Qualitative Longitudinal Interviews With Households: Impact of COVID-19 and Lockdown on Families With Young Children Living in Tower Hamlets, 2020-2022

Cameron, Claire Louise and Hauari, Hanan and Hollingworth, Katie and O'Brien, Margaret and Whitaker, Lydia and Bedford, Helen and Dickerson, Josie and Hayward, Andrew and Ucci, Marcella (2022). Qualitative Longitudinal Interviews With Households: Impact of COVID-19 and Lockdown on Families With Young Children Living in Tower Hamlets, 2020-2022. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-855830

Adverse direct and indirect impacts of the current COVID-19 pandemic will disproportionately fall on individuals and families from poorer backgrounds, those in public facing jobs and living in higher density housing. Tower Hamlets, the site of this study, with its pre-existing stark income and health inequalities is already a high-risk inner city area, placed in one of the richest global cities. This project will focus on the impacts of the lockdown, and its aftermath for the borough's young children, who are likely to experience new health and educational inequalities as a result of the unprecedented restrictions on mobility associated with slowing the spread of COVID-19 introduced on 23 March 2020. Tower Hamlets has a highly diverse population profile, with residents from a wide range of ethnicities and social and economic backgrounds, which offers an opportunity to identify how families deploy their interpersonal, economic and social resources to manage risks associated with living in lockdown and in recovery from lockdown. In close partnership with the borough Public Health and children's services team, we will run a repeat survey of 2000 couple and single parent families with children aged 0-4, and pregnant women; a longitudinal qualitative panel with approximately 60 household members including fathers and wider kin; and examine changing family support services, and emergent community resources such as mutual aid and peer networks. We are interested in families' cultural and inter-personal assets as well as their vulnerabilities: what new forms of managing family and community life have emerged and how are these novel methods helping young children? We will include two groups defined as vulnerable; pregnant women and shielded children. The survey tools chosen are those being run by the concurrent Born in Bradford (BiB) cohort study and by the International Network on Leave Policies and Research offering robust comparisons. Findings will help guide the borough's deployment of scarce resources in the recovery phase of the pandemic and will have relevance to all inner-city areas.

Data description (abstract)

The aim of our study was to assess the economic, social, and health impacts of the pandemic on families both expecting babies, and those with children under five living in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

Interview data was collected as part of the second phase of the research; a repeated longitudinal qualitative panel of 20 households purposively sampled from the Wave 1 survey to represent different household structures and types.
In-depth interviews were conducted via video or telephone with up to 2 adults per household (mothers and fathers. Wave 1 of the panel interviews took place between January 2021 and April 2021 with wave 2 between September - December 2021.

Our sampling strategy was carefully constructed
to ensure representation of the following dimensions: Household type (single, couple, multi-generational); Income (low, moderate, and high); Ethnicity (White, South Asian, Other ethnic groups).
Only one household member could complete the survey. If sampled, they were then contacted to take part in the qualitative panel along with other adult members of their households.

The qualitative interviews utilised supporting interactive activities and focused on children’s development in the context of family’s everyday lives during the pandemic, how parents and kin supported each other emotionally and practically, and how families are engaged in their communities during the Covid-19 era.

Interviews were focused on target child [under 5 years old at wave 1], identified as CHILD A in transcripts.

Households were interviewed approximately 6 months later.

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