远的措施，同时出台了减少病毒传播及其对医疗体系负担的重要政策，造成了一场全国性的“托儿危机”，可能会对家庭的生计和福祉产生严重影响，尤其是对处境脆弱的家庭。由于新冠肺炎及其影响可能是持续的，迫切需要应对危机的解决方案，为关键工人以外的所有家庭提供高质量的托儿服务。我们知道，与自上而下的政策实施相比，基于社区的联合制作可以带来更可持续和更有效的当地解决方案，尤其是对于难以接触到的群体。该项目有两个目标：首先，它将整理一个证据基础，提供最全面的图景，说明新冠肺炎疫情在短期和长期内如何影响家庭的育儿安排和福祉。这将包括收集丰富的新数据(与父母和利益攸关方的深入访谈)，确定不同情况下家庭的具体育儿需求和挑战(包括社会经济背景、受保护特征和地理区域)，并通过对关于新冠肺炎影响的广泛数据来源的二次分析(包括具有国家代表性的调查和便利性样本)进行三角测量。其次，该项目将与地方和国家利益攸关方和政策制定者合作，开发一个共同制作的政策工具包，提供基于社区的实施和实践路径，以支持地方议会对危机的应对和当地社区在新冠肺炎大流行病期间及以后制定有效和可持续的托儿解决方案。这一儿童保育工具包将借鉴当地两个联合制作实验室(在农村和城市环境中)、不同儿童保育背景的绘图练习以及关于不同家庭群体的具体准入问题和需求的证据的整理，特别是那些处于脆弱环境中的家庭。创新的项目设计将全面的数据分析与针对本地服务解决方案的协作联合制作战略相结合，将率先设计具有弹性的托儿服务条款，在此次疫情期间及以后保护家庭福祉。我们对广泛数据的广泛分析将使我们能够找出现有数据中关于有幼儿的家庭在新冠肺炎疫情期间经历的差距，并就未来的数据收集需要哪些进一步的数据以及应包括哪些问题向政策制定者和数据收集者提出建议。我们与广泛的项目合作伙伴密切合作在决策和公民社会方面(如苏格兰政府、改善服务和倡导组织，如儿童贫困行动小组、缩小差距、单亲家庭苏格兰和苏格兰儿童)帮助确保我们的政策工具包有用并适用于正在进行的广泛的国家和区域新冠肺炎活动(例如“改变：托儿和养育”；“获得托儿基金”--项目；“关爱社区”--和“有韧性的社区”--项目；“弱势儿童的关键托儿”--方案)；其次，我们的合作伙伴在全国各地和不同部门广泛传播了这份文件。

High-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) and afterschool-care (ASC) services are crucial for children's equal opportunities, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. They are also crucial for supporting parents' ability to work and families' financial security. The closure of schools and childcare facilities and other social distancing measures in the wake of Covid-19, while important policies to reduce the spread of the virus and its burden on healthcare systems, created a national 'childcare crisis' with potentially severe effects on families' livelihoods and wellbeing, particularly for families in vulnerable circumstances. Since Covid-19 and its impacts are likely to be persistent, there is an urgent need for crisis-resilient solutions of high-quality childcare provision reaching all families beyond key workers.We know that community-based co-production can lead to more sustainable and effective local solutions than top-down policy-implementation, particularly for hard-to-reach groups. This project has two objectives: firstly, it will collate an evidence-base providing the most comprehensive picture on how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected families' childcarearrangements and wellbeing in the short and longer term. This will include collection of rich new data (in-depth interviews with parents and stakeholders) identifying the specific childcare needs and challenges of families in different circumstances (including socio-economic background, protected characteristics and geographical area), and its triangulation with secondary analysis of a wide range of data-sources on Covid-19 impact (including nationally representative surveys and convenience samples). Secondly, in partnership with local and national stakeholders and policymakers, the project will develop a co-produced policy-toolkit providing community-based implementation and practice pathways to support Local Councils' crisis responses and local communities in developing effective and sustainable childcare solutions during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond. This childcare-toolkit will draw lessons from two local co-production labs (in a rural and an urban setting), from mapping exercises of diverse childcare contexts, and the collation of evidence on specific access problems and needs of different groups of families, particularly those in vulnerable circumstances.The innovative project-design combining a comprehensive array of data analysis with a collaborative co-production strategy for local service solutions will be pioneering in designing resilient childcare provision that protects family wellbeing during this pandemic and beyond.Our extensive analysis of a wide range of data will allow us to identify gaps in the existing data on experiences of families with young children during the Covid-19 pandemic and to make recommendations to policy-makers and data-collectors on what further data is required and what questions should be included in future data-collection.Our close collaboration with a wide range of project-partners in policy-making and civil society (e.g. Scottish Government, The Improvement Service and advocacy organisations such as Child Poverty Action Group, Close the Gap, One Parent Families Scotland, and Children in Scotland) helps ensure that our policy-toolkit is useful and applicable for a wide range of ongoing national and regional Covid-19 activities (e.g. 'CHANGE: Childcare and Nurture'; 'Access to Childcare Fund'-projects; 'Caring Community'- and 'Resilient Community'-projects; 'Critical childcare for vulnerable children'-programmes), and secondly, that it is widely disseminated by our partners across the country and different sectors