May 27, 2016 6 min read

State Auditor General Eugene DePasquale, in a news conference this week, released a report showing more than 42,000 reports of abuse and neglect went unanswered, which Washington County Commissioner Diana Irey Vaughan called “very, very alarming.”

Short staffing at the ChildLine hotline could have left thousands of children in dangerous situations. DePasquale cited statistics that nearly a third of all calls received in 2014 and 2015 were not tracked or documented.

Irey Vaughan, vice chairman of the Washington County Board of Commissioners, just received a copy of DePasquale’s report. The information will be discussed by Washington County’s Children and Youth Task Force, which Irey Vaughan formed in 2012, at its July 14 meeting.

“The situation with ChildLine needs to be addressed immediately,” she said Thursday.

In the wake of the Jerry Sandusky trial, when allegations about the Washington native’s sexual abuse of teens and who in the Penn State hierarchy knew or should have known about the situation were splashed on front pages across the United States, the state Legislature passed and amended a raft of laws dealing with mandatory reporting.

“They expanded the basic definition of child abuse, allowing us to intervene where we could not before,” Irey Vaughan said. “Steps were put into place to assist individuals who want to report alleged abuse to be sure we’re handling those referrals to investigate.”

Some information is getting through to Washington County CYS. Kimberly Rogers, CYS administrator, said her agency received 3,285 ChildLine referrals in 2014 and 3,208 in 2015.

“I know there are ChildLine calls that come in,” Irey Vaughan said. “There is a specific timeline that we are required to comply with by law. Our compliance levels are in the 90 percentiles for seeing kids and coming up with a plan for the family, getting to them in a timely manner and monitoring. Kim Rogers is really doing a good job, and she’s brought her numbers up considerably.”

Washington County CYS was downgraded to a provisional license in October 2012 because of the agency’s use of questionable voluntary placement agreements. The Department of Public Welfare cited a Superior Court case in which a parent was coerced into signing a “voluntary” agreement under threat of court proceedings and an emergency order if the agreement was not signed. The state oversight agency also said it found 60 general protective service cases that were not accepted for assessment. Of those, DPW identified 16 cases, or 27 percent, in which it was concerned because the fate of the child was not determined.

Rogers reorganized the CYS office, implemented a tracking system for cases and decreased the average caseload of caseworkers. The agency’s full license was restored in January 2013.

If someone is having difficulty reaching ChildLine, Rogers said Thursday, “We will still take those calls directly” at Washington County CYS, 724-228-6884, which is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

But that’s not the only time a caseworker is available.

“We would never want to place a child in an unsafe situation,” Rogers said. “We do not want any kids to fall through the cracks. If there’s an emergency, call 911 and they will page us on our pager system.”

Greene County Human Services Director Karen Bennett said she was not surprised about the unanswered calls because of complaints her department was receiving recently from area school districts notifying them of the issue. However, she said the real problem lies with the lack of funding and resources to adequately handle the call volume.

“Administratively, if all the calls are coming through, it tells me we don’t have the resources to handle all of them,” Bennett said. “If those calls would’ve come through, I don’t know what we’d do. We wouldn’t even have a staff to deal with it.”

She said her department and the county commissioners are pushing for more state funding for CYS programs to help alleviate the problem. Bennett said more resources are critical to address the problem.

“We’re already overwhelmed with what we have now,” Bennett said.

Greene County CYS Director Stacey Courtwright said the agency received 1,028 calls in the 2013-14 fiscal year and 1,175 calls the following year. She said they have evidence of six unaccounted calls, but “there are no ways of knowing the true number prior to (the state Legislature) changing the law.”

ChildLine, which is operated by the state Department of Human Services, has been in operation since 1975. In the last few years, sweeping changes to the Child Protective Services Law have meant increased call volumes at ChildLine, which operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“While strengthening laws to combat child abuse was a critical achievement, not providing the funding to enforce those laws was a disturbing failure,” DePasquale said at a news conference in Harrisburg.

In 2014 and 2015, ChildLine received 353,268 calls, but one in five were not answered, were “abandoned,” meaning a caller hung up while waiting in the call queue, or they were “deflected,” meaning that once the call queue was full, subsequent calls were immediately terminated. As of Oct. 15, 2015, the queue could hold 30 calls.

During the two years DePasquale examined, 111,245 answered calls did not generate reports that were identified or tracked in any way.

Counties carry primary responsibility for services for abused and neglected children, then conduct the actual child abuse investigation based on those reports.

“While we applaud the Department of Human Services for regularly increasing staffing to ChildLine, we would be remiss if we did not note that the continuing stagnation in state funding has prevented counties from doing the same,” said Brian Bornman, executive director of Pennsylvania Children and Youth Agencies, an affiliate of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, in a news release from CCAP.

Most counties have seen a 35 to 50 percent increase in the number of investigations they must complete. As a priority for 2016, counties are seeking an increase in the financial match for child welfare staff and adequate funding for human services.

“Too often, child welfare mandates are placed on the counties without any means to pay for them,” Bornman said. “It is imperative that changes to the laws affecting child welfare be accompanied with supplemental appropriations for all who must deal with the impacts, at the time the mandates go into effect. The timing for implementing mandates must also be more mindful of the child welfare budgeting cycle so the counties who actually do the work can assure adequate staffing to protect the children of the commonwealth.”