Don’t Let Budget Cuts Inflict More Pain on Abused Kids

Much danger lurks in the shadows as the budget-cutting bazaar bears down on Orange County government. The danger lies in reducing the exercise to analytical numbers-crunching that doesn’t take into account human consequences.

A prime example is the child-abuse operation that its supporters believe has finally gotten up to speed in recent years. Misguided souls could do irreparable social harm by tossing it into the budget blender.

The very real prospect of that happening chills veteran social workers Carol Mitchell and Irene Briggs, who have a combined 16 years with the county in working with abused children. Orange County, they say, has come too far in recent years in handling child-abuse complaints to even consider going backward.

“How can a community even think of doing this?” Briggs is saying, as she and Mitchell lay out their case for the Child Abuse Registry, the telephone hot line that serves as the county’s first contact point with abuse allegations, and the social workers who investigate incidents.

Referring to the registry, Mitchell says, “This is the point at which if the county wants to shut the faucet off, that’s where they can do it.”

They haven’t heard yet whether any cuts will be required. Both say the registry will survive, at least in some form.

But there has been enough conversation and uncertainty to make them nervous. Every week, it seems, new rumors or threats of cutbacks haunt the hallways.

“It’s not about my job, it’s not about Carol’s job,” Briggs says, “but the greater issue for society. We’d be all of a sudden saying these kids don’t matter. For those of us who work in the field, that’s a hard pill to swallow.”

Among other things, they fear that the public may lump child-abuse programs in with general welfare programs, which have become favorite targets in recent weeks.

“One of the biggest myths that still goes on is that the public thinks child abuse occurs (only) in low-income or minority neighborhoods,” Briggs says. “It certainly does occur there, but it occurs across the board at probably the same rate. Even when we try to educate the public on that, it’s like they don’t want to believe it. It’s denial, self-protection; they’re saying ‘It’s not happening in my socioeconomic group, it’s happening over there.’ ”

Many people are convinced that child abuse is a critical contributor to later criminal behavior. Not every abused child becomes a criminal, but studies have shown that as many as nine out of 10 adult prisoners were abused as children.

The registry is the county’s gateway to stemming that tide. Mitchell says the hot line fielded 1,435 calls last month about potential abuse. Of those, 1,019, or about 70%, warranted follow-up.

For all of 1994, she says, abuse reports were taken on 19,632 families. The total number of children in those families--although all may not have been abuse victims--was 45,129. Just five years ago, the comparative figures were 14,946 families involving 22,677 children, Mitchell says.

I ask what would be lost, in real-life terms, by a budget cutback. “Probably everything but imminent risk (situations),” Briggs says. “A child with a black eye who says his dad punched him, we’d probably still go out on that.”

What might be skipped, she says, would be the visit to the child who had a black eye a month ago but didn’t tell anyone because he was afraid at the time, but who later reported it. He might be skipped because he didn’t have a current injury, she says.

Or, Briggs and Mitchell say, situations involving neglect. “People are appalled at physical or sexual abuse, but they don’t understand how dangerous neglect is,” Briggs says. “Children left alone, unsupervised, not living in healthy conditions, not being fed properly; basically, an overall lack of supervision.”

The women and their peers live in dread that budget-cutters may have business degrees but no vision.

“I would make the case on moral grounds,” Briggs says. “I think we have evolved as a society to the point where we at least use the rhetoric that we care about our children. There’s been enough research done to show that if a child is abused or neglected, the likelihood is that they will go on to become abusive, aggressive people. . . . So how can we allow this to go on?”

They should learn later this month whether a budget bomb drops on them. “They don’t know what’s happening,” Mitchell says of her peers. “It’s like one shoe has dropped and they’re waiting for the next one.”

For now, Briggs and Mitchell still want to believe that not even the coldest budget-cutter would retreat in the fight against child abuse. “I guess I question how anyone can come to those conclusions, that it would be OK to do that,” Briggs says. “What’s wrong with our society that we would even consider it?”