Child Abuse Cases Got More Severe During COVID-19. Could Teachers Have Prevented It?

Child Abuse Cases Got More Severe During COVID-19. Could Teachers Have Prevented It?

University of California, Irvine, researchers found that reported cases of suspected child abuse in one large, unnamed county in the Golden State fell during the pandemic—but the severity of actual child abuse cases rose over that time. … “By the time children are identified, the abuse they have suffered is more severe than it otherwise would have been,” said Stacy Metcalf, a clinical research coordinator at the University of California, San Francisco, and a doctoral researcher at UC Irvine, in a presentation on the study at the Association for Psychological Science virtual conference last week.