Ms Ciara Gill:

With special measures, we identify groups of children that might be experiencing disadvantage or be particularly vulnerable. When we conducted the child’s rights impact assessment on the impact of Covid, we picked children experiencing mental health difficulties, homeless children, children living in direct provision, children with disabilities and Traveller and Roma children. We wanted to see how the Covid lockdowns and restrictions had had a particularly negative impact on those children. It impacted all children, but on those children it had a very severe impact.