Impact of COVID-19 School Lockdown on Recently Immigrated Roma and Refugee School-Aged Children in Germany

• In Event: Underrepresented Voices: Positive Youth Development among Vulnerable Minority Children and Youth in Times of Pandemic

Abstract

Since 2015, refugee as well as Roma families from Southeast Europe have migrated to Germany in large numbers. The Roma minority are historically marginalized, deprived, and discriminated against throughout Europe. Previous studies on the mental health of newly arrived Roma and refugee pre-school children found that both groups showed elevated levels of post-traumatic stress, behavior and attention problems as well as weak academic learning foundations when compared to children in the mainstream population (Buchmüller et al., 2018, 2019).
Our study, as originally planned, aimed at creating evidence-based models to address the educational and socio-emotional needs of disadvantaged Roma and refugee children in two elementary schools located in deprived neighborhoods with a high percentage of newly arrived immigrants. Teachers of these elementary schools reported that the majority of Roma parents are illiterate and work in jobs requiring little education, such as the nearby meat processing industry. In comparison, refugee children have more educated parents. Both groups share that parents have limited understanding of the German school system, live in small, often crowded apartments, and are not likely to speak much German.
Elementary schools play an important role in children’s lives after resettlement. Teachers of the two participating schools successfully involved community organizations and other volunteers to support positive development, academic growth, as well as to provide free warm meals and a safe haven for these children.
We intended to gain data on a broad range of children’s academic, social and physical development in direct child assessments and through teacher reports. Unexpectedly, we had to abort our data collection in Mid-March 2020 due to a public lockdown in Germany. During the two weeks prior to the lockdown, we were able to collect complete data from 105 of 305 children and teacher-rated SDQ data for all 305 children. All through the five-month lockdown, teachers' contact with the refugee and Roma children was reportedly limited as most children had no access to electronic devices and many could not be reached at all by the schools. On September 28, few weeks after German schools reopened, teachers filled out again questionnaires including the SDQ for all 305 children while we have re-started to test the children (n= 50 as of September 30; expected to finish in early November). Findings from our longitudinal dataset that spans across the lockdown period will be presented at the planned symposium. Following a risk and resilience framework, we expect that overall, the deprivation during the lockdown will be evident in lower rates of psychosocial adjustment. However, we also expect to find that children who had better initial scores on social competencies will show better psychosocial adjustment. For the subsample that was tested twice (n= 105), we expect that differences in psychosocial adjustment will be also evident in changes in academic and physical competences and in executive functions. Our findings will contribute to our understanding of the exarcerbating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the socio-emotional, cognitive, and physical development of vulnerable young children.

Authors

• Birgit Leyendecker, Ruhr University Bochum
  Presenting Author

• Julian Busch, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
  Non-Presenting Author