Child Welfare – Planning Post Pandemic

There has been a wealth of coverage of the effect of the pandemic on the mental health and substance abuse prevalence of the U.S. population. But there has also been a great, and less well-covered, impact on the child welfare system field. While the number of child protective services investigations decreased slightly from 2019 to 2020, during the lockdown period—3,476,000 and 3,145,000 respectively (see Child Maltreatment 2020), the number of children admitted for pediatric non-accidental trauma tripled (see During COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Orders, Child Abuse Rate Tripled). In addition, the . . .