'Checking in: Voices of young people during lockdown’ began with a simple premise – how are young people coping with COVID-19?. It developed into an in-depth online listening project run by Partnership for Young London and Good Thinking, with the support of TikTok.
Our guiding principles were that the project should be youth-focused, safe, collaborative, asset based and responsive and that it should help to boost participants’ mental wellbeing.
Every fortnight between 26 March and 6 July, a group of 14 to 24-year-olds completed an online questionnaire. The majority of respondents are part of the Digital Health Ambassadors programme set up by Healthy London Partnership/Good Thinking and Partnership for Young London in 2019.
As London-based organisations and with nearly all the survey respondents living in London, we were able to get a snapshot of young Londoners’ experiences of the COVID-19 lockdown. The majority of our survey participants are from BAME groups and our cohort also included young people with disabilities and young care leavers. In surveys 5-8, female respondents made up the majority of the group.
The findings of our 'Checking in: Voices of young people during lockdown’ project have even greater resonance as we move into the next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and we recommend that they are used to help shape mental health support in the UK.
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