Thousands of vulnerable kids in London not visited by services during lockdown

Thousands of vulnerable children across swathes of London, including children at risk of harm in their home or community, were not visited by children's services teams during coronavirus lockdown, a special Evening Standard investigation has found, reported Xinhua.

Face-to-face visits by children's services in the three months of lockdown to June 30 plummeted by up to 75 percent in some boroughs compared with the same period last year, causing huge concern among childcare professionals.

Data obtained from local authorities revealed for the first time the extent to which councils struggled to see vulnerable children in person during lockdown, the London-based newspaper said.

Camden recorded a precipitous 75 percent fall in face-to-face visits, from 4,762 to just 1,198, with Lewisham reporting a decline of 70 percent.

In total, six boroughs in the British capital responded to the survey with full data sets, reporting an aggregate fall in face-to-face visits of 10,210, a decline of 48 percent.

If this was extrapolated across London's 33 local authorities, it would indicate that 56,155 face-to-face visits did not happen because of lockdown, the newspaper said.

British childcare professionals have expressed fears that in some of the boroughs that failed to respond to the survey -- claiming they did not collect the data or did not have time to supply it -- the true extent of the drop-off in visits over lockdown could be even worse.

Councils insisted the most at-risk children had been prioritised.

Pinaki Ghoshal, executive director for children and young people in Lewisham, said: "With COVID-19, it was not possible to continue all face-to-face meetings so we risk-assessed and prioritised families where we had concerns about the child's safety. Face-to-face meetings continued with children considered of highest concern."