Inpatient mental health wards during Covid-19
Focusing on the experiences of children living in mental health wards and how Covid-19 and lockdown has affected their hospital experience
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Governments have a duty to work together to prevent asylum seeking children from risking their lives
This summer hundreds of children risked their lives embarking on highly dangerous journeys from France to the UK by boat. After Covid-19 struck in March, child refugees abroad saw their already desperate living conditions deteriorate as support and aid fell away. In Calais, evictions and the dismantling of camps left children without shelter and basic […]
Lifting children out of poverty and eliminating child hunger is a moral imperative
Today MPs from across the political divide will support a Ten Minute Rule Bill introduced by the MP Emma Lewell Buck. The School Breakfast Bill seeks to provide schools in disadvantaged areas with the support required to give a free, healthy school breakfast to children. It would build on the existing National School Breakfast Programme […]
Your voice
Every year, we speak to children all over England to gather their views on what is going well for them, what isn’t, what needs to change and how. What children tell us influences our work for the coming year. Read our latest business plan consultation. We currently don’t have an open Voices survey.
Government scientists respond with more answers from children’s coronavirus questions
During a virtual event on the 11th of August, 12 children from across the UK had the opportunity to ask their own Covid-19 related questions covering different topic areas, such as social bubbles, face masks and public transport, which were answered by three government scientists, Professor Brooke Rogers, Professor Charlotte Watts and Professor Russell Viner. […]
Amid the coronavirus uncertainty, millions of children are back in school
Now is a good time to reflect on the progress that has been made as children have returned to school after so many months out of the classroom. Schools, teachers and children themselves have worked so hard to adapt to a new normal, from one-way hallways to staggered drop-offs, from classroom bubbles to shorter lunch […]
How lockdown affected children’s stress and anxiety
Children’s lives changed beyond recognition when full lockdown began on 23rd March. With schools shut to the majority of pupils, the regular rhythms of childhood and adolescence – from school runs and playtime, to exams, celebrations and graduation – were put on indefinite hold. Anecdotally, we know that many children struggled with the demands of […]
Help at Hand spotlight: championing the rights of children in care under Covid-19
There are more than 75,000 children in care in England. Although most spent the national Covid-19 lockdown in a place of safety, this stretch of time was not without difficulty. Our ‘Childhood in the time of Covid’ report published on 29th September outlines the many new pressures on social care services during this unprecedented time […]
Childhood in the time of Covid
Six months have passed since the Covid-19 pandemic took hold in this country and we entered an unprecedented lockdown. During this time, I have made it my Office’s mission to highlight the risks to children caused by the pandemic and the measures to contain it, particularly the most vulnerable, and push for their interests to […]
A comprehensive recovery package is needed to tackle rising tide of childhood vulnerability caused by the Covid crisis
Anne Longfield, Children’s Commissioner for England, has publishing a major new report examining the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on children. The report, ‘Childhood in the time of Covid’ calls for a comprehensive recovery package for children and provides a roadmap for what should be done to help children to recover from their experiences of […]
Stress among children in England during the coronavirus lockdown
A look at what children are worrying about both before, and during lockdown
Archived Content
Gaming the system
The overwhelming majority of children (93 percent) in the UK play video games. Yet despite its popularity, the culture of ‘gaming’- its rules and its rituals, the varying profiles of players, the risks they face – tends to be spoken of by adults, whether they be policymakers or parents, as if it were an alien […]
The state of child poverty and how we can tackle it
On the United Nations Day for Poverty Eradication we should never fail to be shocked that we are talking about child poverty when are one of the wealthiest countries on earth. Yet as all of us here know, the number of children living in poverty has been steadily increasing in recent years. There are around […]
EU children in Britain
If you are an EU citizen living in Britain, Brexit will affect your rights. This means you will need to apply for what the Government calls ‘settled status’ in Britain. What is settled status? Settled status is a special immigration category for EU nationals who have made Britain their home. Once you have settled status […]
Children’s Commissioner for England response to CQC report on the state of care
Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner for England, responding to the CQC annual report into the state of care
Almost one in five children left education at 18 last year without basic qualifications
Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner for England, has published research looking at the number of children who leave the education system at 18 without reaching Level 2 attainment (five GCSEs grade A* to C, or equivalent technical qualifications). These are children who will have spent 14 years in compulsory education, often having more than £100,000 of […]
Children’s manifesto calls on political parties to back six pledges to transform life chances for all kids
Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner for England, has published ‘Guess How Much We Love You: A Manifesto for Children’ ahead of any upcoming General Election.
A Manifesto for Children
The manifesto, published ahead of any upcoming General Election, calls on Britain’s political parties to include a six-point plan in their election manifestos to transform the life chances for disadvantaged children and to help all of England’s 12 million children to thrive. The manifesto sets out some of the key issues that children have told […]
Anne Longfield responds to Government Spending Review
Anne Longfield, Children’s Commissioner for England, responding to the Government’s Spending Review
Children’s experiences of online harm and what they want to do about it
In April this year the Government set out their plans for a world-first: a system of regulations that they argue will make the UK ‘the safest place in the world to be online’. The Online Harms White Paper, produced in collaboration between the Home Office and Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), maps out […]
Bleak houses
Tackling the crisis of family homelessness in England