Not what you think!
We stop off for a coffee , I take you to one of our local coffee chains , its only fantasy so obviously I will be paying and we sit down to put the world to rights and the subject is child abuse . Someone comes in wearing a mask , they do that here still , not often but it happens and we get onto the subject of the pandemic and how awful it must have been to be a child in a chaotic household during lockdown. I would be happy to agree and I probably would add that social workers must be getting a lot of overtime to catch up after the lockdowns .Its obvious right ?………….well no actually .
Another late night of reading background research ( I know I must stop that), I came across an Article from March this year ( 2023) that cast doubts on my beliefs . The article from the New York Times ( if I can work out how to do it I will put a link at the bottom of the page) that points to no increase in child abuse during the pandemic lockdowns. If we just take a step back and think about what we would expect in a lockdown . Children in a chaotic household , trapped with their potential abuser , its a nightmare.
New York in Lockdown
We time travel to New York its spring of 2020 , I remember it well, my wife a frontline health professional treated her patients on a Covid ward , caught it, and kindly shared it with me , God we were so ill , I thought we might die. Anyway as happened in many other places everything shut down , shops offices and Social Services . Very limited home visits , no day care , emergency only service provided. we might expect that hospital paediatrics would have to take up the slack in the Emergency Department , but it didn’t happen. Child abuse cases did not rise , children removed from their families and placed in foster care dropped by half. After the lockdowns thats when we would see the bounce back , the surge of complaints , the removal of children , only it didn’t happen.
I actually knew of this before the the reading Times Article and I had written a chapter about it in my book . I found this out by reading an excellent paper by Melissa Friedman and Daniella Rohr ” The COVID experiment and a call for change” 15th march 2023. ( Columbia Law Review Forum pages 52-83).
The paper sets the scene pre COVID where it was the norm to remove children from abusive and neglectful parents ensuring the Childs safety, we can all understand that.The the shutdown began .
In the reports own words “Children remained safe across a range of metrics , avoided the trauma of removal from their homes during the pandemic ,and experienced sustained safety as the city began to reopen”. Perhaps more shocking “This once-in-a century pandemic revealed a striking truth: Keeping children at home with their families provided them with equal ,if not greater,safety than removing them for placement in the child welfare system “.
Officials had understandably worried for the safety of the children left with families , this worry proved to be unfounded.There was no surge in deaths of children , or abuse or neglect. Children furthermore avoided the trauma of removal , removal in itself can, the paper shows result in a complex trauma leading to attachment issues. They describe the removed child as having ” a monsoon of stress hormones”.
The report also states that those children removed from care givers suffer a diverse range of worse outcomes including teen births ,delinquency and learning and development delays and these adverse effects follow them into adulthood. Children they say often face further abuse and neglect once they are placed in foster care. Chances of sexual abuse rise from between two times to four times the general population whilst in foster care. Add to this that foster care placements are often unstable , the report calls it ‘Foster Care Drift’, leading to children having multiple placements.
In New York, although I suspect widely , the largest proportion of children removed are from an ethnic background . In New York this is Black/African American or Latinx/Hispanic who ……..( This is Huge).. make up 91.9% of all children removed. I will leave the figure with you to decide what you think .
What are the figures then?
The report states that ” The City received approximately 42% fewer reports of abuse and neglect ( April to June 2020).”….”Further , the number of investigations into child fatalities suspected to be as a result of abuse and neglect dropped by 25% between February and June 2020″.
In June 2021 The commissioner for children’s services said ” Im happy to say that we haven’t really seen any indicators of a larger bolus of undetected child abuse”.
Why did this happen then ?
Now that the pandemic is over , the figures have slowly crept back up . The report and this confirms with a paper I read for my book from a community worker is poverty . The report quotes J.Milner and D Kelly former officials of the US Children Bureau . They wrote” We see poor and vulnerable families as the ‘other’. The role that poverty plays in child welfare decision-making is a topic that has yet to be meaningfully confronted and addressed”.
The report points to numerous studies that public benefit programmes lead to fewer maltreatment -caused child fatalities . In 2021 the American Academy of Paediatrics evaluated spending in all fifty states and found the spending on benefit was strongly associated with reductions in child maltreatment. They reported that for every $1000 per living person in poverty spent there was a 4.3% reduction in abuse or neglect.
The pandemic saw an expanded Federal Child Tax credit as part of a financial rescue plan , it dramatically reduced poverty 800,000 children were raised out of poverty by payments. In New York 86 % of low income families used the tax credit for basic needs.
Well it does provide food for thought , can an increase in welfare reduce the numbers of childhood abuse and child removal? perhaps a system of race-blind removals and better funded government aid programmes together with a child centred review of social services , better funded legal representation and a trauma informed justice system. If the New York experience is reflected elsewhere it really would get people thinking , or it should…….
Anyway , thanks for spending your time with me , I know there is so much content out there . Hope you are well , see you soon.
Citations
COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW FORUM
VOL. 123 MARCH 15, 2023 PAGES 52–83
REDUCING FAMILY SEPARATIONS IN NEW YORK CITY:
THE COVID-19 EXPERIMENT AND A CALL FOR CHANGE
Melissa Friedman* & Daniella Rohr**
