Introduction

Being an applied researcher in the children's charity sector can mean designing research and evaluation approaches at the last minute. However, given the novel pandemic conditions that we are facing, we have had to consider how we embed a participatory approach to researching and evaluating the adversities that come with living in poverty amidst the era of COVID-19 (Correia et al, 2019). With ‘schools [being] closed for a long period of time [this] could have [a] detrimental [impact on] social and health consequences for children living in poverty and [is] likely to exacerbate existing inequalities’ (Van Lancker and Parolin, 2020). services. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in our usual face-to-face work with children, families, and communities being halted due to the lockdown.

Save the Children UK undertook a monumental pivot in our programmatic, policy and research approach. We redirected a significant amount of our support and funding across the United Kingdom to rapidly develop an emergency response. The aim was to support and meet the needs of children and families who were currently in or transitioning into poverty due to the socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has involved an enormous shift in designing, developing and delivering an efficient and robust research and evaluation plan amid the strains of limited capacity and resources. This chapter discusses how the pandemic forced the authors to quickly respond, reassess and reconsider an entire evaluation, evidence and learning approach to monitor and measure the impact of our response while practising our duty of care to children and families in poverty that have been affected by lockdown in the United Kingdom. We dedicate space in the chapter to critically reflect on our positionality and stances as researchers in leading an evaluation and navigating social and organizational complexities.

Responding to the pandemic and child poverty

At the point when the pandemic started, we were midway through designing a comprehensive theory of change, impact map and evaluation for the next phase of our ‘Building blocks’ programme. This was being co-designed in partnership with our country teams representing Wales, Northern Ireland, England and Scotland. The development and delivery of Save the Children UK's emergency response to support families living in poverty was based on the ‘Building blocks’ programme.