State lawmakers eye improvements to child abuse hotline process

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Some state lawmakers are looking to improve the state's child abuse hotline after a meeting held earlier in the week.

State Rep. Hannah Kelly (R-Mountain Grove) wants to make major improvements within the Department of Social Services and its process for child abuse hotline calls.

Tuesday morning, Missouri's Joint Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect held a meeting to discuss the current state of child abuse hotline calls.

Kelly said within her district, she is seeing more cases of children who have been victims of abuse or neglect. The lawmaker said people are making calls to the hotline, but they are not being followed up on or investigated.

”Then I piggyback on to the situations in my district right now where concerned teachers, schools nurses have hotlined and hotlined and hotlined and then all of the sudden one day somebody actually believes them and they barely catch them before they die … that’s a problem”, said Kelly

Kelly wanted to ensure the meeting happened before the holidays, she noted during the meeting seeing recent reports of deaths and harm to children play out in the media recently.

"There's a girl that died in Salem and the editor of that paper asked the question in his closing remarks how many times was this child hotlined and how many times was the hotline not paid attention to," Kelly said.

"Those kids deserve to have a voice," Kelly said.

Sara Smith, with the department of social services, said in the meeting the department has received over 140,000 calls to the child abuse hotline this year.

In the meeting, Smith went over the process of how calls are responded to, “If three documented calls are received within 72 hours on the same child, a report is generated that prompts a supervisor’s review of those calls cumulatively." At that point, supervisors look to see if the report needs an emergency response.

Lawmakers asked Smith if documented calls are being reviewed outside of the 72-hour window. Smith said there was not anything in place to prompt a review of calls outside the three-day threshold unless there’s a concern made when reviewing prior history.

Smith said hotline calls decreased by half after schools went to online learning in March.

"Typically our call volume is lower throughout the summer with school out of session. Once students returned to in-person classroom settings the calls increased again," Smith said.

Students do not have their typical interactions with teachers, school nurses, and other adults as they typically would because of online learning. Some students facing challenges or abuse at home aren't able to receive the help and assistance they normally would if in-person classes were in session, Smith said. There's a concern that many students are suffering in silence, and Kelly said, it doesn't help the situation when hotline calls are not being followed up on.

School board officials like, Brent Ghan, the Executive Deputy Director of the Missouri School Board Association, says educators are concerned with the well being of students. Ghan said, "We're in a stressful time right now, and incidents of child abuse and neglect tend to go up during stressful times; such as what we're experiencing right now, and I think our environment has really illustrated the important role that teachers and school staff play in reporting suspected cases of child abuse and neglect."

As of Tuesday, the committee is looking into changing the process of how DSS handles hotline calls to improve the response time and follow up with reports. Kelly said lawmakers are looking at how other models for how hotline calls are handled. “Understanding what other states are doing and how Missouri can mold and shape its model to better match other states that have better outcomes.”, said Kelly