VULNERABLE CHILDREN ARE at heightened risk of abuse and neglect during the Covid-19 pandemic, but services are struggling to reach those most in need due to social distancing restrictions.
“It has become more difficult for our services to make contact with them since schools closed,” she says. “An ISPCC resilience support worker works closely with the social worker to determine that the child is okay and the home environment is stable. This increased domestic stress – coupled with a difficulty in accessing at-risk children – is a theme that repeats itself in all of our conversations with social services and children’s charities about the issues facing children and young people during the Covid-19 lockdown.
“We’re working with families in poverty, where there is difficulty with money or where there are mental health concerns. Some of the children may have diagnoses of learning difficulties or, if they’ve lived with domestic violence, aggressive behaviour. Since Covid-19, some of this aggressive behaviour has been increasing and so we have had to adapt our programmes to carry out over the phone.”
He hits out when he feels scared. We had helped him to develop coping skills and we had a safety plan for mother and child to help him if he felt aggressive urges. Now he is in the house and can’t meet up with his friends, so there are further risks for the family. The Dublin sisters were sexually abused throughout their childhood by their father, Kevin Kavanagh, who also raped and abused children outside the family home. He was brought to justice in 1989, served a seven-year-prison sentence and died a year after release.
Earlier this month, Cari , a charity that provides therapy for child victims of sexual abuse and their families, received a phone call to its helpline about a child at immediate risk. Like other forms of child and domestic abuse, being trapped at home with an abuser presents a heightened risk to young people. Farrelly says:
Being isolated in a bedroom and spending too much time online is a risk factor for young people to download pornography – including illegal child sex abuse material – and to become vulnerable to online grooming, One in Four has previously said.
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