Hello 

Our member, Charlie, joined LCK founders Sammie & Fran to give evidence at the APPG hearing on Children with Long Covid.

If you missed it you can catch it here.

Before the hearing we submitted written evidence comprising of statistics, statements and emails from parents. Here is a little of what we sent.

Long Covid Kids Facebook based campaign and support group was founded by parents in October 2020 after the launch of a short film ‘Unhappily Ever After' to support parents of children with Long Covid. It is run by volunteers & unfunded.

The group has grown to over 700 families in less than four months and continues to grow daily, welcoming members who have children that have been infected by Coronavirus and are struggling with long lasting symptoms.

We operate via Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram and our website www.longcovidkids.org

Our mission statement is simple.

We aim to;

Raise awareness that children transmit Coronavirus, can get both Covid-19, and Long Covid regardless of the severity of symptoms at initial presentation.

Support the medical community in understanding Long Covid in children and ensure that children are included in the developing narrative.

Ensure schools provide a safe space for all children: including adequate ventilation that helps prevents airborne transmission, and considers the long-term health and wellbeing of children and staff, alongside their educational needs.

 We are asking the government to #JoinTheDots

Support received within a meaningful timeframe. 

Long Covid must be accepted by the professional bodies’ members within the paediatric medical community to ensure support at a local level. Any delay in support can trigger long- term chronic health conditions like ME. Effective knowledge sharing across primary and secondary care practitioners will aid the speed of awareness and increases the potential of positive impact on patients’ long-term outcomes. Providing early intervention and care through Long Covid paediatric services is likely to reduce the risk of long-term chronic health conditions. Undertaking research and establishing a true understanding of the extensive features of the paediatric version of Long Covid will take considerable time. It is imperative that paediatric care and support is not delayed any further as this would result in severe decline on paediatric health outcomes.

Place wellbeing at the heart of education.

Forwards is the only way to go. Each school should be risk assessed with the assessment devised by an expert task force, which includes ventilation specialists. Schools must be supported in implementing changes in line with scientific understanding of aerosol transmission. These include a reduction in pupil numbers, part-time hours with blended learning, adequate ventilation and mask wearing for all staff and students. Blended learning will allow parental choice during the pandemic and meet the needs of clinically vulnerable families, whether that is a child or an adult in the household who needs to be shielded during this time.

Provide knowledge & clarity. 

Thus giving parents and carers the ability to make informed decisions. By providing knowledgeable insights, consequently people will change their behaviours which will help control and mitigate the spread of the new highly contagious variants, and minimise the risk of long-term chronic health conditions. Education is key; parents and carers must be able to identify the symptoms that children present with, when to get a test and know how to manage recovery to reduce the risk of long-term chronic health conditions. Current testing criteria precludes children.

We further submitted supporting evidence from Parents United & a ventilation expert, & included links to resources like this video below.

How Safe is Your School?

Please Share

How safe is your school? Practical advice & a simple scientific explanation.

Latest Stats

We are regularly asked for the source of our data.

It is from the Uk Government Dashboard, we just publish in a clearly.

Support Our Petition 

Our Petition Asks

Promptly create an awareness campaign detailing the effects of COVID19 on children.

Create a clear campaign that informs parents of the COVID symptoms children present with. This should include the criteria for a child to get a test and the long-lasting effects COVID can have on children.

What We Wanted Our Petition To Say

Remove barriers to children accessing a free test by changing the wording on the government website to reflect the symptoms children present with.

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But for it to be approved for publication we had to change the wording.

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About Us

Long Covid Kids Support & Campaign Group started in the autumn & represents over 400 children.

Our children got COVID19 in Lockdown 1/2 & are still ill.

We receive emails from parents who tell us that by the time they realised their child needed a test it was 'too late for testing', they didn't 'know what to look for'.

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This Is Important

These children are not included in the statistics.

Children must be counted so informed decisions can be made in education and healthcare.

Children may also need Long Covid services and without being counted how can we evidence that?

We are self-funded and run by volunteers.

Donations of time, skills or money gratefully received.

Every donation counts and will enable us to keep going.