key: cord-0950422-c7ydxesr
authors: Katz, Carmit; Fallon, Barbara
title: Protecting children from maltreatment during COVID-19
date: 2020-09-18
journal: Child Abuse Negl
DOI: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2020.104753
sha: 9ddafa315413cecadffe9f2cb14b1ca821684816
doc_id: 950422
cord_uid: c7ydxesr

nan

COVID-19 took the world by surprise with the only comparable worldwide health event one hundred years prior. The Spanish Flu which began in 1918 was ultimately responsible for the deaths of 50 million people. COVID-19 resulted in a health crisis that was accompanied by the imposition of social isolation measures and, in many countries, a quarantine for various periods of time in order to contain the spread of infection and reduce the burden on health care sectors. These unprecedented measures also generated a worldwide economic crisis.

Inevitably, COVID-19 will have serious and potentially long-lasting implications for the mental health of millions of children and their caregivers. In a recent report by UNICEF Innocenti (2020), a worrisome picture of children's well-being worldwide was presented indicating that in many countries children are not provided access to the resources and opportunities needed in order to achieve their full potential. The catastrophic impact of COVID-19 on the lives of children, parents and families worldwide will have adverse J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f 2 consequences for their mental and physical health as well as their long-term development.

This issue is dedicated to understanding the immediate and potential consequences of COVID-19 and its impact on child safety, development and on our ability to protect children from maltreatment given the unprecedented social isolation measures employed.

We were honoured to act as guest editors of this special two-volume issue, as the content will contribute to an international discussion of the emerging questions regarding the impact of COVID-19 hitherto unanswered by the empirical literature. The first volume provides preliminary data and research studies that contribute to three fundamental areas of study: (1) how COVID-19 affects individuals previously impacted by maltreatment; (2) et al., 2020) and interviews with children (Haffejee & Levine, 2020) , as well as from Great

Britain , Germany (Jentsch & Schnock, 2020) and evidence from Japan with respect to the impact of school closure policy on suicide rates in Japan (Isumi et al., 2020) .

The third substantive area of the first volume is organized around interventions; more specifically how can practitioners be supported to provide interventions during a pandemic?

Initial results from online training programs in the United States are presented in two manuscripts (Wilke, Howard, & Pop, 2020; Schwab-Reese et al., 2020) . Another important aspect is brought to the attention by a study carried out in Brazil in an attempt to understand the impact of COVID-19 on the engagement of practitioners in resilience behaviors, taking into consideration individual and socio-ecological predictors (Priolo Filho et al., 2020) . The first volume sheds light on the challenges in developing interventions to support the rapid return of children from residential care to their homes (Wilke, Howard, & Goodman 2020) and to various adapted telemental health interventions examined by Racinea and colleagues (2020) . An innovative tool developed in Canada for screening the vulnerability of children and families takes into consideration the multifaceted nature of the pandemic is described by Fallon and colleagues (2020).

We hope that the rich body of knowledge and discussions offered in the special issue will inform research efforts to continue advancing theory and practice in protecting children in times of crisis. Moreover, we sincerely hope that the various perspectives and international collaborations presented in the special issue will encourage future collaborations in our field, as COVID-19 has emphasized the crucial importance of joint efforts in protecting children from maltreatment. J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f

When will I be free': Lessons for child protection in South Africa, from COVID-19

Do suicide rates in children and adolescents change during school closure in Japan? The acute effect of the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic on child and adolescent mental health

Child welfare in the midst of the coronavirus pandemicemerging evidence from Germany

Child maltreatment during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Consequences of parental job loss on psychological and physical abuse towards children

Child safety, protection, and safe guarding in the time of COVID-19 in Great Britain: Proposing a conceptual framework

Brazilian child protection professionals' resilient behavior during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Telemental health for child trauma treatment during and post-COVID-19: Limitations and considerations

The mediating effect of complex posttraumatic stress disorder

Worlds of Influence: Understanding what shapes child wellbeing in rich countries

Rapid return of children in residential care to family as a result of COVID-19: Scope, challenges, and recommendations

Data-informed recommendations for services providers working with vulnerable children and families during the COVID-19

Material hardship and parenting stress among grandparent kinship providers during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The mediating role of grandparents' mental health