Protecting children and supporting families
The Quality Improvement Center on Helplines and Hotlines will create practical, research-based solutions for child protection hotlines and community helplines to support all families to reach their full potential.
Child protective services (CPS) agencies are responsible for investigating allegations of child abuse and neglect and ensuring that children involved stay safe. When someone makes a report of child abuse, neglect, or another concern, a CPS hotline worker takes that report. Hotline workers talk with callers and determine whether a CPS intervention is required. Hotline work requires good interviewing and assessment skills in a high-stakes situation: a child’s safety is on the line.
Mandated reporters are legally responsible for making reports of possible child abuse or neglect. They include people in many professions and settings: law enforcement, schools, medicine, and more. Mandated reporters play a key role in ensuring child safety by virtue of their frequent and meaningful interactions with children. In fact, nationally, two out of every three calls to CPS hotlines come from mandated reporters.
Why do we need the Center?
CPS agencies must investigate reports that meet legal thresholds. However, mandated reporters must grapple with difficult decisions about whether their concerns may involve actual child abuse or neglect, or whether those concerns stem from other issues like needs that could be addressed through community-based resources.
Addressing all the needs that families may have is beyond the mandate of child protection, straining resources that are meant to keep children safe from danger. Responding to reports that don’t require child protection intervention can also waste taxpayer dollars, undermine parental rights, and divert child protection agencies from their mission: protecting children from harm.
How can we ensure effective use of CPS agencies’ resources, clear understanding on the part of mandated reporters, good decisions by hotline workers, families’ needs being met, and most importantly, children’s safety?
Many communities have begun trialing parallel services to run alongside child protection. These services are sometimes called “helplines.” Helplines are typically managed by community, faith-based, and nonprofit service providers. They are designed to connect families in need with prevention services, leaving child protection hotlines free to focus on their important mandate of child safety.
Community-based helplines can make a real difference for families with complex needs. However, there are currently no nationally established best practices to help mandated reporters and CPS hotline staff determine which reports must be referred to CPS hotlines and what kinds of concerns are appropriate for helplines.
The Quality Improvement Center on Helplines and Hotlines will bridge this gap.