Child Welfare Services Worry About Kids Who Have Gone Off the Grid During Coronavirus Pandemic

“We will see a rise in the cases of child abuse and neglect when this is over.”

Charles Thompson/PennLive

(Harrisburg) — Children’s advocates say they aren’t too worried about kids who are on the radar screen of child welfare agencies during the coronavirus pandemic, saying they are finding ways to continue keeping a protective eye on their charges.

It’s the children who have gone off the grid — because of statewide school closures, cancellation of sports, church and other activities, and even the end of routines such as going to doctor or the dentist’s office — that have people worried.

“We will see a rise in the cases of child abuse and neglect when this is over,” forecasts Angela Liddle, president of the Pennsylvania Family Support Alliance, a group that’s been running training programs aimed at preventing child abuse and helping families stay together for more than 30 years.

Fellow advocate Cathleen Palm says a review of the numbers backs this up.

“Approximately 80% of all calls and online filings with ChildLine (the main statewide abuse reporting hotline) are made by mandated reporters – essentially all the adults that children have been largely disconnected from in recent weeks,” Palm said.

Case in point: Of the 46,617 total child abuse reports filed in Pennsylvania in 2018, 39,040 were made by a mandated reporter. The biggest group in that set? School employees, who accounted for more than a third of the tips in 2018. That regular connection with Pennsylvania’s kids is broken for the time being.

The better news is that many feel it’s the exact opposite situation for families already in the child welfare system. Some say the system is still tracking families trying to work their way to providing a more stable home for their kids; children who – for reasons of neglect or abuse – have already been placed outside the home; and households for whom a new ChildLine report has been made.

While the specifics vary a bit from county to county, a PennLive survey of several central Pennsylvania counties in recent days found that all are continuing with unannounced, in-person responses to any new reports of alleged abuse or neglect.

“You can’t really replace going out to someone’s home to investigate child abuse,” said Sarah Finkey, the children’s services administrator in Adams County. “There’s really no other way than to see the child.”

“I don’t have a concern about that call to ChildLine being handled any differently today than it was in February,” Liddle said.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t some modifications being made for the safety of caseworkers.

In Cumberland County, Children & Youth Services Director Necole McElwee said a routine part of any visit now includes initial screening questions to determine if anyone at the home is sick. Even then, that won’t mean an investigation or meeting with a high-risk family is called off; it just means that case workers get to work trying to set up a meeting at a safer site, such as a nearby doctor’s office.

Other counties are doing interviews with appropriate social distancing in mind, even outside where practical.

All have begun working with their local emergency management agencies to try to secure face masks and gloves, so they’re at least available to caseworkers who want them.

More routine functions have moved to high-tech alternatives like Zoom, as directors try to limit their staffers’ fieldwork.

These are the cases where parents are permitted a supervised visit with a child who has already been placed outside of the home, or routine checks with families where problems are considered lower risk and the caseworker has already established a good rapport.

In many counties, those monthly, in-person visits have given way to weekly telephone calls that are partly designed to help make sure all households are aware of the various charity services that have been established to make sure pantries and refrigerators are full, new parents have access to diapers, or that kids who are ill are getting the proper medical care.

“We need to make sure we’re helping them get the services they need,” said Crystal Natan, who heads the Lancaster County Office of Children and Families. Natan estimated that in-home visits have dropped by 20 to 25 percent from the beginning of March across Lancaster, one of Pennsylvania’s most populous counties.

Liddle said anecdotal reports she’s heard about virtual visitations and other alternative approaches have been good.

“The providers I’ve heard from said they’ve had some of the best family visits they’ve ever seen,” Liddle said. “Everybody was home, and there was great interaction with the kids.”

At the state level, criminal background checks for aspiring teachers, would-be field trip chaperones and youth sports coaches and Sunday School teachers are also moving forward. However, the Federal Bureau of Investigation fingerprint checks aren’t happening – the state’s third-party vendor that collects the prints here has closed most of its offices due to the virus.

The state Department of Human Services, which oversees the background check system, is still trying to figure out an appropriate work-around for that, though it appears that one potential solution – a blanket waiver of the federal fingerprint check – has already been ruled out.

“They’ve tried to keep many parts of the system running, so there’s not going to be a backlog,” Liddle said.