Children and COVID-19 Research Library

COVID-19 has had a major impact on child abuse and neglect (CAN) in the U.S. leading to a change in the number of reported screened-in CAN investigations, missed prevention cases, and missed CAN cases. This paper aims to estimate the deficit number of CAN investigations and resultant estimated number of missed prevention and CAN cases due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. from March 2020 to December 2020.

In March 2020, when COVID-19 was acknowledged as a worldwide pandemic, many countries dedicated their efforts to mitigate the virus and its negative health outcomes. One of the most frequent solutions was forced lockdowns, which was found to be beneficial in decreasing the spread of the virus. Today, after a year of international efforts to diminish the virus, we are at a stage where we can see the impact of these measures on children during COVID-19. Specifically, we now need to reflect on what happened to the prevention of child maltreatment (CM) during this time.There is an accumulation of knowledge with respect to the dramatic decrease of CM reports to formal systems worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, researchers have been stressing that this decrease should not be attributed to an increase in the safety of children but rather due to the adverse impact of the lockdown on the system’s ability to see and protect children (e.g., Baron et al., 2020; Katz & Cohen, 2020). In addition, there is growing evidence that during COVID-19, various CM risk factors significantly increased (Conrad-Hiebner & Byram, 2020; Proulx et al., 2021; Rodriguez et al., 2020; Wu & Xu, 2020), such as parental job loss (Lawson et al., 2020), parental social isolation (Lee et al., 2021), and mental health issues (Russell et al., 2020). Adding to this, parental stress was found to be a major CM risk factor that increased during COVID-19 and an increase in self-reported child abuse was found for parents experiencing heightened stressors (Lawson et al., 2020).

COVID-19 has become a worldwide pandemic impacting child protection services (CPSs) in many countries. With quarantine and social distancing restrictions, school closures, and recreational venues suspended or providing reduced access, the social safety net for violence prevention has been disrupted significantly. Impacts include the concerns of underreporting and increased risk of child abuse and neglect, as well as challenges in operating CPSs and keeping their workforce safe. The current discussion paper explored the impact of COVID-19 on child maltreatment reports and CPS responses by comparing countries using available population data.