Fluffing The Numbers - One Pinwheel For Every Call To The Hotline

I am going to harp on this throughout Child Abuse Propaganda Month. The pinwheels are used as a symbolic representation of the number of child abuse cases in a small area such as a county, a state, what have you. But as the woman states, one pinwheel is being placed for every call to the child abuse hotline.



Now, lets look at some data...

Child Maltreatment 2008: Summary of Key Findings from the US Department of Health and Human Services website.

How many children were reported and received an investigation or assessment for abuse and neglect?

During FFY 2008, an estimated 3.3 million referrals involving the alleged maltreatment of approximately 6 million children were made to CPS agencies. An estimated 3.7 million children received an investigation or assessment.

* Approximately 63 percent (62.5 percent) of referrals were screened in for investigation or assessment by CPS agencies.

* Approximately 24 percent (23.7 percent) of the investigations or assessments found at least one child to be a victim of abuse or neglect, with the following report dispositions: 22.3 percent substantiated, 0.9 percent indicated, and 0.5 percent alternative response victim.1

* More than 76 percent (76.3 percent) of the investigations or assessments determined that the child was not a victim of maltreatment, with the following dispositions: 64.7 percent unsubstantiated, 7.7 percent alternative response nonvictim2, 1.7 percent "other," 1.9 percent closed with no finding, 0.1 percent intentionally false, and 0.1 percent unknown or missing.

So if you do the math, you will see that 3000 calls to the hotline does not equal 3000 cases of child abuse, especially when you consider that nationwide only 24% of the cases investigated were founded, and 37% of those calls were screened out without as much being investigated.