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‘We Should Hang Our Heads in Shame Over the Way We Have Treated Children in Lockdown’

by Will Jones
1 April 2021 2:47 PM

Professor of Psychology Ellen Townsend, a member of HART, has appeared on Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan’s podcast Planet Normal to tell them how harmful lockdowns have been to the nation’s children.

For Professor Ellen Townsend, it’s simple: “We’re putting adults first when we should be putting children first.” The result, according to the University of Nottingham academic, is “a real disaster” for young people and an approach she feels the country will come to regret, citing widely-reported mental health concerns and a sharp increase in youth unemployment.

Speaking to The Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast, Professor Townsend tells columnists and podcast hosts, Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan, why she believes it’s now vital for the Government to implement a “trauma-informed recovery approach” to ease young people out of lockdown. The emphasis, she says, should lie on mental recovery rather than catching up on school work: “If we don’t have mental health and wellbeing, the learning is just not going to take place.” And a second plan is needed for the “morally questionable” way in which she believes the Government has induced fear in the young: “If I were to induce any kind of emotion in the lab, for example, I would ethically expect to make sure that people left the lab feeling as good or better than they did when they came in… I’d have an exit plan. What worries me about what has happened is there doesn’t seem to be an exit plan to de-escalate the fear.”

Worth listening to in full (no subscription required).

Tags: ChildrenHARTLockdown harmsPlanet Normal

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6 Comments
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Cristi.Neagu
Cristi.Neagu
4 years ago

A lot of people should be in prison for human rights violations, and not only because of how they treated the children.

23
0
Fingerache Philip
Fingerache Philip
4 years ago
Reply to  Cristi.Neagu

I’m tempted to say “Heads should roll”.

8
0
alw
alw
4 years ago
Reply to  Cristi.Neagu

Putting them in front of a firing squad won’t be enough.

9
0
Annie
Annie
4 years ago

Government traumatises children.Government sets up de-traumatising unit.
Words fail me.

13
0
Ruth Sharpe
Ruth Sharpe
4 years ago
Reply to  Annie

My friend works for a local charity that up to last March took ‘disadvantaged’ children on residential to do leadership training etc.

They’ve just been awarded a £4.2 million pound contract from the Scottish administration to do work over 4 years to ‘work with people mentally effected by the pandemic’.

I said it’s good for her, because the 4 years take her up to her retirement, but on the rest of it, I’m thinking, oh my God – it really is every man for themselves from now on.

0
0
Ruth Sharpe
Ruth Sharpe
4 years ago

I was taken up short by the Planet Normal interview and found it really powerful. I have been telling people already and will continue to do so, Professor Townsend’s central message that we should all be ashamed of ourselves for how we’ve treated the children.

Certainly, it’s a different starting point a different in terms of conversation and far more emotive as well.

0
0

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