CONNECT

Children and COVID-19 Research Library

UNDER DEVELOPMENT UNICEF Innocenti's curated library of COVID-19 + Children research

RESULTS: 94 SORT BY:

1 2 3

Library Home | Reset filters

FILTER BY TOPIC:

ADVANCED SEARCH:

Select one or more filter options and click search below.

PUBLICATION DATE:

UNICEF Innocenti Publication

UNICEF Publication

Open Access

Reset filters

JOURNAL ACCESS FOR UNICEF STAFF CONTACT US

1 - 15 of 94

1 2 3

Journal article

Physical and emotional sibling violence in the time of COVID -19

AUTHOR(S)
Nathan H. Perkins; Abha Rai; Susan F. Grossman

Published: February 2021 Journal: Journal of Family Violence

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted families in a variety of ways with much being written on the potential impact of sheltering in place and quarantining on intimate partner violence and parent-to-child abuse. One area that has received scant attention is that of physical and emotional sibling violence. While physical and emotional sibling violence is a predominant form of family violence, discussion of violence between siblings in the time of COVID-19 has not received the attention it warrants. This article examines the potential for family stress to place siblings at risk for engaging in physical and emotional sibling violence and how this is exacerbated in the time of COVID-19. Also discussed is the the connection between physical and emotional sibling violence and other forms of family violence including intimate partner violence and parent-to-child abuse and neglect which underwrites the need to place physical and emotional sibling violence on the radar of practitioners, policy makers, and researchers. Finally, implications for practice, policy, and research on physical and emotional sibling violence in the context of COVID-19 are discussed.

Commentaries and Think Pieces

Transformative learning in early-career child and adolescent psychiatry in the pandemic

AUTHOR(S)
Sowmyashree Mayur Kaku; Ana Moscoso; Jordan Sibeoni (et al.)

Published: February 2021 Journal: The Lancet Psychiatry

The COVID-19 pandemic has globally affected the practice of child and adolescent psychiatry, as well as the daily lives of early-career child and adolescent psychiatrists. There have been changes in continuity of care (eg, postponed, cancelled, or online consultations, and few functioning inpatient units, with others becoming COVID-19 units) and the usual work frame (eg, facemasks, physical distancing, and not offering toys). Work shifted to creating standard operating procedures for care with safety precautions; disseminating advice and information about mental health; offering mental health support to frontline workers; and helping with duties outside of child and adolescent psychiatry. As early-career clinicians in child and adolescent psychiatry, we feared potential problems, such as increased risk of child abuse, domestic violence; behavioural crisis or suicide in adolescents who rely mostly on peer support and their social life; diagnostic delays (eg, for neurodevelopmental disorders); and parental burn-out (as the only caregivers). The fear of infection reduced emergency visits, but probably made these at-risk families inaccessible to clinicians.

Journal article

Impact of COVID-19 on child maltreatment: income instability and parenting issues

AUTHOR(S)
Janet Yuen-Ha Wong; Abraham Ka-Chung Wai; Man Ping Wang (et al.)

Published: February 2021 Journal: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Children are widely recognized as a vulnerable population during disasters and emergencies. The COVID-19 pandemic, like a natural disaster, brought uncertainties and instability to the economic development of the society and social distancing, which might lead to child maltreatment. This study aims to investigate whether job loss, income reduction and parenting affect child maltreatment.

Journal article

Childhood maltreatment is associated with distrust and negatively biased emotion processing

AUTHOR(S)
Johanna Hepp; Sara E. Schmitz; Jana Urbild

Published: February 2021 Journal: Borderline Personality Disorder and Emotion Dysregulation

Cognitive models of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) propose that trauma entails cognitive alterations of increased distrust and perceived threat from others. We tested whether these predictions also hold in individuals with varying levels of childhood maltreatment (CM), which is much more prevalent than traumatic events as required for a PTSD diagnosis. This study hypothesized that higher levels of CM would entail greater distrust and perceived threat, and that distrust would be more change-resistant in participants with more CM.

Cite this research | Open access | No. of pages: 14 | Language: English | Topics: Child Protection | Tags: abandoned children, child abuse and neglect, post traumatic stress disorder, violence against children, COVID-19 response, lockdown, child protection measures

Working paper

Are we asking the right questions?: choices and challenges in assessing COVID-19 impact on the vulnerable in Bangladesh

AUTHOR(S)
Debapriya Bhattacharya; Sarah Sabin Khan; Towfiqul Islam Khan

Institution: Citizen’s Platform for SDGs
Published: January 2021

The paper puts forward a framework to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on vulnerable population groups in a developing country context. Bangladesh has been used as a case study. The pandemic has not only exacerbated pre-existing vulnerabilities of these groups but has also induced new ones. Policy actions towards recovery and resumption—both immediately and over the medium-term—need to be informed by genuine and disaggregated evidence based on realities on the ground. The paper urges a need to have conceptual, analytical and methodological clarity on the relevant issues. Towards this end, it explores the current state of knowledge on the topic and digs deep into the existing literature to analyse these issues. The paper offers a set of analytical questions to construct the assessment framework. The resultant framework presented can be adopted and replicated across national contexts.

Cite this research | No. of pages: xv, 54 | Language: English | Topics: Social Protection, Well-being and Equity, Child Protection | Tags: child abuse and neglect, child care services, poverty, sustainable development, COVID-19 response, child protection measures | Countries: Bangladesh | Publisher: Citizen’s Platform for SDGs

Journal article

Child maltreatment in the time of COVID-19: changes in the Florida foster care system surrounding the COVID-19 safer-at-home order

AUTHOR(S)
Erica D. Musser; Cameron Riopelle; Robert Latham

Published: January 2021 Journal: Child Abuse & Neglect

Media outlets have suggested that rates of child maltreatment may increase during the global COVID-19 pandemic. The few empirical studies that have examined pandemic related changes in rates of child maltreatment have relied predominantly on reports of suspected maltreatment. This study examines rates of documented, substantiated child maltreatment resulting in foster care placement, as well as demographic correlates of child maltreatment within the foster care system, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Journal article

When “Shelter-in-place” isn’t shelter that’s safe: a rapid analysis of domestic violence case differences during the COVID-19 pandemic and stay-at-home orders

AUTHOR(S)
Molly M. McLay

Published: January 2021 Journal: Journal of Family Violence

This study explored the COVID-19 pandemic’s impacts on domestic violence (DV) with the following research questions: 1) Did DV occurring during the pandemic differ on certain variables from cases occurring on a typical day the previous year? 2) Did DV occurring after the implementation of shelter-in-place orders differ (on these same variables) from cases occurring prior to shelterin-place orders? Two logistic regression models were developed to predict DV case differences before and during the pandemic. DV reports (N = 4618) were collected from the Chicago Police Department. Cases from March 2019 and March 2020 were analyzed based on multiple variables.

Journal article

Parental social isolation and child maltreatment risk during the COVID-19 pandemic

AUTHOR(S)
Shawna J. Lee; Kaitlin P. Ward; Joyce Y. Lee (et al.)

Published: January 2021 Journal: Journal of Family Violence

On March 11, 2020, COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. The social isolation and economic stress resulting from pandemic have the potential to exacerbate child abuse and neglect. This study examines the association of parents’ perceived social isolation and recent employment loss to risk for child maltreatment (neglect, verbal aggression, and physical punishment) in the early weeks of the pandemic.

Policy brief

Influencing policy to reduce child marriage in India: reflections from young lives

AUTHOR(S)
Kath Ford; Renu Singh

Institution: Young Lives Longitudinal Study
Published: December 2020

In October 2017, India’s Supreme Court issued a landmark judgement ruling that a man who has sex with his wife where she is less than 18 years old, is committing rape. Evidence from Young Lives longitudinal data and national census analysis by the Young Lives India team contributed directly to this important change in the law, aiming to reduce child marriage. In June 2020, the Government of India established a task force to consider increasing the legal age of marriage for women from 18 to 21 years of age. Young Lives evidence is again making an important contribution to this debate, at a time of huge social and economic upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This report discusses how longitudinal research can influence policy change and what the potential impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic might be on levels of child marriage.

Evidence Synthesis and other Reviews

COVID-19 impact on intimate partner violence and child maltreatment

AUTHOR(S)
Holly Gunn; Suzanne McCormack

Published: December 2020

This report provides an overview of the evidence regarding the impact of COVID-19 and related restrictions on intimate partner violence and child maltreatment. The report also includes information on risk factors for violence, access to support for those at risk, and measures to mitigate the risk of intimate partner violence and child maltreatment during this period. The findings of this report are based on a focused literature review.

Cite this research | No. of pages: 24 | Language: English | Topics: Child Protection, Social Protection, Well-being and Equity | Tags: child abuse and neglect, domestic violence, gender based violence, violence against women, violence against children, COVID-19 response, lockdown | Countries: Canada

Discussion paper

It’s time for care, prioritizing quality care for children - Challenges, opportunities and an agenda for action

AUTHOR(S)
Gillian Huebner

Institution: *UNICEF, Better Care Network
Published: December 2020

COVID-19 is having unprecedented impacts on children and families across the globe; however, these are not being evenly experienced. While the challenges of caregiving are increasing for most families, the effects are particularly acute for those already engaged in low-wage or in-kind work, often in the informal economy where there are few safeguards. Caregivers are stretched, and there is a lack of quality, affordable childcare, with limited access to social protection, services and support to address the multiple and cumulative risks associated with the pandemic, as well as persistent poverty, systemic inequality and discrimination.

Cite this research | No. of pages: 15 | Language: English | Topics: Child Protection, Social Protection, Well-being and Equity | Tags: child abuse and neglect, child care, child care services, domestic violence, institutional care, social inequality, COVID-19 response, child protection measures | Publisher: *UNICEF

Journal article

Orphanage trafficking and child protection in emergencies in Nepal: a comparative analysis of the 2015 earthquake and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic

AUTHOR(S)
Martin Punaks; Samjyor Lama

Published: December 2020 Journal: Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond

This article compares and contrasts two humanitarian emergencies and their impact on Nepal: these are the Nepal earthquake in 2015 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. It explains how each emergency has impacted children without parental care or at risk of family separation, with specific reference to orphanage trafficking, voluntourism, child institutionalisation and family preservation. In relation to each emergency, the article considers the role of disaster preparedness; the roles of the Nepal government, the international community and civil society; and the significance of one emergency being localised, while the other is a global phenomenon. It also shows that while these emergencies have increased the risk of harm and exploitation for children and families, they have also driven forward innovation in child protection practices, particularly through the use of reintegration, case management and family preservation programmes.

Journal article

The perfect storm: hidden risk of child maltreatment during the Covid-19 pandemic

AUTHOR(S)
Christina M. Rodriguez; Shawna J. Lee; Kaitlin P. Ward (et al.)

Published: December 2020 Journal: Child Maltreatment

The Covid-19 pandemic upended the country, with enormous economic and social shifts. Given the increased contact from families living in virtual confinement coupled with massive economic disarray, the Covid-19 pandemic may have created the ideal conditions to witness a rise in children’s experience of abuse and neglect. Yet such a rise will be difficult to calculate given the drop in official mechanisms to track its incidence. The current investigation utilized two studies conducted early in the pandemic to evaluate maltreatment risk.

Journal article

Modelling the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on violent discipline against children

AUTHOR(S)
Camilla Fabbri; Amiya Bhatia; Max Petzold (et al.)

Published: December 2020 Journal: Child Abuse & Neglect

The COVID-19 pandemic could increase violence against children at home. However, collecting empirical data on violence is challenging due to ethical, safety, and data quality concerns. This study estimated the anticipated effect of COVID-19 on violent discipline at home using multivariable predictive regression models.

Journal article

Child welfare policies and services during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea

AUTHOR(S)
JongSerl Chun; Jinyung Kim

Published: December 2020 Journal: Asia Pacific Journal of Social Work and Development

Emergency situations render children vulnerable; hence, this study reviewed child-related policies and services in South Korea during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus far, the government has proposed online health promotion programmes for children, emergency care services and allowances, and school meal delivery services. Based on these findings, we recommend the establishment of mental health, sexual abuse, and child abuse online messaging services, allocation of additional financial and educational support to lowincome families, and prioritisation of childcare services.

1 - 15 of 94

1 2 3

UNICEF Innocenti's Children and COVID-19 Library is a database collecting research from around the world on COVID-19 and its impacts on children and adolescents.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE DATABASE

Subscribe to updates on new research about COVID-19 & children

Campaign

COVID-19 & Children: Rapid Research Response

UNICEF Innocenti is mobilizing a rapid research response in line with UNICEF’s global response to the COVID-19 crisis. The initiatives we’ve begun will provide the broad range of evidence needed to inform our work to scale up rapid assessment, develop urgent mitigating strategies in programming and advocacy, and preparation of interventions to respond to the medium and longer-term consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. The research projects cover a rapid review of evidence, education analysis, and social and economic policies.

Visit the page

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER

CONNECT

MENU

Children and COVID-19 Research Library

RESULTS: 94 SORT BY:

1 2 3

FILTER BY TOPIC:

ADVANCED SEARCH:

PUBLICATION DATE:

Share:

Sign up to Innocenti news

CONNECT

MENU

Children and COVID-19 Research Library

RESULTS: 94 SORT BY: NEWEST OLDEST ALPHABETICAL A-Z ALPHABETICAL Z-A 1 2 3

FILTER BY TOPIC:

ADVANCED SEARCH:

PUBLICATION DATE:

Share:

RESULTS: 94 SORT BY:

1 2 3