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This paper reports research findings on the experiences of parents/carers of children with special education needs and disabilities who present violent and challenging behaviour. More specifically, the purpose of this paper is to explore how parents/carers report how their support needs are met by social care services.

The research is an empirical study which considers the challenging side of parenting children with additional needs. Data were gathered through a national online social media focus group and thematically analysed to identify emerging themes from an overlooked community. The study applied a participatory approach, with researchers and participants collaborating in designing and producing the research.

Participants reported a multitude of adversities and they experience difficulties in accessing support from professionals. The parents and carers expressed a continued desire to care for their children, often during much adversity and in receipt of little recognition or support from external agencies. An emerging theme was that they are often not assessed in their own right by agencies who focus on safeguarding.

In this online participatory study, participants were self-selecting and the research relied on self-report during online discussions.

This study is original in applying an innovative research methodology using online focus groups with an under researched community. This online focus group generated real time data and offered participants the opportunity to share information in their own environments. The themes emerging from this research have implications for policy and practice for an under reported adult community who experience increasing vulnerabilities.

This chapter discusses the care experiences of a group of parents and a grandparent working at a Higher Education Institution in England and homeschooling during the pandemic. The group established an informal, work-based, online peer support group during and beyond the first COVID-19 lockdown. This chapter analyses a survey of group members and the group's online chat data to explore experiences of homeschooling and participating in the group. It represents a pioneering case study in how a group of parent-workers coped with the conditions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that the group was underpinned by an ethic of care, based on reciprocal care relationships. The group developed ways of caring together and sought to influence and create more caring working practices and cultures. Whilst it is possible to create small pockets of more inclusive, supportive and caring spaces within education workplaces, we conclude that the challenge to create supportive family-friendly working environments remains.

This introductory chapter provides the context for this edited collection: Care and Coronavirus: Perspectives on Children, Youth and Families which aims to understand care in the context of COVID-19, the practices, experiences and potential futures of it for children, young people and families. In this chapter, the authors begin by exploring COVID-19 and its implications for children, young people and families. This includes a consideration of how particular discourses of childhood and youth often led to the marginalisation of children in care policy and practice during the lockdown periods. The authors then discuss interdisciplinary literature on care to identify directions in policy, practice and research, drawing attention to the political nature of care and the need for scholars of childhood, youth and family to engage with these critical and political approaches to care. The authors argue that developments in the field of Childhood Studies can be brought into productive dialogue with care to forge new ways of thinking through care and childhood. The final part of the chapter provides an overview of the ensuing chapters and concludes with the implications of this work for future research, policy and practice. The authors argue that COVID-19 heightened the attention paid to care and the ways in which care is vital for the maintenance of ourselves and the world around us, while also cautioning about the inequalities and the commodification of care that was revealed in these times. The authors end with a call for reflection on the failures and successes of caring during the pandemic and in its aftermath so we might plan a more caring, hopeful future.