Lockdown leads to family wellbeing toolkit

The Home Hack Toolkit will aid the understanding of how a family’s domestic space impacts on wellbeing and what simple adaptions could be made. 

One of the outputs from the At Home with Children: Learning from Lockdown study, an online, accessible resource, guides adults and children through a series of potential socio-spatial challenges that they might be facing. The toolkit can also be used to prompt discussion between front-line staff working with families and psychologists working with clients. 

The researchers included Psychologist Dr Emily Pattinson (Newcastle University), and Dr Sandra Costa Santos (University of Dundee), Professor Rosie Parnell (Newcastle University) and Home Hack Toolkit Research Lead Dr Heba Sarhan from an architecture background. They told us: ‘Even before the Covid pandemic, research showed that lack of space away from others in the home had a significant impact on wellbeing. As families across the world were locked down in their homes, we started to see the true impacts… for many families, lockdown heightened awareness of the unsuitable aspects of their home, since they were required to spend so much time there. Not surprisingly, research from others found that those living under household crowding suffered worse psychological wellbeing outcomes during the lockdown. Now, although Covid restrictions and lockdown might feel like a thing of the past, the legacy that we see in increased homeworking and reduced use of childcare, means that the lessons we have learnt from lockdown remain relevant for future homes.’

The At Home with Children project consisted of a large-scale survey filled in by one household member from 1,246 different families with children, along with 45 in-depth family interviews across England and Scotland. The findings highlighted some of the psychological wellbeing challenges experienced by families. 

Family homes lacked the spaces needed for individual wellbeing, with more than half of survey respondents strongly agreeing or agreeing that there was more familial tension during lockdown. 70.9 per cent of respondents ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘agreed’ that lockdown made it more difficult to have time and space to themselves. Finding space for ‘child alone time’ was also a concern for many families, with children who shared bedrooms being particularly affected.

More than half of respondents reported that lack of time and space to oneself had a negative impact on wellbeing. Although adult reflections on wellbeing were significantly affected by household density, the survey findings also showed that the negative effects of lockdown on wellbeing were felt across all household densities and all home types. The in-depth interviews suggested that the relation between domestic space and wellbeing is not just a matter of the amount of space, but also about drawing physical and psychological boundaries around that space: ‘I think full time work from home is just awful.  I hate looking over at the desk because it’s in my bedroom and I constantly feel I’m at work […] say you had a stressful day at work previously or something happened.’

Satisfaction with the family home was significantly lower during lockdown. Often the layout of the family home made it very difficult for parents to gain enough space and privacy to concentrate on work, while still maintaining the proximity to children to ensure support and safety. 

This dissatisfaction with the home led to families making spatial adaptations to try to alleviate wellbeing challenges. Adaptations were geared towards re-drawing physical and psychological boundaries around others in the family and/or around their activities. In other words, adaptations were not necessarily about avoiding proximity, but redefining proximity. The findings showed families using home adaptations to achieve different and nuanced ways of being at ‘home-but-never-alone’ to help wellbeing.

‘Proximity with separation’ was enabled by changing or extending room functions, or using measures such as temporary dividers or furniture to create designated spaces for different activities whilst maintaining lines of sight. Compartmentalising could involve prioritising activities (e.g. home-working was allocated to areas that could serve IT equipment), creating a time-sharing schedule to allow different family members to use living areas at different times, or changing the use of existing rooms. De-cluttering and adding storage solutions was mentioned as a way of mitigating the challenges associated with mess from multiple activities in the home during lockdown. Containment of play and work equipment was also a way of drawing boundaries between adult/child spaces or work/family time: ‘However, one of the things that really helped my wellbeing was to keep things out of sight. […] So it’s like when you put it away you can kind of sanitize...’. ‘Parallel proximity’ allowed family members to be ‘alone together’ and benefit from proximity whilst focusing on parallel activities.

The findings of both the survey and family interviews also helped the development of the Hybrid Home: Adaptable Design for Small Homes with Children design guidance, the team told us. ‘This design guidance aims to inform the building of new homes, but also the retrofitting of existing homes to begin to combat some of the common socio-spatial challenges faced by families.’

The researchers conclude that understanding a family’s psychological needs in relation to their spatial needs is important, along with an awareness that domestic space may or may not be compounding health and wellbeing challenges. ‘Domestic space, considered alongside family living patterns, could form part of the families’ toolkit for wellbeing, with psychologists ideally placed to support this thinking.’