National COVID-19 inquiry should examine social impact on students, experts say
The federal government's COVID-19 inquiry is being criticised for failing to examine the impact of school closures on children. National Children's Commissioner, Anne Hollonds, says she will be personally writing to the inquiry with a number of recommendations.
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00:00 I think children should be looked at by this inquiry.
00:05 And if we do look at children, then we should be looking at all the decisions that were
00:10 made that impacted on children.
00:12 So I'm still hopeful that that can happen.
00:16 And if not, if the terms of reference don't allow for the examination of school closures
00:21 on children, then there should be some other mechanism set up to do that.
00:25 We have a lot we can learn from the international evidence now on how children were cared for
00:32 during the pandemic by different countries and their different measures.
00:37 And I really think that that spotlight on the unique needs of children is very important.
00:44 At the time of the pandemic, I was very disappointed that there was so little attention to these
00:49 unique needs of children, that there was no one at that top decision making table whose
00:55 job it was to represent children and no chief pediatrician, no minister for children was
01:00 there.
01:01 And of course, now we've seen this long tail of impacts that have been widely reported
01:07 of serious mental health issues for much younger children, school refusal, that kind of thing.
01:13 We really have to learn from this experience and make sure that we don't ever repeat the
01:19 mistakes again.
01:20 We know that some kids were fine because they had families with resources and able to help
01:26 them.
01:27 But there were many, many children from families with complex needs and disadvantage, perhaps
01:34 with disabilities to manage.
01:36 They didn't have devices for all the children.
01:40 But by the way, we learned that school is about much more than just academic learning
01:45 that can be replaced by Zoom.
01:47 And that social learning environment was absent.
01:51 This had very serious consequences, particularly for those children whose home lives were not
01:58 what we would want them to be.
02:00 There was also now we know that child safety risks went up because the lockdowns meant
02:05 that child maltreatment could not be investigated as it should be.
02:10 So these are the unique needs of children that we need to pay attention to.
02:16 And by the way, children and young people under the age of 24 are about a third of the
02:21 Australian population.
02:23 And I think it's about time that we as a country really looked at our obligations under the
02:28 Convention on the Rights of the Child.
02:30 And the Commonwealth is a signatory to that convention.
02:34 So I'm still hopeful that children can be a focus of this inquiry.
02:39 I will be writing to the inquiry myself.
02:41 And the sorts of things that I will be recommending is that we look at the international evidence
02:47 on how children were cared for during a crisis like this, what we should be doing next time.
02:55 I'll be recommending that perhaps we should look at a Child Wellbeing Council of multidisciplinary
03:00 experts who could provide advice to governments at critical times like this.
03:06 And ideally that there be a Minister for Children whose accountability it is to pay attention
03:13 to the unique needs of children and young people.
03:16 [BLANK_AUDIO]