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Citation
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Hartwell M, Hendrix AD, Sajjadi NB, Baxter MA, Chesher T, Coffey S, Passmore SJ. Child Abuse Rev. 2022; ePub(ePub): ePub. |
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Abstract
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The state of Oklahoma ranks among the nation's highest in child abuse and neglect prevalence, with 15.9 confirmed cases per 1000 children (Oklahoma State Department of Health, 2018). Moreover, Oklahoma has consistently ranked low in overall child wellbeing compared to other states (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2020). Oklahoma's poor child wellbeing status is attributable to many factors including high prevalence of poverty, housing instability, food insecurity, lack of health care coverage, and low parent educational attainment - all of which are risk factors for child maltreatment (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2020; Hunter & Flores, 2021).
Previously, we found that criminal filings of child abuse and neglect significantly decreased in the state of Oklahoma during the first six months of 2020 during the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic (Whelan et al., 2020). The first case of COVID-19 was identified in Oklahoma on March 6, 2020, prompting a state-wide Safer-at-Home order on March 24, 2020 (Oklahoma Executive Order: Safer at Home, 2020). Following these Safer-at-Home orders, many families faced increasing stress and risk of parental substance misuse due to financial hardships from lost wages, thus adding to the risk for abuse (Bradbury-Jones & Isham, 2020; Flory et al., 2009; Liu & Doan, 2020). Our initial findings showed that criminal filings were significantly lower than a projected model based on 10 years of previous data, culminating in a 63 per cent difference in actual filings compared to forecasted filings in June of 2020 (Whelan et al., 2020). Beyond the Safer-at-Home order, Oklahoma courts reopened with few interruptions (Oklahoma State Courts Network, 2021) and crime rates remained consistent with pre-pandemic levels (Carter, 2020). As the pandemic continued to take its toll, the state did little in the way of policy change aimed at alleviating these burdens (Polansky, 2020). Additionally, most schools did not return to in-person learning in the fall semester of 2020, likely limiting child abuse and neglect surveillance by teachers and school staff. Thus, we hypothesised that the rates of child abuse filings continued to decline during the summer and autumn months of 2020.
Our findings suggest that Oklahoma criminal filings for child abuse and neglect continued to decline for most of the latter half of 2020 before rising to expected levels near the end of the year. Child abuse and neglect in Oklahoma likely continued and may have even increased to levels higher than that seen prior to the COVID-19 pandemic during this time, especially in the presence of heightened risk factors (Storz, 2020; World Health Organization, 03/, 2020). Though our findings are correlational in nature - a limitation of our study - we posit our findings of lower criminal filings are likely due to interrupted child abuse and neglect surveillance and may only represent a small fraction of actual child abuse.
Language: en |