Coronavirus: A youth ministry liveblog

If you're looking for the latest blogs, research, and resources related to youth work and Covid-19, we've made a new home for that content with out Resource Hub, which you can find at the adjacent link. So no more updates on here, but do join us over there!

We’re into the sixth week of lockdown but our liveblog is still going strong. Here are the highlights you may have missed from the last week.

• There’s been a couple of incredible blog posts appear over the last seven days. Both Martin's Order out of chaos: Creating a Rule of Life and Rachel’s Is TV's Sex Lockdown "Too Hot to Handle?" are definitely worth checking out!
• Mark Arnold was a guest on the Friday podcast and provided some great insights into the challenges many young people with additional needs are facing right now and the best ways youth workers can support them.
• The last in our series of quarantine ideas was published this week; the last post was all about how to run a quiz night with your youth group while in lockdown. The complete series is available on the blog and provides ideas and inspirations for how to plan fun social activities for your group to do together online.
• Multiple posts came out this week highlighting a range of different online resources and training, for example, Soul Survivor's Loud & Clear course and Dreaming the Impossible's online youth leader gathering.
• Lastly, if you're concerned about the vulnerable young people in your community, do check out the new report released today by the National Youth Agency. It talks through concerning situations many young people are facing as a result of the pandemic and emphasises the need for a clear exit strategy for young people who are likely to be included in the early stages of release.

As always, we want to thank you so much for your support and if there’s something you’d love to see or even something you want to contribute in coming weeks please get in touch!

If you're concerned about the vulnerable young people in your community, we recommend reading the new report released today by the National Youth Agency. It draws attention to the pressing needs many young people are facing as a result of the pandemic and calls for a clear exit strategy for young people who are likely to be included in the early stages of release from lockdown measures.

The top-three concerns (found in the report) are:

• ‘Increased mental health problems’: Over a million young people have self-reported mental health issues. There is a spike in calls to Help Lines, with 84% reporting worse mental health following school closures or being no longer able to access mental health support
• ‘Missing from education’: With schools only partially open and youth centres closed, as few as 5% of young people are currently engaged in school and have limited or no access to youth work. Even when schools re-open there are 700,000 young people persistently absent or NEET (not in education, employment or training)
• ‘At risk, at home’: Over a million young people are at risk from any of the so-called ‘toxic trio’ of addiction, mental health, and domestic abuse. Despite this, child protection referrals have plummeted by 50% in some areas.

You can read more and download the full report here.

Are you planning to get some extra training in during this time? Esteem Acet UK are running a four-day accredited Relationships and Sex Education Training programme online. You'll learn how to:

• Support young people in building self-esteem
• Support young people in developing healthy relationships
• Develop confidence in talking openly and sensitively about sexual health issues
• Support young people to develop skills and resilience to deal with the influence and impact of modern technology on relationships and sex (including porn)
• Communicate to young people the importance of making healthy life choices about sex
• Plan and deliver effective, fun and interactive sessions with young people
• Apply best practice and recommended government policy guidelines

They are also posting out a pack of physical resources to use during the training, including #isitOK?, the sexting resource that Youthscape and Esteem Acet UK worked on together.

A lot of young people are using Houseparty at the moment, a video-sharing app that's been around since 2016 but gaining popularity recently (it's had over 2 million downloads in just one week). It's also received a lot of negative press because of security worries - it has features that allow people to easily virtually "enter" a room. Open View Education have written this helpful blog post for a clearer overview of Houseparty.

The NSPCC has shared useful guidance about how to talk to children worried about coronavirus, alongside practical ideas about dealing with isolation: how to structure a day; keeping in touch with family, and helping young people maintain a sense of control. Childline, part of the NSPCC, has also produced this coronavirus information page aimed specifically at young people.

Childline last week reported it has faced "unprecedented demand for its services" in the wake of COVID-19. More than 900 children and young people worried about coronavirus had counselling sessions with Childline between the 21st of January and 22nd March. Sessions peaked on the day (18th March) that the government confirmed UK school closures.

The NSPCC reported that "Over half of young people who spoke to Childline last week about coronavirus were counselled for their mental and emotional health around issues like isolation, arguments at home and removal of professional support from schools and the NHS."

Last week, Youthscape Luton launched a Digital Mentoring program to serve young people in Luton looking for support, you can find out about it here.

We are hugely grateful to the team at thirtyone:eight for their continued hard work and partnership on this vital resource. You can also find the document on thirtyone:eight’s website, which includes a range of other useful tools and materials.

The rapid rise in popularity of online video chat interface Zoom has brought with it a brand new and somewhat malevolent phenomenon. The practice of ‘Zoom-bombing’ sees people joining online chats and seeking to disrupt them by sharing explicit or unpleasant images, video and audio to the conversation. Once inside, the perpetrators are skilled at using multiple accounts to avoid being thrown off the call - meaning they’re quickly able to throw a video chat into chaos.

In order to prevent this from happening to a call, Zoom themselves have suggested a short list of steps you can take. You can find their response article here, but in brief summary:

1. You should avoid listing zoom links (Personal Meeting IDs) in public, and never allow screen sharing as a standard default for all users.
2. Familiarise yourself with the ways in which you’re able to manage participants as host (including muting individuals and locking the meeting), and make use of the ‘Waiting Room’ feature.
3. You might also want to consider password-protecting any Zoom meetings which aren’t open to the public as a standard good practice measure.

Many churches and youth groups are making use of Zoom in a variety of ways, and the likelihood is that as more people hear about this rather innovative method of online trolling, more cases of ‘Zoom-bombing’ are unfortunately likely to occur. It’s therefore important to take steps where possible to protect against an attack of this sort, which could otherwise lead to the unleashing of pornographic or other harmful material in the middle of a session.

How can you support young people without face-to-face interaction? How can you help them look after their wellbeing, and deal with challenging circumstances, without meeting together? Youthscape Luton has developed a new program that will provide online mentoring services to young people who want it. Young people can easily sign up for Digital Mentoring through this page, and with parental consent secured, they can check in for 20-minute video call sessions (once or twice a week) with a youth leader to talk about anything they want to. This is one of our local, Luton-based projects. Sadly we can't offer this service on a national scale, but we thought it might encourage you as you rethink familiar youth work models, and try to imagine what meeting the needs of young people looks like when all the rules have changed.

Could you attempt something similar where you are? Perhaps you've started already – if you've got a story you'd like to share of something you're trying out, don't hesitate to let us know!

On Friday, Youthscape and safeguarding charity thirtyone:eight published a new guidance document for staying safe while moving parts of your youth work online. You can download the first draft of the guidance here, but we want to keep adding the caveat that this is designed as a basis from which you can create your own online safeguarding policy; it’s not a policy all on its own.

The teams behind this free resource are continuing to think around this developing area of youth work, and keeping the guidance under constant review. They are already working on a revised version which should be available by the end of the week. It will again be available to download from this liveblog page, and directly from thirtyone:eight’s website.