Skip main navigation

Welcome to Week 1

The course host provides a video welcome and a guide to the focus of Week 1 – Protecting Children during COVID-19 and Other Infectious Disease Outbrea

Welcome to Week 1 of the course “Protecting Children during COVID-19 and Other Infectious Disease Outbreaks,” “Framing IDOs for Child Protection Workers.”

IDOs disrupt the environment in which children grow and develop. For example, IDOs like COVID-19 can impact children in three main ways:

  1. Through infection with the virus itself;

  2. Through the social and economic impacts of measures (such as control, containment and mitigation) intended to reduce or stop transmission of the virus; and

  3. Through the potential longer term effects of the crisis, including economic downturn and a delay of progress toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (UN 2020).

By the end of Week 1, you should be familiar with:

  • The definition of IDOs and types of transmission;

  • The dynamic stages of COVID_19 and other directly transmitted IDOs, associated public health measures and the impact those may have on children’s well-being;

  • The Multi-level Impact of COVID-19 and other IDOs;

  • The applicability of the Minimum Standards for Child Protection in Humanitarian;

  • Action in COVID-19 and other IDOs; and,

  • Guiding principles to ground all IDO responses.


Your Task

Dear Learners,

As The Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action (The Alliance), we strive to deliver effective capacity building initiatives that truly respond to the needs of field practitioners.

We would like to invite you all to participate in a rapid self-assessment at the beginning and end of the course. The self-assessments are not an examination and you cannot pass or fail, but they will also help you reflect on your own learning as you progress through the course.

Your responses will be linked to your course activity, but you will not be identifiable. The survey results will be used for monitoring and evaluation purposes only.

We really appreciate your help. All the information collected will be stored and handled according to The Alliance’s data protection policies.

Click here to start the self-assessment.

Thank you!

Claire Whiting, Course Facilitator, The Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action

This article is from the free online

Protecting Children during Infectious Disease Outbreaks

Created by
FutureLearn - Learning For Life

Reach your personal and professional goals

Unlock access to hundreds of expert online courses and degrees from top universities and educators to gain accredited qualifications and professional CV-building certificates.

Join over 18 million learners to launch, switch or build upon your career, all at your own pace, across a wide range of topic areas.

Start Learning now