The Lockdown Generation: How covid still affects thousands of Yorkshire's children five years on

All that changed when Billy was just 10 weeks old and Boris Johnson announced the country was going into lockdown.

“I was really upset and did cry,” Naomi, a 32-year-old nurse from South Milford, near Selby, remembered.

“We didn’t know how long it was going to go on, and it was so weird. I was really upset to think my family were not going to see Billy.”

Naomi tried to see the positive side - lockdown meant her partner Richard Bennett, a professional footballer, was home with her and Billy and his son Harrison from a previous relationship.

“Rich had that time at home to support us. But our family is so close - I see my mum and dad every day and it was really hard to go through that.

“I’ve never suffered with my mental health, but I lost a lot of weight and I probably didn’t realise it, but I was really struggling. I needed to go home for support

After five weeks, Naomi and her family decided to combine households with her parents in nearby Monk Fryston, allowing her to have more support with Billy’s early days.

The rest of lockdown passed uneventfully, although Naomi was disappointed to not be able to attend the baby groups and classes she had booked. “I’d booked onto baby sensory classes and swimming, and was so looking forward to taking Billy and meeting new people. Obviously that was taken away.”

But a couple of years later, when Billy was at nursery and restrictions had eased, Naomi was alerted that Billy’s word pronunciation wasn’t developing as it should be.

“There was no delay in Billy’s starting to speak, it was his pronunciation,” said Naomi. “I didn’t think much of it, and he didn’t get assessed face to face for his two-year review, so no one ever saw or listened to him talking and picked up on it. I was used to it, I could understand everything he was saying.

“Nursery picked up on it. When he started school, his teacher said she would do a referral but the waiting list was very high.

“I didn’t wait for the referral - I work in the NHS and knew it’d be a two year wait. And if therapy needed to get done, it needed to get done.”

Billy is now having weekly private speech therapy sessions, which his grandparents are helping to pay for. “We don’t have a spare £300 a month with our mortgage rate going up,” said Naomi “We would have really struggled to have done it without financial help. But it is massively helping him, 100 per cent.

“In Billy’s class there are a number of children who should be having speech and language therapy, but can’t because of the waiting list and aren’t in a position to pay privately.”

Billy’s speech is not holding him back from being a typical five-year-old, full of energy and obsessed with sports. “I get emotional talking about him,” said Naomi. “He is the most bubbly, kind, football crazy little boy.

“He really tries with everything he does. The therapist has told us he puts everything into it. He really is a lovely little boy.”

Naomi has since given birth to her second son Joey in 2024. Describing her second maternity leave, she said “It was just so nice to go to classes, to pop to friends for cups of tea and not worry about restrictions.

“But what I must say though is that I still don’t understand why they’re doing virtual appointments.

“Joey’s 12 month review with the health visitor was done online. No health professional measured his development in person since he was three days old.

“I just think it’s so dangerous from a safeguarding perspective that it’s a postcode lottery if you get to see anyone face to face.”

Naomi and her family have a strong support network and Billy is thriving, but the long-term impact of months of social isolation on children is still unclear, a speech expert warned.

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Babies born in the first lockdown, which began in March 2020, started school last September, with a further cohort of “lockdown babies” due to begin primary school this Autumn.

But teachers are grappling with an increased number of children with difficulties directly linked with the lockdowns, Professor Judy Clegg, a speech and language expert at the University of Sheffield said.

Most childcare settings including nurseries and pre-schools were closed during the lockdowns except for the children of designated key-workers.

Baby groups and classes were also paused, and parents often had to juggle work with their children being at home.

Now, many more children than in non lockdown years are starting school with speech, language and learning difficulties, Professor Clegg said.

She said: “For babies born during the lockdowns, the concern from speech and language therapists is that they missed out on social interactions.

“They weren’t going out on everyday activities to shops and parks and mixing with other children and adults.

“Children usually learn to talk from other people and their social worlds were very small during intense periods of lockdown.

“There’s a school of thought too that they had more screentime, which is not the same sort of interaction as playing with other children and adults.”

Professor Clegg is one of the co-authors of a major report from two childhood focussed think-tanks on the “school readiness” of children.

Last year, the Child of the North and Centre for Young Lives report highlighted children were turning up to Reception aged four still needing nappies.

Professor Clegg said: “It’s very unclear at the moment if these children will just catch up.

“What you’re also finding is the number of children with special education needs is higher than it used to be.”

And she warned of regional disparities too in the support available.

She said: “You do get geographical variation. It’s to do with distribution of high quality services. In rural areas the service provision is not of same quantity so it’s harder for families, they might have to travel a long way. It’s harder to find the staff for childcare provisions.”

It comes as NHS data shows thousands of children are waiting over a year to access speech and language therapy.

Some 4,259 children in England have been waiting between one and two years for community therapy, some 6.5 per cent of the total waiting list of 65,445 children.

According to Leeds Community Healthcare, the average waiting time for a child referral to speech and language therapy is six months.

And in Sheffield, primary school children can expect to wait up to 39 weeks for a first appointment, rising to 45 weeks for a secondary appointment.

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The after-effects of lockdown closures are still affecting the region’s most talented young dancers five years on, a leader has said.

Tracy Witney, head of learning and participation at the Leeds based Northern School of contemporary dance, said teachers had witnessed both physical and mental development issues with students.

The conservatoire teaches dance to children from aged four up to degree level.

Ms Witney said: “Directly after covid, some of the first things we noticed were developmental delays physically. Where we’d expect children to have a certain skillset, for example, agility, we’d notice in our younger children that because they’d been at home during covid they hadn’t been as physical.

“The elements we’re expecting, strength, flexibility, stamina and endurance, had reduced. And that’s something we’re still seeing.

“We’ve had to go backwards and start teaching really basic things - like teaching a child how to jump and land. There was a massive change in levels of conditioning.”

But while the physical development delays have improved, the mental changes that came with lockdown are still having a huge impact, Ms Witney said.

She said: “We’ve really noticed an upsurge in anxiety. Social situations like coming into the building - for some students we meet them outside.

“When they start a class, it’s elements of support at all times, doing regular check-ins.

“We’ve seen an upsurge into supporting students into counselling. Pre covid I probably had one or two students a year who needed counselling, but now that’s tripled.

“Our high school students are who we’re seeing this more with, and with our smaller children it’s socialisation skills and concentration levels. It’s due to age as well but we’ve noticed a difference there.

“We’ve also noticed a significant rise in students who are home schooled. A lot of our students, especially teenagers, cannot cope in full time school.”

And the external support in how to best support “the lockdown generation” has been varied, Ms Witney said.

“Because we’re so specialist, we try to look at it in a specific way. Some of the skillsets we’ve had to build in our staff have included mental health first aid for young people.

“A lot of organisations which are dance specific have shared ideas. We run a network here which oversees children and young people’s dance in the North, and we share challenges we’ve been facing.”