ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Connecting on Child Abuse

Few things are more horrific than child abuse, so it’s upsetting that one out of every four callers to an Orange County hot line hung up after receiving a busy signal or being put on hold. The problem must not be allowed to recur.

The Orange County Grand Jury reported last week that 11,591 of the 46,313 callers to the county Child Abuse Registry in an 11-month period last year never got through. As one grand juror correctly noted, it is impossible to know what prompted the calls that were unanswered but the threat that they suggest is certain.

The registry was established in 1975 as the central repository for reports of child abuse, involving either beatings or sexual mistreatment. Over the years, the number of reports to the registry has climbed enormously, in part because of tougher state reporting requirements for doctors, teachers, police officers and others.

A good recommendation from the grand jury panel that studied the registry’s operations was to have those professionals who are required to report abuse use facsimile machines as much as possible. That would keep telephone lines open for neighbors, relatives and others willing to overcome the reluctance to get involved in reporting abuse. For many, it takes courage to call the hot line, and it might be even harder to gather that courage again when the phone line is busy or when doubts creep in while one is on hold.

The county Social Services Agency already has recognized the problems and taken some steps to correct them, but the report provides an independent look at what happened to calls during 1993. The agency added more telephone lines and clerks and expects to have more social workers at the registry in the next few weeks. The social workers screen the phone calls to determine which situations require an immediate response and which do not.

The steps already taken are laudable, but the agency must be sure to monitor changes to see that they work, and it must remain committed to keeping improvements in place.