3 | The Child Rights Impact Assessment tool • There were emerging indications that the closure of ECEC and schools had a significant impact on not only children’s academic development, but also on their psychosocial development. Additionally, children missed out on services conventionally provided by schools, such as breakfast and lunch programs, health programs, and counselling. on surveys and consultations with children, and it corresponds to the early stages of pandemic restrictions in 2020 and early 2021. While current policy by the federal Department of Education, Skills and Employment, as of January 2022, states that schools will be ‘the last to close and the first to open’, the trajectory of the pandemic is uncertain and data on the longer-term impacts is not available at this time.21 To apply the tool, information on ECEC and school closures was gathered through: • desktop research on the impacts of the pandemic experienced by children, including published research from government departments; NGOs; academic sources; ministerial releases; and government websites. The majority of this research was qualitative and based on experiences in early 2020 and 2021 • requests for information from Education Ministers across jurisdictions about their decision-making processes • the views of children, gathered using survey results from the National Children’s Commissioner’s national survey on children and young people’s mental health during the pandemic. The results of this engagement are published in the AHRC’s ‘Mental health shapes my life’: COVID-19 and kids’ wellbeing report.20 By applying the CRIA tool to the issue of ECEC and school closures, the following issues were identified and were used to further refine the tool: • Availability of information and data: The majority of Australian research available on the impacts of the pandemic is based This highlights the importance of policy and law-makers identifying data and information gaps early on, and, where possible, gathering information to fill those gaps, and/or ongoing monitoring of emerging data throughout the process. • Information on specific groups of children: It was difficult to find information on the impacts on specific groups of children, including those living with disability, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, CALD children, LGBTIQA+ children,22 children living in outof-home care, and children from refugee backgrounds. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) notes that while some groups are included in surveys, the small sample sizes often prevent any significant differences being detected between groups.23 Applying a CRIA tool to policy/legislation would help identify data gaps and could assist with identifying how to fill these gaps. Safeguarding Children: Using a child rights impact assessment to improve our laws and policies | 17