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What was missed in child protection responses during COVID-19? Perceptions of professionals from various countries
Carmit Katz1, Afnan Attrash-Najjar1, Natalia Varela2
1Bob Shapell School of Social Work, Tel Aviv University, Chaim Levanon 30, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel.
Insights
The COVID-19 pandemic worsened child maltreatment, revealing critical gaps in child protection policies and practices globally. Professionals urge improvements to better safeguard children's rights during crises.
Area of Science:
- Child Protection
- Public Health Crises
- Social Work
Background:
- The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated child maltreatment and strained families, increasing the importance of child protection systems.
- Evidence indicates a rise in child maltreatment rates during the pandemic, highlighting systemic vulnerabilities.
Purpose of the Study:
- To identify deficiencies in international child protection responses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- To inform future crisis response strategies that uphold children's rights and protection from harm.
Main Methods:
- Qualitative study utilizing five online focus groups with 47 child protection professionals across various countries.
- Thematic analysis was employed to interpret the data gathered from focus groups.
Main Results:
- Three primary themes emerged: policy gaps, practice deficiencies, and actionable recommendations from professionals.
- Identified shortcomings in child protection policies and practical implementation during the pandemic.
Conclusions:
- The study highlights persistent neglect of children's needs and voices in global child protection policies and practices during the pandemic.
- Professional recommendations offer insights for enhancing child protection policy and practice in future crises.
Background:
The COVID-19 pandemic increased the likelihood of child maltreatment and made already difficult circumstances for children and their families much worse. This increased the significance of the child protection system's role in responding to child maltreatment and ensuring children's rights, including their right to a safe life without violence. Unfortunately, accumulating evidence has indicated that the rates of child maltreatment increased during the pandemic.
Objective:
The current study sought to identify the gaps within child protection responses in various countries during the COVID-19 pandemic and to discover how we can respond to crises in the future while preserving children's rights, including their right to protection from maltreatment.
Method:
Five focus groups with a total of 47 professionals working with children from various countries were conducted via Zoom and analyzed using a thematic approach.
Results:
Three main themes were identified: 1) gaps in policies, 2) gaps in practice, and 3) professionals' messages to improve policy and practice.
Conclusions:
This study emphasizes what was missed in child protection policy and practice, highlighting the continuous neglect of children's needs and voices within policies, practices and guidelines worldwide during the pandemic. Professionals' recommendations for policy and practice are also discussed.
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