nbcdfw | Doctors at Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth say stress from the
coronavirus pandemic may be linked to the six cases of child abuse they
saw this week, one resulting in death.
Dr. Jayme Coffman, medical director of the CARE team at Cook Children’s, said all six cases were related to physical abuse.
They typically consult about eight a month.
“Thursday night, we had one child admitted with unfortunately,
life-threatening injuries, which they succumbed to, as well as four
other children in the emergency department at the same time who were
treated and released,” Coffman said. “It was like, we have to reach out
to the community.”
Coffman said all of the children were 6 years old or younger. Though
she said they could not say with full certainty the impacts of COVID-19
motivated the abuse, “it’s hard to think that it’s just coincidental”.
“There’s no way for us to directly link that, but that’s the concern –
are these families under more stress related to financial issues,
whether it’s lost jobs or concerns for their jobs?” she said. “We also
saw similar types of things happen during the recession where, in our
trauma department, the most common cause of trauma death in children was
motor vehicle collisions. During the recession, that changed to abusive
head trauma, and I don’t want to see that again.”
Shellie McMillon, chief program officer at the Alliance For
Children, described the spike in cases at Cook Children’s as heartbreaking.
“One thing we know is that educators, our school
professionals are the largest group of people who report suspected child abuse
and that makes sense. They’re usually with kids a good portion of the day,”
McMillon said. “Now that kids are not in school, they’re at home – a lot of
times, they don’t have that, what we call a trusted adult, to maybe tell about what’s
going on.”
McMillon said one of the crucial things parents or
caretakers should keep in mind if they are stressed is to not hesitate to ask
for help.
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