Hotline turns cold
Child abuse tips going unanswered
It is outrageous and unacceptable that Pennsylvania has a child abuse hotline that routinely “misses” calls from people trying to report neglected, beaten or sexually abused children.
Nearly 10 percent of callers to the statewide hotline last year failed to deliver their tips to officials who might have intervened and saved a life or a lifetime of psychological turmoil. Through November of this year, according to the state Department of Public Welfare, 10,805 calls to the phone number did not get through.
It’s frightening to imagine what might have been missed. How could a hotline that is set up to field child abuse reports miss so many calls? Too many calls, too few staffers, according to department officials.
Through November, the hotline received 112,520 calls – a frightening number in itself, even if only half or some other fraction of the reports are true cases of abuse.
State officials said the missed calls came in two categories:
n Callers who are on hold for so long that they hang up without reporting their information.
n Callers who are informed they can’t register a complaint because the hotline is jammed.
Imagine witnessing some horrific abuse of an innocent child, calling the number, and getting some such automated brush-off: “We’re sorry, we’re experiencing heavy call volume. Please stay on the line. Your call is important to us.”
Obviously, those calls are not important enough to have adequate funding to make sure there are enough operators, or at least reasonable wait times.
Where are our priorities in this state? Lawmakers and administration officials spend our tax dollars on thousands of questionable things, but they won’t provide enough to properly fund a hotline that might save the lives of youngsters?
Such a situation makes us wonder: If our government can’t even get to all the child abuse tips, how effectively is it investigating the reports that do get through the hotline?
We can only hope that those who failed to get through the hotline last year didn’t just give up, that they contacted local authorities or police instead.
Actually, that seems like a better approach anyway – as state officials say such tips are routed to county and local agencies for investigation.
To its credit, the state Department of Public Welfare reported its own failings on this front, expressing concern about the high number of missed calls in a transition report for incoming Gov. Tom Corbett, and saying that more funding was needed for the effort.
Mr. Corbett, most recently the state’s top prosecutor, had better pay attention to that particular transition report and move quickly to address the problem. He faces many issues and budget constraints, but this must be a top priority.
If the hotline is underfunded, provide enough money and staff. If the hotline doesn’t work well and is too clogged with calls in its current centralized format, reinvent it – perhaps routing callers directly to officials in their own communities.
But we cannot continue with the outrageous shame of missing 10 percent of calls that might save innocent lives.
York Daily Record