The child population has not only suffered, due to COVID-19, a particularly restrictive confinement, but also a strong invisibilisation of their needs in the political discourse and in the research agenda itself. We need to reverse this invisibilisation and have precise research tools that describe in detail their situation, expectations and needs – with an emphasis on the most vulnerable – since in the post-COVID period an important task of reconstruction lies ahead, both in the uncertain educational relational scenario and in the rest of the areas of children’s social life. Through a public utility approach, and using a mixed methodology (quantitative and qualitative) that places children as key informants alongside adults, this project aims to identify priority areas for intervention to combat the impact of the multiple inequalities that the pandemic has introduced or accentuated in the lives of children. Therefore, the general purpose of the project described in this scientific and technical report will be to analyse the degree of well-being and the perceived needs of children in the COVID-19 crisis and new normality, with emphasis on how minors are experiencing the educational process and with it the need to understand the trends of change and their possible impact on the child population in the coming years, in order to formulate public policies that can compensate for the possible tensions and imbalances that will arise in this post-pandemic recovery scenario.
This justifies the need to return children to the forefront of research activity and to use our instruments of scientific knowledge to reverse the impact that the pandemic has had on pre-existing problems, but also on those that undeniably belong to the new scenario of social life after COVID-19, based on a diagnosis of public utility. Policies and responses from sensitive social protection systems are needed in the wake of this social and health crisis.