After several weeks of stay-at-home orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is clear that we will soon face a crisis in child maltreatment. Well-known risk factors for the incidence of child maltreatment likely have been exacerbated by the circumstances brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, our ability to identify children who are experiencing maltreatment has been drastically limited by the stay-at-home orders prompting parents to keep their children home. As long as the community organizations that most frequently serve our children are closed or restricted, it will be necessary for our local and national leaders to bring together our multidisciplinary colleagues to generate new ideas meant to prevent and address children’s experience of maltreatment under our current circumstances.
Children’s increased risk for child maltreatment, as well as other adverse childhood experience (ACEs) including exposure to intimate partner violence, during this pandemic should not come as a surprise. Parents are facing elevated stress related to reduced access to concrete resources and to skyrocketing unemployment rates (Associated Press, 2020; Kroman, 2020). Parenting demands are increased while childcare centers and schools are closed indefinitely. Parents are called upon to do their own jobs remotely, have increased financial stress in cases of unemployment or furlough, and must oversee their children’s distance learning. School closures also exacerbate food insecurity as many children rely on free and reduced-cost school meals (Van Lacker & Parolin, 2020), all while food pantries are at a loss to help those families seeking food resources. Moreover, parents’ mental health is at increased risk during this time of stress, particularly as they worry about potential coronavirus risk and illness. These risks are exacerbated among families who are poor and living in highly crowded urban areas, where COVID-19 cases and fatalities are the highest.
In the midst of these stressors, social support, a well-known protective factor that may mitigate the occurrence of child maltreatment and other ACEs, is limited by stay-at-home orders, during which even visits from extended family are discouraged. Instead, social isolation, another major risk factor for child maltreatment and other ACEs, has increased. Although physical distancing is necessary for slowing the spread of COVID-19, strict stay-at-home guidelines enable children’s experience of maltreatment to go unnoticed and make it more difficult for families to seek and receive help.
As children are kept home from their usual childcare and school settings, our ability to identify and protect them from child maltreatment occurring in their homes has decreased substantially. Across the nation, reports to child protection hotlines are down as much as 62% as compared to this time last year (Schmidt & Nelson, 2020). School professionals typically account for a large proportion of child protection reports. With schools currently out of session, school professionals are not able to provide oversight and a much-needed safety net. For many students, teachers and outside adults provide social stability, reassurance, and an extra set of protective eyes to monitor for abuse and neglect. Similarly, many home-visiting, mental health, and medical care services designed to support families at risk for child maltreatment and other ACEs are not operating at their usual capacity or are attempting to operate using telehealth or other virtual interfaces. Although telehealth offers some continuity of support and an opportunity to see into family settings, professionals are limited in their ability to assess risks with the same depth and breadth as usually offered by in-person visitation. As such, instead of being able to intervene early with families before severe abuse occurs, child protection calls are down, and emergency room visits for serious child maltreatment related injuries are increasing (Santich & Miller, 2020). As states across the nation are anticipating a surge of new child protection reports when stay-at-home orders are lifted, we must be prepared to intervene effectively.
How then should we prepare ourselves? Grounded in decades of research on child maltreatment, we recommend focusing on two primary efforts: work to increase family engagement in prevention efforts and work to promote awareness of child maltreatment and other ACEs so that unsafe situations for children can be identified more readily. To achieve these goals in the context of COVID-19, we recommend multidisciplinary coordination and creativity so that necessary information and resources can be shifted to a “new front line” of individuals who are positioned strategically to reach at risk children and their families.
Foremost, it is important to recognize that there is an immense opportunity and need for primary prevention services during this time. Many families are facing challenges and stressors that they have never experienced before. As such, they may not be aware of the resources and supports available in their communities. Gathering and increasing information sharing about local resources is an important goal. These resources should include financial and material assistance (e.g., food) as well as mental health and parenting programs and supports. Second, we need to evaluate which individuals have the most contact with at risk children and their families during this time. Once these frontline individuals are identified, they should be provided with resource information and training on how to effectively facilitate discussions with families about their needs and how engagement in services may feel supportive rather than burdensome. At the same time, we should provide wide-spread training on mandated reporting so that individuals are educated about indicators of child maltreatment and other ACEs and so that they will know how and when to contact child welfare agencies. Mandated reporters vary by state and are sometimes limited to professionals in school and health care settings, professionals who are not seeing children while stay-at-home orders are enacted. As such, keeping our children safe must be a community wide effort.
The resources and needs of each community may vary substantially. Thus, we recommend that communities invite systems of care or professionals from child welfare, mental health, primary prevention, law enforcement, first responders and schools to come together to coordinate local efforts in a team-like fashion. For example, in Northern Indiana, Elkhart County’s system of care, The Source, hosted an open community work group meeting that brought together over 50 individuals from diverse disciplines. The purpose of this meeting was to generate ideas and action steps designed to better target support and resources for the most at-risk families and to consider how new frontline staff could receive additional training. Promising and creative collaborative ideas emerged, such as using public school meal distribution sites to share resources with families; developing standards within the school system for identifying at-risk children who are not engaging with distance learning and determining when a home visit by school counselors may be warranted; providing additional resource information and training to grocery store cashiers; engaging church communities in prevention efforts, and more. By communities bringing together their diverse contingent of multidisciplinary professionals who serve at risk children and their families, a team like investment can be made in generating and implementing innovative and progressive ideas. We recommend that these interdisciplinary teams start their work now to plan for the influx of child abuse reports and the increased need for support and resources. Working together across disciplines and involving community volunteers to accomplish these goals will create a more connected society where we support each other. As we continue to navigate addressing children’s exposure to maltreatment and other ACEs under our current pandemic conditions, it really will take a village to ensure the health and well-being of our children.
References
Associated Press (2020, April 29). State to offer more services amid pandemic. The Herald, https://duboiscountyherald.com/b/state-to-offer-more-services-amid-pandemicopens in new window
Kroman, D. (2020, April 9). Housing, food, cash: Requests for help double in WA amid pandemic. Crosscut, https://crosscut.com/2020/04/housing-food-cash-requests-help-double-wa-amid-pandemicopens in new window.
Santich, K. & Miller, N.S. (2020, May 2). Central Florida child abuse cases spike during pandemic. Orlando Sentinel, https://www.orlandosentinel.com/coronavirus/os-ne-coronavirus-pandemic-rise-in-severe-child-abuse-20200502-iigwo4couna4lmi66douttyksa-story.htmlopens in new window
Schmidt, S., & Natanson, H. (2020, April 30). With kids stuck at home, ER doctors see more severe cases of child abuse. The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/04/30/child-abuse-reports-coronavirus/opens in new window.
Van Lacker, W., & Parolin, Z. (2020). COVID-19, school closures, and child poverty: A crisis in the making. The Lancet Public Health, 5(5), E243-E244. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(20)30084-0opens in new window