Child welfare authorities dealt with nearly 90,000 child abuse cases in the fiscal year ending March, a government survey showed Thursday, with experts blaming the record-high figure on increased poverty and the isolation of some families.

Logging the largest-ever increase of 20.5 percent from the previous year's 73,000, the preliminary survey by the health ministry showed the number of cases handled by 207 child consultation centers across the country in fiscal 2014 reached 88,931, up for the 24th consecutive year since the survey started in 1990.

The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare attributed the rise to the widened scope of circumstances that can be reported as abuse following an August 2013 notice that instructed the centers to deal with siblings of abused children as they may also be suffering from psychological abuse.