She continued: ‘What we’ve seen in quite a few of the cases is the way in which lockdown measures were actually used as a cover by some adults who were intent on causing harm to those children.
‘Now that those cases are coming through the court system, we’re seeing the horrible details of all of that come to light.’
Government figures show the number of child deaths involving abuse or neglect rose by 35, or around 20 percent, to 223 in 2020-2021. There were also 87 more serious incident notifications relating to children than in the previous year.