One success story in the fight against child abuse has been the state`s innovative child-abuse hotline, credited with raising public concern about mistreated children, streamlining methods of reporting abuse and triggering quick response to those in need.
The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) has staked its national reputation on the success of the hotline, considered the state`s front line in its mission to rescue battered and neglected children.
But a Tribune investigation found serious shortcomings in the operation, as a growing demand has sapped the state`s ability to respond. Greater public awareness of child abuse has flooded the system with calls, defeating its promises of simple procedures and immediate response.
It also found that the way DCFS keeps records disguises the fact that its rate of response to child-abuse reports is slower than it claims.
The DCFS says it starts to investigate 97 percent of the reports within 24 hours. Practically speaking, however, the rate is much lower because investigators count attempts to visit victims, even if they don`t see them.
The issue of inflated statistics caused quiet controversy within the department four years ago, The Tribune has learned. Two workers charged that hundreds of incomplete investigation reports were targeted for removal from the hotline`s computer in 1982 to make the department appear more efficient.
State officials deny the charge, saying the employees misinterpreted a system that was being used to audit incomplete abuse investigations.
But the workers charge that the plan was called off only after it was brought to the attention of the governor`s office. That action, they said, prompted new efforts to complete the investigations.
Since it was started in 1980, the hotline has been copied by child welfare agencies in other states and its funding has been increased by 500 percent, to $2.1 million.
To report abuse, a caller dials a toll-free number in Springfield and is connected with a social worker, who takes the information. The report then goes to an investigator who, by law, must initiate an investigation within 24 hours of when the call was received.
But at peak times in the last six months, 28 percent of those who called the hotline either hung up after reaching a recording that said the lines were busy or had to wait an average of 93 minutes for a return call, officials report.
”To me, that`s revolting,” said Ed Cotton, manager of the Springfield-based hotline, ”because that`s not a hotline when you call people back. The idea of a hotline is to take a call and deal with it, and we`re not doing that.”
Gordon Johnson, DCFS director, said last week in an interview that ”all in all the hotline is working very well.” He said plans call for a new routing system to be installed this month that will separate calls seeking information from those reporting abuse.
During the 1986 fiscal year, calls to the hotline totaled 181,000, an 8.3 percent increase over the previous year, said Thomas Villiger, deputy director of the department`s Division of Child Protection. About 35 percent of the calls result in the filing of a report, he added.
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In June, according to officials, there was a particularly heavy flood of calls, an average of 700 a day. About 150 callers a day had to wait an average of 93 minutes for a return call, and about 70 hung up when they reached the recording.
Since July 1, three operators have been added, bringing the staff to 36. Still, nearly one fourth of callers aren`t able to get through to a social worker on their first try, Villiger said. The hotline is now averaging 431 calls a day, he said. The number of daily hang-ups is down to 23, he said, and 87 callers a day must leave messages, which are returned in about 26 minutes. The large number of people who don`t get through on the hotline`s 16 lines troubles state officials and angers those, such as doctors, who are required to notify authorities of battered children.
And the volume also has caused ”ongoing morale problems here” for workers who are expected to answer about 40 calls a day, many with horrifying details, according to Cotton.
”We`ve had people vomit on the floor from cases they`ve heard,” said Cotton. ”It`s not an easy job.”
Hotline operators, investigators and caseworkers complain they have workload quotas that are burdensome. The quotas, they say, are intended more to make the department look good than to protect children.
”The focus was on quantity and time frames,” said a former supervisor of DCFS abuse and neglect investigators. ”You were graded on how long it took to get things done, you weren`t graded on helping children.”
The worker, who asked not to be identified, said she requested a transfer to another DCFS division because she felt that the pressure of quotas compromised the quality of investigations.
”We could have done better investigations if we did not have that lurking in the background,” she said. ”I definitely think (children) get hurt.”
Johnson, however, defends the quota system.
According to DCFS records, 97 percent of its investigations are begun within 24 hours after receiving a report of a mistreated child, as required by state law. Officials use those numbers to demonstrate that alleged victims are seen quickly to determine if there is risk of further harm and are checked for physical evidence, such as bruises, before they have time to heal.
But in practice, meeting the mandated deadline can be an empty gesture. DCFS investigators told the Tribune that they routinely certify that they have met the 24-hour deadline even when they cannot find the home of the possible victim or if no one is home when they visit.
A reporter who accompanied DCFS investigators on 10 cases of reported abuse and neglect during a two-day period noted that children were seen by workers in only four of the cases. Yet the 24-hour requirement was considered met in all 10 because they made ”good faith efforts.”
”How can you hold the department responsible for a person who is not at home?” asked Johnson in an interview. ”We`re supposed to make initial contact within the first 24 hours. If the person is not there, we come back.” Investigators said attempts are made again the next day, or visits are arranged by calling the family to set up an appointment.
The department does not keep figures on the number of reported victims who are actually seen within the 24-period. The department only records the number of instances in which the mandate is met.
Claims made by DCFS of compliance in meeting the 24-hour deadline were disputed in the most recent audit of DCFS by the state auditor general. The audit charged that the department was inflating the numbers by starting the clock when investigators received the report rather than when it was taken by the hotline.
That audit, completed in March, 1984, concluded that the department was violating the law. It determined that the actual compliance rate in fiscal year 1983 was 86 percent, not 93 percent as claimed by the department. In fiscal year 1984, the compliance rate according to the audit was 94 percent rather than 97 percent, as DCFS claimed. It called on DCFS to comply with the law requiring speedy investigations.
The department coupled its state-of-the-art hotline with a computer system, called the state central register, designed to chronicle DCFS involvement with families in order to spot repeated incidents of abuse and neglect.
The computer was expected to correct a problem described by the state auditor general in a report issued in January, 1981, according to DCFS officials.
The audit found that DCFS officials had discarded reports of 1,212 possible victims of child abuse between July 1, 1979, and April 30, 1980. The reports were dumped, according to the audit, because the department couldn`t find records of investigation results, which were required by law to be filed within 90-days of receiving a report.
Auditor General Robert Cronson admonished agency officials about the deletions in an official compliance audit. The DCFS responded that the new centralized computer system would prevent anyone from attempting to delete old cases in the future.
”We told him that was wrong and it would not be repeated,” said former DCFS director Greg Coler, who is now chief of the Illinois Department of Public Aid.
But 13 months after Cronson`s report, two DCFS staffers charged that officials had targeted hundreds of reports of abused and neglected children for deletion from the computer system. The two workers said they were ordered to single out cases that had not been concluded within the 90-day limit set by law and reflected poorly on the department`s efficiency.
The workers said the order was given by Michael Tristano, then a DCFS deputy director, in February, 1982.
Tristano, now director of Central Management Services, the state`s administrative arm, and his former boss, Coler, labeled the charges of both workers ”lies.”
They said the old reports were flagged by the computer system so that social workers could determine why they still weren`t completed.
Department officials who reviewed the incident last week said they had flagged 723 cases that weren`t completed in a timely manner and ordered that investigators go back into the field to complete about half of the cases. The others were determined to be true or untrue based on the evidence that was available.
But one of the workers who was involved with the task said that as many as 75 reports were removed from the state central register without any additional checking, and about 750 other cases were identified for possible removal, not for investigation.
The worker was ”enraged” because the cases, many filed by police officers and hospitals, had not been investigated.
Both that worker, and Hilma Hawkins, a former hotline supervisor, said the plan to purge the records was aborted only after Hawkins brought a computer printout of the cases to the governor`s office.
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The printout, Hawkins said, listed cases involving children with broken bones, burns and bites.
Daniel R. Long, a former member of the governor`s staff, confirmed that the governor`s office summoned Coler and Tristano to a meeting called ”to discuss the allegations and, if that was going to happen, to make sure it didn`t happen.”
Hawkins, whom Coler and Tristano called a ”disgruntled employee,” said she quit the department the next year after a suspension that she said was in retaliation for ”blowing the whistle” on the deletion of reports.
Pressure to meet the 24-hour requirements and comply with department-imposed quotas to determine within 10 days if an accusation of abuse is true, by indicating it, or unsubstantiated, by unfounding it, is felt even by private firms contracted by DCFS to conduct investigations.
”The implications of indicating sex abuse, or unfounding it, are so important we can`t afford to keep making them on a rush-rush basis,” said Anne Brown, whose firm, Associates in Crisis Therapy, performs about 150 abuse investigations a year under contract to DCFS. ”You get numbers, but you don`t get good, competent service.”