Impact of COVID-19 outbreak on domestic violence and child abuse

peer reviewedAmong the somatic and medical consequences of the pandemic linked to COVID-19, the increase in the rate of domestic violence and child abuse is one of the most serious and significant encountered in pediatrics. Indeed, if the reporting rate of ill-treatment of minors was abnormally low during the confinement of March-May 2020, the reopening of schools and psycho-social intervention teams in the spring made it possible to highlight a signifi¬cant increase in the number of worrying clinical situations. In some cases that meet strict hospitalization criteria, the social services call on specialized teams to take care of child victims of abuse. The purpose of this article is to des¬cribe and analyze the child abuse situations handled by the multidisciplinary team Cellule Maltraitance in the Pediatric Department of the CHU Liège between May and November 2020. We will also briefly describe the work and the multi¬disciplinary intervention of the Cellule Maltraitance