Hello everyone. Not much going on in my life right now… just summer school and the increasing hassle of finding a place to live next year.
Anyway, I thought I’d throw out some interesting statistics I learned in my PSC 153 class from first session. You’re all familiar with the mandatory reporting laws for child abuse, right? Well, even if you weren’t, they are pretty self-explanatory… all professionals who regularly come into contact with kids are required by law to report the suspicion of abuse to Child Protective Services (CPS) and to the police. Do you know how often the Child Abuse Hotline gets calls?
Every nine minutes!
By the way, that’s not a national hotline or anything… that’s for the Greater Sacramento Area. Every nine minutes, a case of child abuse is reported. Every twenty-seven minutes, a social worker hears a new allegation of abuse or neglect. (Because some are repeats.) That’s still just under twenty thousand children annually in Sacramento. And every two hours, a child is removed from his or her home. Pulling back to nation-wide numbers… CPS receives about three million referrals for suspicions of maltreatment concerning five million children yearly. About sixty-two percent of these referrals are investigated, and almost one million children are involved in substantiated cases.
You may wonder why only some cases are investigated. It’s partly due to the fact that the average social worker has a caseload of over five hundred children already. With their attention spread so thin, only the most heinous of newer cases are picked up.
To quote Helen Lovejoy, “Won’t somebody please think of the children?”
I am a mandatory reporter for child abuse! I’m also a mandatory reporter for elder or dependent adult abuse. Luckily I haven’t needed to report anything so far.
Posted by Thupac on August 14th, 2007.
Hey! I am too thu! Yeah go mandatory reporters!!
Also… just as an other side of the story… alot of those accusations are just unfounded/malicious.. i honestly can’t say how many times i’ve had a potential FP call in and tell me about how they do have an allegation of child abuse, but that it was from some pissed off neighbor/birth family/annoyed spouse
hell even social workers make the calls because when you get that many calls on abuse you just start to believe the hype and just see everyone as a potential abuser.. and whne that allegation comes in you just go ‘see? i knew it was only a matter of time’.. and that’s coming from a private FFA’s social workers who have such a lighter load than CSWs.…Also, just to make these statistics a little less alarming.. haha Child Abuse as defined by County/State/Federal bodies is super vague and covers alot more than you would normally think… trust me, you’ve abused a child in your lifetime according to those statutes.. not you, dinh, but most people have… it just sucks when FPs or people working in the DCFS/DSS system get dinged for it because that’s for life.
Posted by Drewizzle on August 14th, 2007.
Lovejoy is such a cool last name
Posted by Peggy on August 14th, 2007.