ARU Final Report

26 Care leavers’ experiences of support during the Covid-19 pandemic and how this has exacerbated existing mental health problems, as well as sharing experiences of support from services and self-help. 4.2.1 Impact on mental health and wellbeing The questionnaire responses showed that mental health and wellbeing deteriorated during the pandemic: 25% reported that their mental health and wellbeing was not very good before the pandemic, which rose significantly to 57% during the pandemic (see Graphs 4 and 5). Graph 4: How was your mental health and wellbeing before the pandemic? Number and percent of care leavers Not very good - 5 4 3 2 Very good - 1 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 9 (9.8%) 14 (15.2%) 21 (22.8%) 29 (31.5%) 19 (20.7%) Graph 5: How was your mental health and wellbeing during the pandemic? Number and percent of care leavers Not very good - 5 4 3 2 Very good - 1 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 26 (28%) 27 (29%) 22 (23.7%) 13 (14%) 5 (5.4%) Indeed, these figures show that many care leavers were struggling with their mental health before Covid-19 and that this further deteriorated during the pandemic. This was also reflected in the focus group discussions, where care leavers discussed their mental health and wellbeing in relation to the restrictions and implications for social isolation, especially for thosewith young children to look after, and those who were shielding as this contributed to a loss of independence and agency. In the literature, Cortina et al. (2020) suggest that livingthroughthepandemicand lockdown iscausing increased stress, worry, fear, anxiety and depression for children and young people. However, several social and economic factors, including separation from family and financial concerns, make certain groups of young people particularly vulnerable to the mental health challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic (NAHT, 2020) and care leavers are one such group. The MCR Pathways Lockdown Survey (2020) found a significant impact of the pandemic on the mental wellbeing of care experienced young people, with 66.8% feeling stressed, low