Title: COVID-19: Families, children aged 0-4 and pregnant women: vulnerabilities, resources and recovery in Tower Hamlets
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: Recovery from pandemic will require harnessing all possible resources to support families with young children to avert lasting damage to health and development since health and equality are linked (Marmot 2020). This study aims to provide new and detailed knowledge to support local service delivery, and to disseminate this widely, to promote economic regeneration, social cohesion and addressing polarised inequalities. We adopt an assets based approach (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1996); we seek evidence of localised adoption and potential of peer, familial and community mutual aid strategies that aid personal and structural recovery pathways as well as identifying need. Objectives 1. Through our partnerships, identify key topics and knowledge gaps for local authority provision and planning 2. Establish immediate physical, mental, economic and social impacts, and on which household profiles, of the COVID-19 government response, through a repeat survey of 2000 families with children aged 0-4 and pregnant women 3. Purposively sample and interview a subset of survey respondents to form a longitudinal qualitative panel to explore family and community impact in-depth 4. Closely map changes to support services available to families, including the emergence of new forms of support (e.g., mutual aid) 5. Disseminate emerging findings to inform localised health and community responses, particularly in the recovery phase, and adopt flexible adaptive research methods as required.

Lay abstract: 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.

Research activity codes: 2.4 SURVEILLANCE AND DISTRIBUTION
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;INFECTION