An inside look at the County Hotline
ONONDAGA COUNTY -- On this, the beginning of Child Abuse and Prevention Monday, officials are calling attention to an alarming increase in reported child abuse in Onondaga County. With recent alleged child abuse cases, including the deaths of Imani Jennings and Erin Maxwell, the number of calls to hotlines has skyrocketed.
In Onondaga County, a hotline is set up in two small rooms in a county building. It is manned, 24 hours a day, by workers who take calls from police,hospital workers, teachers and average citizens. Onondaga is one of only two counties in the state to have its own hotline. Everywhere else, calls must be screened through the state hotline in Albany before caseworkers are assigned to investigate.
According to Deputy Commissioner of Child Welfare, Brian McKee, the advantage to the county run hotlines is response time. "They can call us directly, we can respond quickly...sometimes we can't wait for the normal process to happen; we can get somebody out right away."
When you average it out, there's one call every two hours that requires an investigator to go out into the field. McKee says calls to the county's hotline have increased dramatically. In 2007, caseworkers responded to 4,601 calls to the hotline. Last year it jumped to 5,235 calls. This year, the county is on track to top 6,000. At any given time, McKee says the 47 child abuse investigators under his command handle an average of 30 cases, which is twice the state's recommended standard.
Sandra Major has answered the hotline for the past two years. Prior to that, she spent five years investigating child abuse. "It's so far removed from my own personal reality," Major explains, "I don't take it home anymore but, the first couple of years, you go to bed thinking of it...you wake up thinking of your caseload."
Deputy Commissioner McKee says, with an annual turnover rate of 20 percent, the county is constantly forced to hire and train new caseworkers.
In the wake of the Erin Maxwell case, Oswego County legislators are considering establishing a similar hotline there.
An administration source says the state budget will also help address the growing problem of child abuse. The budget continues to reimburse counties for 65 percent of the cost of a caseworker. There's an extra two million to hire additional investigators and another million to provide them with laptops so they're not stuck in offices filling out paperwork.
The number for Onondaga County's child abuse hotline is 315-422-9701. The state's hotline is 1-800-342-3720.
