Children’s rights to be heard and to Be Seen: Child Protection in the UK in Response to the Pandemic

The global pandemic and the response measures that ensued since March 2020 exacerbated the invisibility of the child in safeguarding responses. The UK Government’s emergency legislation and policy directives resulted in significant changes to child protection practice, albeit in the short term. The social distancing measures since the first lockdown in England and Wales meant that a large majority of children could not attend school, and home visits by safeguarding professionals either became ‘door-step visits’ or were limited to high risk cases. This chapter undertook a rapid review of literature published since 2020 to critically examine the policy and practice changes in child protection and their implications for children and young people. The analysis is informed by Carol Gilligan’s feminist ethics of care as a framework for exploring what ‘being heard’ means in a child protection context and reflects on the value and significance of listening to and seeing children, in ensuring that child protection practice remains child centred and continues to be meaningful in the post-pandemic era, not just for the children it serves to protect, but also to its practitioners.