Assessing Child Abuse Hotline Inquiries in the Wake of COVID-19: Answering the Call

Experts are concerned about increasing child distress and maltreatment alongside decreasing exposure to mandated child abuse reporters, such as teachers, during the COVID-19 pandemic.1 Hotlines may serve as alternate means to identify family violence and support at-risk children. This study assessed the volume of calls and texts to a national child abuse hotline during the pandemic compared with the prior year. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted using restricted-access data from Childhelp, the only national hotline with a primary focus on child abuse and neglect. Childhelp has offered 24-hour multilingual counseling across all US states via phone call inquiries from youth and concerned adults since 1982 and via text message since 2019.2,3 Users anonymously provide optional demographic information, including their relationship to the youth (eg, themselves, parent, neighbor, or teacher). Users are then connected to a crisis counselor. Study data included the number of inquiries, modality (call or text), and demographic characteristics (inquirer’s age category, sex, and identifier type). The University of Pennsylvania Institutional Review Board deemed this study nonhuman subjects research. Given the initiation of school closures on March 5, 2020, we examined differences in demographic information by modality between March 1, 2019, and May 27, 2019, and March 1, 2020, and May 26, 2020, using χ2 and Fischer exact tests. We then assessed inquiries for each full year beginning in January by modality. Analyses were performed using Stata/IC version 15.1 (StataCorp), with 2-tailed significance set at P < .05. Results From March to May in 2019 and 2020 combined, Childhelp received 35 480 call and text inquiries, mostly from female individuals (74.63%) and adults 18 years and older (92.97%) (Table). Nearly 96% of callers were adults (18 years and older), while most texters were younger than 18 years. There was a 13.75% increase in the total number of inquiries in 2020 compared with 2019. Caller type differed between 2020 and 2019 as well, with a decrease in calls from school reporters (teachers, school personnel, and daycare personnel) and a smaller decrease from non–school-based mandated reporters (Child Protective Services [CPS] workers, counselors, foster care providers, health care workers, and authorities). There was an increase in calls from neighbors or landlords, relatives, and friends, and other caller types remained relatively stable (within 1%). Calls increased after the declaration of a health emergency by the US Secretary of Health and Human Services on January 31, 2020, but then decreased after the initiation of school closures on March 5, 2020 ( Figure ). Additional analyses (not shown) revealed that a sustained decrease in school reporter calls was contrasted by a later increase in parent calls. Text inquiries increased after initial school closures. In May 2020, both calls and texts surged higher than 2019 levels.