CHILDREN'S PLEAS NOT ANSWERED ABUSE HOTLINE UNDERSTAFFED.

Byline: Troy Anderson Staff Writer

Endangering the lives of abused children, up to half of the phone calls to Los Angeles County's child abuse hotline go unanswered or callers hang up after waiting on hold 45 minutes or more, critics say.

Officials are demanding a concerted effort to find money to hire more workers even as the county faces a budget squeeze.

``There are children in need and with 50 percent of calls not being answered, it's leaving these children vulnerable to serious injury or death,'' Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich said. ``The (Department of Children and Family Services) ought to bring in a cadre of volunteers ... to receive these calls.''

The 4,600-member Service Employees International Union Local 535 studied the calls received on more than a dozen days in January and February and found that 34 percent to 47 percent were put on hold so long that callers hung up or the calls were left unanswered.

An analysis of 976 calls placed to the hotline [phone]) on Feb. 15 showed 459, or 47 percent, were abandoned. The longest wait that day was one hour, eight minutes.

A separate analysis by the department found just 10 percent of calls were abandoned Nov. 19-30; 11 percent Dec. 18-31; 32 percent Jan. 17-31; and 26 percent Feb. 18-21.

``It's nowhere near 50 percent,'' said Eric Marts, acting bureau chief in the Bureau of Child Protection, which oversees the hotline. ``We went up in January because of the systems reforms we are trying to do. That is just an aberration and more specifically because we required staff to do a more thorough evaluation in January and early February.''

DCFS Director Anita Bock said unanswered calls do not jeopardize children's lives.

``A child's life need never be in immediate danger due to a hotline answering delay,'' Bock said. ``A 911 call is the appropriate backup to the child abuse hotline as we work in close partnership with law enforcement.''

The Child Protection Hotline and the emergency response system of workers sent to investigate allegations is the first point of contact between the public and the agency dedicated to ensuring the safety of children in the county.

Hotline officials say peak-hour waits average 12-25 minutes and can last as long as 45 minutes. That's better than waits ranging from 34 minutes up to nearly four hours discovered in a 1998 audit.

The supervisors took action to fix problems in 1998 and required calls to be answered within a minute, but children's advocates say the long waits and problems have continued.

``I'm just incredibly amazed this could be happening,'' said Deanne Tilton, executive director of the Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect. ``Every possible resource should be explored as quickly as possible to ensure when someone calls, perhaps at a critical moment in time, that intervention can be provided. It could be the one chance to save a child's life.''

Paula R. Gamboa, president of Local 535, said the reforms made to improve the system have not worked and that the department is now considering reducing the number of questions hotline workers ask, giving investigators less information about possible abuse and neglect.

The Board of Supervisors was scheduled to vote Tuesday on Antonovich's motion to get funds for more hotline workers, but it delayed the item while negotiations with the union continue.

The hotline got 14,872 calls in November, 12,368 in December and 16,052 in January. That's up 4,098 calls, or 17 percent, from the 11,466 received in December 2000 and 12,856 received in January 2001.

``We've had quite an increase and no additional staffing to manage that,'' said Janice Johnson, interim regional administrator of the hotline.

She has 72 social workers and 16 as-needed social workers answering calls. Her office also has authorization to fill 16 vacant social worker jobs, eight as-needed social worker positions and five clerical spots, but those jobs are hard to fill in a 24-hour operation in which workers deal with calls concerning the worst in human behavior. The social workers are paid $32,979 to $49,399 a year.

Johnson said she needs 35 to 40 more social workers to properly staff the hotline.

Nationwide, reports of child abuse and neglect rose more than 16 percent from 2.4 million in 1990 to 3 million in 1996 and then fell 5 percent to 2.9 million in 1999.

In California, reports of child abuse and neglect rose 14 percent from 421,506 in 1990 to 480,443 in 1997 and then fell 6 percent to 452,887 in 1999.

Of those reports, 19 percent were substantiated by investigators in 1990, 36 percent in 1997 and 29 percent in 1999.