What sorts of services? Try the child abuse hotline and investigations of professional misconduct charges.
New Yorkers assume if they call the state hotline to report child abuse, their call will be immediately answered and their allegations investigated quickly.
Likewise, if the pharmacist gives them the wrong medication, if their root canals fail and their front teeth turn black, or the architect dangerously botched the design for their home, New Yorkers rely on the state to investigate their complaints and yank the licenses of professionals who fall below acceptable standards.
NYS Child Abuse Hotline 1-800-342-3720
‘Please hold’
But what really happens if you place one of the 375,000 calls this year to the hotline to report suspected child abuse or neglect?
According to PEF Division 234 members who answer those calls, you may be put on hold for 20 or even up to 30 minutes before someone is available to take down your information.
“Callers receive an
automated response that tells them to hang up and call the police if it’s an
emergency,” said Janet Ludwig, Division 234 council leader and a supervisor
on the hotline. “So, at least, people aren’t holding the line waiting to
tell us an assault is in progress. But if they need to report suspected
abuse, they must wait until someone can take their call.”That’s especially rough on the tens of thousands of teachers, child care workers, doctors, nurses, emergency medical technicians and others who are required by law to report any signs of child abuse they encounter.
“We receive an average of 1,200 to 1,400 hotline calls every day,” Ludwig said, “and about one-third of those reports of suspected abuse turn out to be founded.
“The number of calls goes up as we approach the end of the school year, because many teachers, nurses, counselors and others file reports they hope will cause county or city child protective workers to keep a watchful eye on vulnerable children over the summer vacation.
“Can you imagine how hard it is for these mandated professionals, even doctors, to hold the line for up to half-an-hour waiting to file a single report?” Ludwig asked.
Why the long waits?
Under the terms of a legal settlement, the state Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) agreed to answer at least 86 percent of the hotline calls within one minute, but short staffing and increasing call loads have driven down the agency’s ability to meet that commitment.
“We absolutely are not able to keep to that standard,” Ludwig said.
The hotline operates around-the-clock every day of the year. However, about two years ago, OCFS stopped using overlapping shifts that had helped assure adequate coverage during breaks, vacations, illnesses and other temporary, but frequent drains on the number of child protective specialist 1s (CPS1s) available to answer calls.
The agency has just 150 authorized CPS1 positions to cover all the hours of all the days in the year. However, 11 of those positions are vacant.
Supervisors (CPS2s), such as Ludwig, are the next line of defense and must fill in the gaps.
“Every single day, they put supervisors on the hotline to help answer calls,” said Ludwig, who often works 10-12 hour days.”
Answering hotline calls is not a regular duty of the supervisors. They are supposed to be available to speak to callers whose reports don’t quite fit the criteria, supervise the CPS1s, and process complaints from people who want the findings of local child protective investigators to be reviewed by the state.
That workload is about to grow exponentially because a legal settlement was reached in February that requires OCFS to notify 25,000 people currently on the NYS Abuse and Maltreatment Register they can file new requests for hearings and reviews of their cases.
These people were denied hearings between 2003 and 2007 and, so long as their names remain on the register, they are barred from jobs that routinely would put them in contact with children.
“Our biggest staffing shortage is in the CPS1s, but we also are down one supervisor, a manager and an administrator,” Ludwig said. “It takes six to eight months to get approval to fill a vacancy and, while we wait, more people get burned out and leave.”
Because the hotline jobs are considered essential, they have not been subject to the elimination of vacant positions the way jobs at most state agencies have been. Nevertheless, the hotline ranks are desperately thin.
Enforcing high standards
Understaffing of the child abuse hotline is not an aberration. It’s emblematic of a problem cropping up every day throughout state services.
PEF Executive Board member Bill Sachs, a senior professional conduct
investigator at the state Education Department’s Office of Professional
Discipline (OPD), said it, too, is trying to respond to a critical public
need, even as its resources slowly disappear.Like OCFS, the OPD also operates a hotline for New Yorkers to call and report professional misconduct by a professional (other than physicians and their assistants) licensed by the state.
In just the last six months, the state Board of Regents has disciplined 239 professionals, mostly in health-related professions, including 37 whose licenses were revoked, suspended or surrendered.
PEF members at OPD say it’s just the tip of the iceberg, because staffing for investigations has dropped too low to keep up.
Investigators are spread over nine regional offices, with three of those serving New York City and a fourth on Long Island. The remaining five are in Port Chester, Albany, Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo.
“Our Buffalo office has just one investigator, one supervisor and no clerical staff to service nine counties,” said Sachs, who works out of the Brooklyn office.
The Albany office has seven investigators, but no supervisor.
“Statewide, we have 42 investigators. That’s less than half the 90 we used to have,” Sachs said. “We’re still authorized for about 70 investigators, but approximately 38 of those positions are vacant. We’re hoping it will improve, because we’re told the Division of Budget has approved filling nearly a quarter of the vacancies.”
What does it mean for the public? “We can investigate only the most serious cases,” Sachs said. “Investigating allegations of unprofessional conduct is very time-consuming.”
If you call to report the possible abuse of your mother in a nursing home, the allegations must be very serious to merit that investment of time for an investigation.
In regions with the poorest staffing, Sachs said, “Slapping wouldn’t get our attention. Neither would neglecting to provide water or blankets.
“It’s not that we don’t want to investigate these things, but we’re in triage mode. We are forced to prioritize and focus on the very worst cases.”
What will get their attention? “We’re talking about criminal assault, punching, burning, sexual assault and medication error.” Sachs said.
“The lower our staffing gets, the lower the bottom line for what we can effectively investigate. We’re getting dangerously close to the point where: If it isn’t death or serious abuse, it’s nothing.
