Child welfare policies and services during the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea

ABSTRACT

Emergency situations render children vulnerable; hence, this study reviewed child-related policies and services in South Korea during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus far, the government has proposed online health promotion programmes for children, emergency care services and allowances, and school meal delivery services. Based on these findings, we recommend the establishment of mental health, sexual abuse, and child abuse online messaging services, allocation of additional financial and educational support to low-income families, and prioritisation of childcare services.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• child welfare
• policies
• services
• South Korea

Acknowledgments

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

JongSerl Chun

Dr. JongSerl Chun is a Professor at Department of Social Welfare, Ewha Womans University. Dr. Chun earned her PhD from School of Social Work at University of Texas at Austin. Also, she completed her National Institute on Drug Abuse sponsored post-doctoral fellowship, and received a research specialist appointment at Department of Psychiatry & Institute for Health Policy Studies in University of California, San Francisco. Her research focuses on alcohol and drug addiction, gambling addiction, smartphone adiction, cyberbullying, suicide prevention, and public health in social work.

Jinyung Kim

Jinyung Kim is a PhD student at Department of Social Welfare, Ewha Womans University. Ms. Kim as a research assistance, has been involved in several projects including the questionnaire development for Korean Youth Risk Behavior Survey, smartphone addiction programme, and development of cyberbullying scale. Her research interests focus on multicultural social work, mixed method research, adolescent substance use, systematic review, and child & adolescent welfare.