HARRISBURG - Advocates hope the new Task Force for Child Protection, formed in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child-sex abuse scandal, will help determine how to reform Pennsylvania's child protection system to better recognize and respond to reports.
The 11-member panel met initally last week, is expected to hold hearings and issue a final report by Nov. 30.
State and federal data suggest Pennsylvania is missing numerous child abuse cases.
An initial recommendation of new civilian review panels was to use technology to better connect the ChildLine hot line with child welfare agencies. Advocates say that 9 percent of the calls to ChildLine in 2010 were missed. That amounts to 11,792 calls that went unanswered. Even when the call was answered, just 25,000 of the more than 120,000 reports to ChildLine led to an investigation.
Dr. Pat Bruno, based at Geisinger's Child Advocacy Center near Northumberland and an expert in the recognition of child abuse, said that when a report is made to the ChildLine, the staff in Harrisburg will sometimes determine that the allegation does not describe an act of abuse. The staff may make a referral for another type of assistance, like parenting classes.
Northumberland County topped the statewide averages in child abuse rates, both in reported and substantiated cases, but the situation is much more muddy than that because both county and state numbers fall well below national averages.
Last year, Pennsylvania investigated suspected child abuse at a rate of 8.0 per 1,000 children as compared with the national rate of 40.0 per 1,000 children, according to a statewide coalition of child abuse advocates called Protect Our Children. The Pennsylvania rate was followed by Hawaii at 16.5 and Minnesota at 18.1. New Jersey's rate was 37.0, Ohio 33.8, and Virginia 35.1.
Pennsylvania's rate of victimization (substantiated child abuse cases) was 1.3 per 1,000 children and the national rate was 9.2 per 1,000 children.
What's the difference?
To achieve its rate of 2.4 substantiated cases of child abuse per 1,000 children, Northumberland County identified 42 cases of child abuse. If the county were to meet the national rate of substantiated child abuse, it would need to identify about 120 more cases.
In Snyder County, where there were 18 substantiated cases, child protective services would need to document 56 more cases to meet the national average. In Union County, there were 11 substantiated cases of child abuse in 2010, while the county would need to identify another 57 cases to achieve the national benchmark.
In all, among the three counties, if the national rate of child abuse holds true, there were 233 children in the region who suffered child abuse that went undocumented.
Bruno said that he hopes the new task force will help identify what is causing Pennsylvania to lag so alarmingly.
Factors worth examining include the definition Pennsylvania uses to call a child's injuries "substantiated" child abuse, as well as what happens when a call is made to the ChildLine hot line.
Pennsylvania's definition of child abuse is the narrowest in use in America. To be considered abuse, an act must cause serious bodily injury or permanent or temporary disability. Bruno said the definition is too subjective.
Susan Mathias, director of the YWCA of Northcentral Pennsylvania in Williamsport, joined Bruno and about two dozen other advocates in signing a letter from Protect Our Children making recommendations to the new task force.
She said that while she believes that Pennsylvania is being unfairly maligned nationally because of the scandal at Penn State, there certainly is room for improvement. Part of the challenge is that people who are in a position to report child abuse are often people who have had prior encounters with child protection agencies and have lost faith that reporting a problem will lead to any satisfactory conclusion.
Bruno said that advocates see this as an opportunity to achieve something worthwhile, but that other opportunities have been squandered in Pennsylvania. He pointed to the Kids for Cash scandal in Luzerne County which prompted a raft of reform legislation, none of which ever became law.
