A Crisis for a System in Crisis: Forecasting from the Short‐ and Long‐Term Impacts of COVID‐19 on the Child Welfare System1

• Published date: 01 October 2020
• Author: Kristen Pisani‐Jacques
• Date: 01 October 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12528

A CRISIS FOR A SYSTEM IN CRISIS: FORECASTING FROM THE

SHORT- AND LONG-TERM IMPACTS OF COVID-19 ON THE CHILD

WELFARE SYSTEM

1

Kristen Pisani-Jacques

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust the world into a crisis –and the child welfare system is particularly susceptible to its

effects. This pandemic has exacerbated some of the most problematic aspects of the system, and its impacts will reverberate

long after the immediate crisis ends. As COVID-19 spread, families were instantly impacted –in-person family timewas can-

celled, youth and families were unable to access basic resources, services, and technology, and access to the courts was

curtailed. Those short-term effects may give way to long-term harms such as disrupted attachments and delays in achieving

permanency. The pandemic also reinforced the importance of key tenets of a well-functioning child welfare system: high-

quality legal representation, creativity, and youth and family engagement. Attorneys must learn from the fallout of the pan-

demic, retain the best responsive practices, and use the lessons learned from this crisis to transform dependency cases, and

the system writ large, into what families need and deserve.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

Many child welfare agencies and courts’first response to COVID-19 was to suspend in-person family time (visitation)

for all youth in care; these blanket suspensions failedto take into account individual familycircumstances, contravened

federal guidance, and isolated youth from their families –and virtual visitation did not serve as a meaningful substitute

for all youth, particularly when taking into account age, developmentalneeds, and access to technology.

During COVID-19, families and youth in the dependency system experienced restricted and limited access to daily

living needs (food, shelter, education), technology, reunificationser vices and resources for transition-aged youth, and

the courts and attorneys.

Because quality family time supports attachment and expedites permanency, parent/child relationships may be long

impacted by COVID-19 restrictions, well after the immediate crisis ends.

Attorneys have an important role to play in ensuring that meaningful, quality family time resumes and that disrupted

attachments are repaired through increased contact and/or targeted therapeutic services.

Closed courts, cancelled services, and suspended visitation may lead to delays in achieving permanency for youth in

the child welfare system during COVID-19.

Attorneys should ensure the court has before it a full record of what was supposed to happen and use the reasonable

efforts requirement to hold agencies accountable for what did or did not occur during the pandemic (and why) –

including services, family time, placement changes, and case plan compliance.

The child welfare system can mitigate the worst impacts of COVID-19, and begin to become the kind of system that

families need and deserve, by focusing on and emphasizing high-quality legal representation, creativity in advocacy

and policy design, and meaningful youth and family engagement –all best practices that shone through even during

the pandemic.

Keywords: Attachment; Child Welfare; COVID-19; Dependency; Family Time; Quality Legal Representation; Reasonable

Efforts; Youth Engagement.

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust the world into a crisis. Although the disease and its conse-

quences have impacted people in varying degrees, it has produced some common experiences. As

states and countries sheltered-in-place, shut down, and quarantined, the world has almost universally

and simultaneously experienced isolation, scarcity of resources, and heightened uncertainty, anxiety,

and fear.

Corresponding: kristen.pisani-jacques@naccchildlaw.org

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 58 No. 4, October 2020 955–964, doi: 10.1111/fcre.12528

© 2020 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts