when schools reopen, front-line workers anticipate spike in child abuse reports

taylor chetty’s job as the victim services responder with the centre for children’s justice in saskatoon is a busy one. with children returning to school after such a long time off, it could get even busier.chetty works with child survivors of abuse. part of her job is to support children under 17 and their caregivers through the court process and connect them to services and counselling. on average, she has 40 cases a week.the centre for children’s justice — a multidisciplinary team that includes police, victim services, the ministry of social services and the saskatchewan health authority — usually sees a surge in files in the fall because some children who have been victimized over the summer will tell their teachers, school staff and friends, or these people will notice something concerning.chetty is anticipating a more marked increase in reports once children are back in school after more than five months away from class.“while we did see quite a bit more files come through during covid, we are all really gearing up for the fall, when school (comes) back, because now children have been at home and potentially at higher risk for longer than normal now,” chetty said.dr. sharon leibel manages a team comprised of a pediatrician, physician, nurse practitioner and pediatric nurses who do medical examinations after receiving referrals from law enforcement, social services, tribal councils and doctors for cases of suspected child maltreatment involving people under the age of 16 living in southern saskatchewan. she said she and her colleagues saw fewer cases than they would have expected in april, may and june when schools were closed.children are often referred to leibel’s team because of “community oversight” — relatives or friends who are concerned about something they see or hear and report it. when children are more isolated from others, it’s a problem, leibel said.“we feel like we lost our community oversight,” leibel said, pointing out that there were months when neighbours weren’t seeing each other and children weren’t seeing other relatives.“children weren’t being seen in school, which for many of them was their safe place. i guess our concern is we possibly had an increase in frustration in isolation, we had people not employed or not able to get out, we had people perhaps feeling more economic stress, so our concern is we don’t know what we don’t know.“we don’t know what we’re not seeing.”according to new data from the ministry of social services, it reported fewer intakes and investigations from april 1 to june 30 this year than in the same period in the four previous years.for the most recent april to june period, the ministry reported 3,766 new intakes and 1,425 investigations. in the same period in 2019, the ministry reported 4,987 new intakes and 1,921 investigations.

during the first couple of months of the pandemic, chetty switched from conducting home visits and providing court and investigative updates to providing help over the phone and using facetime to virtually meet with some of her child clients.there’s been a noticeable increase in files related to crimes involving technology during the pandemic. chetty believes more children may have disclosed abuse to parents because they’ve been spending more time at home with them.“our file load definitely increased. it’s always increasing every single year and i don’t know whether that’s due to more awareness being brought,” she said.with covid-19, she said investigators focused on the most urgent files, although she noted every file is urgent when there’s a child at risk or if they’ve been victimized. when staff with the centre for children’s justice returned to the office — a location off-site from the saskatoon police building on third avenue north — there were several files that needed interviews.“we had an escalation of files and statistics, but we also saw a backlog of interviews that needed to be done,” she said.tjames@postmedia.com