The Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic on Child Abuse and Neglect

Purpose - Child abuse and neglect (CAN) is a worldwide issue due to its biological, psychological, and social effects. Research in this field is particularly useful to understand CAN aspects which are still unknown and to define updated intervention strategies. Until now, there are no clear indications about the possible effects determined by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on CAN. For these reasons, the authors of the present manuscript propose a study in which they compared quantitative and qualitative variables of pre-pandemic and pandemic cases evaluated at an Italian ambulatory specialized in diagnosis and management of CAN. The main aims were to: define if there was a reduction or an increase of cases referred for CAN during SARS-CoV-2 pandemic; evaluate if there were statistically significant differences of variables’ distributions between pre-pandemic and pandemic periods. Methods - The study included children 0 - 18 years of age who were referred to the specialized ambulatory during the first 13 months of the SARS-COV-2 pandemic in Italy: March 2020 - March 2021. As control group (Group B - GB), the authors chose children 0 - 18 years of age evaluated by the healthcare professionals of the same ambulatory from March 2018 to March 2019. Ages and main qualitative variables were compared between the two samples throughout statistical tests. Results - The analysis yielded no statistical differences for age distributions and for the most part of qualitative variables. The study pointed out a reduction of the distribution of the number of cases. Conclusions - In this study, the comparison of frequencies’ distribution of the most part of variables between pre and post pandemic samples did not differ. The most important result of the present analysis is that in the pandemic period the volume of observed CAN cases decreased. This allows us to confirm the indications of the scientific literature. We cannot exclude that the decrease was due to a negative impact of the pandemic on the child protection system. The afore-mentioned data will be useful to program corrective interventions, also for future pandemic and disasters.