Children and COVID-19 Research Library

Child-welfare practices transformed drastically in 2020 after governments instituted quarantining and social-distancing measures. Child visitation, mental health evaluations and treatment, and court hearings either ceased or only accessible via information communication technologies (ICTs). Peer-reviewed published scholarship about technology use in child welfare is limited to voluntary, supplemental contexts and insufficient to understand the nuanced effects of this transition on vulnerable populations. A critical case study ethnography was used to name this phenomenon, ‘pandemic practice’, and describe how case-management challenges were compounded and/or masked by pandemic practice. Mandatory ICT use in case management contributed to injustices for some families in the child-welfare system, including children spending extended time in foster care, families receiving superficial treatment services and irreparable harm to timely case progression. This study used technology adoption theory and technological capital framework to identify and understand the complexities of pandemic practice beyond a simple digital divide perspective. It presents a hierarchy of technological capital necessary to participate in pandemic practice, suggestions to create sufficient capital and implications for policy and practice.