Experiences of children from vulnerable families during epidemic
In my master's thesis titled Experiences of children from vulnerable families during the epidemic, I focused on how the epidemic of the disease COVID-19 affected children from families defined as vulnerable. I define vulnerable families as those families that, even before the outbreak of the epidemic, faced several different problems (social vulnerability, housing vulnerability, low income, family problems, etc.) and were included in one of the institutions or forms of assistance that deal with the problem of vulnerable families.
In the theoretical part, I define key concepts, such as vulnerable groups of people and vulnerable families, their characteristics and the challenges they often face. I will also touch on distance learning and the basic characteristics of the Covid-19 epidemic in Slovenia. I also focus on the development of children, what they need for healthy development, the importance of school for development and how the epidemic affected this.
I did the research in two parts - in the first part I focused on the parents and their perception of the epidemic and the well-being of the child, and in the second part on the children themselves and their experience and perception of the situation. I conducted qualitative research with four families, with whom I came into contact with the help of the Youth Center and the Counseling Center for Children, Adolescents and Parents. Both institutions deal with this type of problem and offer help to families who find themselves in need. I got in touch with one family with the help of my internship mentor. With this research, I wanted to investigate the impact of the epidemic - especially the closing of schools and public life - on the mental health of children who come from families that are already pushed to the fringes of society under normal circumstances. With this, I wanted to shed light on the issue of vulnerable families, and at the same time highlight the perspective of children, who are often overlooked in research or who are spoken for by others. I wanted to find out what were the most common challenges faced by families, what they missed the most during the closure, what might have been a support for them, and how the children experienced all of this. I obtained this data through semi-structured interviews with parents and children.
Through my research, I found that the families I worked with faced great challenges and changes in their everyday life during the epidemic. Above all, these changes were linked to the lack of sources of help in one's own social network and an even greater relegation to the fringes of society than before the epidemic. A pattern emerged that women in particular were much more burdened during the epidemic, as they shouldered the responsibility for the entire family, the education of children and the coordination of all other obligations.
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