Impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic in foster care institutions from France, Canada, Switzerland, Belgium and the UK: A rapid synthesis of online testimonials made by educational staff
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background and rationale: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is currently disrupting activities of foster care staff and the functioning of foster care institutions in France, Canada, Switzerland, Belgium and the UK. Despite this, little details about the impacts of the pandemic seem to have found their way in the scientific literature. Similarly, although literature on respiratory outbreaks in children’s homes can be found, studies typically describe measures taken in limited details and focus on drug interventions, few report issues and challenges residential staff had to face and none apparently report how residential staff and residents felt or which resources they found helpful during outbreaks. Objective: To synthesize key themes emerging from online testimonials made by educational staff looking after children in foster care institutions during the Covid-19 pandemic. Methods: Scoping Google searches with keyword variations of “SARS-CoV-2”, “residential staff” and “foster care institutions” meant to identify testimonials from educational staff from institutions in France, Canada, Switzerland, Belgium and the UK, published from 1 January 2020 to 8 April 2020, and written in French or English. Testimonials were then read in full and data related to 9 broad themes (measures taken, issues, concerns, needs, legal aspects, helpful resources, feelings, context and opportunities) was extracted and synthesized. Findings: 24 individual searches were made on Google between 6 April and 8 April 2020 (included) and a total of about 2370 website titles and website descriptions (“abstracts”) were screened for inclusion. Testimonials from residential staff were found on 43 different webpages. 32 testimonials came from France, 2 from Belgium, 2 from the UK and 1 from Canada. No testimonials from Swiss residential staff were found. 6 sources included testimonials already found in other sources (3 duplicate testimonials for France and 3 duplicate testimonials for the UK). Residential staff most commonly reported feeling anxious or stressed out; some were angry against authorities or felt hopeless. Children in care were said to be anxious, stressed out or sad, but in some testimonials they reportedly were doing well despite the pandemic. 119 unique measures taken in institutions were identified, most were organizational (19 measures), about social distancing (15 measures), hygiene (13 measures), focused on residents (11 measures) or other (26 non-categorized measures). Personal protection equipment, computers, volunteers, staff creativity or adaptability, staff solidarity, recreational activities and outside activities were identified as useful resources. The most common issues were related to inadequate supplies of personal protection equipment, unfeasibility of implementing social distancing measures, children eloping, staff shortage, risk of staff burnout, increase in violence, difficulties supporting residents to do schoolwork and insufficient communication with authorities. Residential staff was concerned about safety, well-being of the residents, their own, that of their families or relatives, the risk of staff shortage and staff burnout and educational outcomes for children in care. A few staff members pointed out opportunities brought by the pandemic, for instance an opportunity to strengthen relationships with residents. Limitations: Testimonials were often found in journal articles and journalists may have been incentivized to emphasize problems. The representativeness of testimonials found cannot be assumed and they may be a poor surrogate for the actual prevalence of problems reported. I may have inadvertently overemphasized needs given solidarity with colleagues. Data collection, classification and synthesis involved subjectivity. The trustworthiness of online testimonials is difficult to assess but reports from France, Canada, Switzerland, Belgium and the UK appeared relatively similar. Conclusions: Not yet fully written, not yet summarized Funding: No funding was received for this work. Registration: See previous versions of https://osf.io/kx4g9/ Data and materials: See https://osf.io/kx4g9/ and https://osf.io/5bewk/ Keywords: Covid-19, residential care, foster care, children, social work, testimonials
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.024 | 0.073 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.016 | 0.013 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".