What Lessons Can the Child Welfare System Take from the COVID-19 Pandemic? By Sarah A. Font Cosigners: Elizabeth Bartholet, Bob J. Bruder-Mattson, Maura Corrigan, Mark Daley, James G. Dwyer, Greg McKay, Jedd Medefind, Emily Putnam-Hornstein, Thea Ramirez, Naomi Schaefer Riley, Cassie Statuto Bevan, and John Walters
January 2021
Key Points • COVID-19 and subsequent government responses introduced new barriers to detection and responding to child maltreatment and achieving permanency for children in foster care. • New strategies and better use of existing technologies are needed to detect child maltreatment for children unseen by school personnel. • Improved use of virtual technology could improve family court processes and family treatment options during and after the pandemic. • Indications of positive adaptation by community-based agencies during the pandemic allowed them to sustain or increase services to foster, kin, and biological families, but greater support for data collection and transparency for government contracted services is still needed. The COVID-19 pandemic has drawn greater attention to the plight of abused and neglected children. Maltreatment incidence is likely on the rise, given the combination of social isolation, increased economic precarity, and heightened caregiving burden for children who would typically be in school or day care. Yet, fewer such incidents are referred to state child welfare systems (CWS), and core CWS activities are delayed, canceled, or moved to a virtual format in some areas. Even as vaccines and treatments for COVID-19 allow for a return to normal, CWS remains at a crossroads. Growing calls from activists to abolish
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the system entirely1 and claims of systemic bias and overreach from within the US Children’s Bureau2 necessitate a crucial look at CWS’s effectiveness. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought long-standing CWS problems to the forefront while also identifying pragmatic opportunities for system improvement. What can we learn from the pandemic—and federal, state, and local governmental responses— about the cracks in the child welfare system? What lessons can be carried forward post-pandemic? What happened after the emergence of COVID-19 and subsequent governmental orders?
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