Looking Ahead: The Nation’s Child Welfare Systems after Coronavirus

Fred Wulczyn - The Chronicle of Social Change

In this piece for the Chronicle of Social Change, Fred Wulczyn - a senior research fellow at Chapin Hall and the director of its Center for State Child Welfare Data - discusses the potential long-term impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on the U.S. child welfare system. "The list of concerns starts with mortality, and whether children lose one or both of their parents. More pernicious over the longer term is the economic impact the virus is having, and the strain those changes induce in already fragile families," says Wulczyn. The piece also explores "how we prepare ourselves for a sudden and protracted shift in the demand for child welfare services."