The potential influences of COVID-19 and social vulnerability measures on child maltreatment in the United States: Spatial temporal cluster analysis and negative binomial regression.

Background: Although existing research has reported the impacts of COVID-19 on child abuse and neglect (CAN), little attention was paid to the relationship between spatial patterns in the trends of COVID-19 cases and their effects on the prevalence of CAN cases.

Objective: This study examined the associations between trends of confirmed cases of COVID-19 and child removal due to physical abuse and neglect at the county level in the U.S while taking the social vulnerability into account.

Participants And Setting: This study utilized three secondary data sets nationally collected.

Methods: Spatial-temporal cluster analysis was used to classify and assign trends in confirmed cases of COVID-19 into their distinctive clusters. These spatial-temporal clusters were then used as independent variables in the negative binomial regression (NBR) models.

Results: Average cases of physical abuse and neglect increased as the growth rates of confirmed cases of COVID-19 were accelerated except for the counties assigned to the cluster characterized by moderately low increase and very high increases. NBR found social vulnerability measures have no effects on child removal due to physical abuse and neglect after controlling spatial-temporal clusters of the confirmed cases of COVID-19.

Conclusions: Our study indicates that concentration of disaster has certain effects on child maltreatment. This suggests that child welfare pay special attention to the areas that undergo steep increases in confirmed cases under public health crises.