COVID-19, child abuse and social work practices

Abstract

This research seeks to investigate the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on child abuse in terms of any changes in prevalence as well as challenges to the social workers during their practice of child protection. Previous studies discovered a significant increase of child abuse prevalence during the pandemic in different regions, with researchers proposing that the COVID-19 triggered different risk factors leading to higher potential of child maltreatment. To examine whether a similar pattern could be found in Hong Kong, this study compared the prevalence rate of child abuse in the past decade through data retrieval from a hospital database. On the other hand, two semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore the challenges when handling the child abuse cases from the social workers’ perspective. Data analyses revealed a contradictory result that the prevalence rate of sexual abuse increased during the pandemic, but the rate of non-sexual abuse decreased. To try explaining the contradictory results, Abidin’s (1992) Parental Stress Model was adopted to explain the role of COVID-19 in triggering additional stressors and blocking the available resources, leading to a higher child abuse potential. In contrast, theoretical concepts of social construction of child abuse and official statistics were applied to discuss how the phenomenon of underreporting could result in a different picture regarding the decreased rate of non-sexual abuse. The concept of “invisibility” was also adopted to interpret the obstacles to the social workers when implementing child protection practices during COVID-19, in terms of the increased difficulty to identify new cases and the extra barriers when handling the cases due to the social distancing measures. In brief, the main challenge focused on the ineffective communication between the workers, the children and parents, and the other collaborators.