In 2007, seven-year-old Katelynn Sampson was found brutally murdered in her caregivers Toronto apartment. Injury, upon injury, upon injury on her frail body. Her room was smeared with blood and feces. There was also a note. Katelynn had written over and over : I am A awful girl thats why know one wants me.

Katelynn was not murdered by her single mother. Her mother, struggling with her own demons, had placed Katelynn with caregivers through a court decision. It was the caregivers who had murdered Katelynn.

Two child protection agencies in Toronto were formally responsible to serve Katelynn. Yet what we learned through the inquest into her death was that she was largely invisible to her social workers they simply never saw her, failed even to ask her how she was doing and took her caregivers word about her well-being instead. Being hidden in plain sight was the key factor in her suffering and death.

This was the result of a strained system on a regular day. The situation is made even more dire by the COVID-19 pandemic is stretching the resources of our child protection and family support systems in an unprecedented way.

I wonder what Katelynn would say to us if she were still alive today, quarantined in a home with her abusers. Perhaps she might say something like what this former youth in care wrote on her Creating Roots Facebook page , where she raises funds to give young people leaving the system permanent homes:

Child protection, like other systems of care responding to the novel coronavirus crisis, has had to reduce non-essential services.

The system, designed to protect children from abuse and neglect at the hands of their parents or caregivers, in their own home, is not built on social distancing and self isolation. It is built on relationships formed face to face with children and families. Yet the pandemic has caused many home visits to be suspended. Visits and reunifications have gone virtual or over the phone, or placed on hold entirely; court-ordered requirements placed on parents are nearly impossible to carry through.

The needs of potentially thousands of children and families in need have been hidden in plain sight with the closure of places of worship, daycares and community centres: places where teachers and staff working with children are in a unique position to flag things like unexplained bruises, a child confiding in them about dangers at home, or unusual behaviours that could indicate distress to child protection agencies.

With such points of protection lost during school and community closures, there is almost no commitment to putting eyes on children. If children are not seen and heard; if calls are not being made to child protection or calls are made, say by a concerned neighbour, but social workers cant follow up at a childs home certainly some kids will be in danger.

Moreover, many foster parents and guardians are left with little or no support at this time, including parents with children living with disabilities. Families already under stress are being asked to self-isolate and further strained by the shrinking of services, such as respite care, that held them together. Nutrition, counselling and addiction support is limited, if available at all. Job loss, children at home 24/7, worries of eviction, the closure of playgrounds where children can let off steam, loneliness they all create a recipe for trouble for a struggling family.