Child protection advocates are worried that the COVID-19 pandemic led to a spike in child-abuse cases in South Dakota and that the abuse of children was more severe than in the past.
They are also concerned that the pandemic led to an increase in child-on-child abuse that was more rare prior to the arrival of the coronavirus.
Recent statistics are unlikely to tell the whole story of how child abuse changed during the pandemic, and in fact may obscure what experts are almost certain was a rise in abuse cases. The fact that some cases went unreported during the pandemic may have inadvertantly allowed some child abuse to continue unabated.
Rural ambulance services in South Dakota are having an increasingly hard time recruiting volunteers and generating revenues, putting the stability of the services at risk and making it more likely that rural residents will endure longer response times in emergencies or possibly lose ambulance service altogether.
While most larger cities in South Dakota have professional ambulance services or fire departments with paid staff members, rural services rely mostly on volunteers. In recent years, those rural providers have seen fewer people willing to volunteer and those who do volunteer are older residents who are aging out of the workforce.
About a third of rural ambulance directors in South Dakota said they couldn’t respond to a call because of staffing shortages, according to a 2016 survey. Roughly a third more said response times were delayed due to lack of staffing.
SDPB
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments today in a case to determine who is eligible for federal virus relief funding set aside for Native American tribes last year. Another impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is the increase in gas prices.
All this and more in today’s SDPB News Podcast. Find it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify today.
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