A state audit reveals the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services needs to improve the handling of calls to its child abuse and neglect hotline. That includes the average number of minutes to answer calls and the number of calls abandoned by the person who called into the hotline. DCFS Secretary Terri Ricks says the agency needs 14 additional staffers to help lessen the seven-minute wait.
“The state has not authorized us to have that level of staffing. Sometimes the wait is longer. So I think all of us need to be in a space of recognizing more resources are needed.”
The audit found 19 percent of the calls to the hotline, resulted in the person hanging up before someone picked up. Ricks says callers do not have to abandon the call – there are call prompts for staffers to return the call.
“They can chose to have us call them back when the staffing slows down a little bit. It may be some of those abandonment are people who call back at another time when they were available again.”
Auditors also found that staff answered only 60 percent of nearly 40 thousand calls. Ricks says they will monitor the data outcome to better their performance targets.
“We’re asking for people to be patient. And even though we are not resource and plussLed up as much as we would love to be, we do care and we will get to calling them back and getting their information.”
If you know a Louisiana child is being abused or neglected, call 1-855-4LA-KIDS.
Comments