Impact of Covid-19 on making decisions about future choices .
Family in uences
We asked young people whether they felt that their family influence decisions about their future more after and during Covid-19 . 23 % of the young people felt that this was the case . The young researchers attributed this to young people and their family spending more time together during lockdown .
Overall 48 % of young people say they always receive enough support from their family to make decisions about their future . This is a 6 % fall from the pre-Covid survey . 22.4 % of young people said they either sometimes , rarely or never get enough support from their family to make decisions about their future ( this is not a significant increase from last year ' s survey ). These differences could be due to the added stress on parents trying to make ends meet on furlough or having lost their jobs and having less time .
As a follow up question to this we asked what young people ' s parents or important adults who support them want them to do . We compared this to the data from the previous pre-Covid survey . There was a significant increase in adults wanting young people to go to further or higher education , 47 % to 63 % post Covid-19 . This is mirrored in a significant decrease in adults wanting the young people they care for to get a job from 24 % to 10 %.
The young researchers have speculated that there could be several reasons for this . One could be students having a better chance of meeting grade requirements without exams . A cynical young researcher suggested that parents may be wanting to ship their children off to university after being confined with them over lockdown ! Another could be that the labour market looks less attractive at the moment and parents and carers would rather young people gain more qualifications to access jobs slightly easier .
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