SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif. — In March of 2020, kids across California left the classroom with little idea of how long they'd be out of school. Many are now finding themselves back in a classroom and at a desk for the first time in a year.
When those school bells rang for the last time in 2020, Sacramento County's Department of Child, Family and Adult Services knew a good portion of their reporting base was going too because many of those school employees were mandated reporters for Child Protective Services.
When that reporting base left the campus, investigations dropped to 1,883 in the second quarter of 2020, a nearly 23% drop from 2019's second quarter. Comparing 2019 and 2020, the overall drop for the whole year was 445 cases or 5%.
“When we look at the full calendar year of 2020, COVID absolutely did have an impact in regard to the work that Child Protective Services does,” said Melissa Lloyd, deputy director of Child Protective Services.
She said that impact is seen with the decreased calls to the hotline and fewer investigations done in 2020.
Among three years of investigation rate data, it's the second quarter of 2020 that stands out. It was the first few months of the pandemic and the first few months where kids were out of the classroom.
“Essentially, one of the big decreases, of course, was in school personnel," Lloyd said. "Overall, between 2019 and 2020, we had a 50% decrease in calls to the hotline by this group of mandated reporters, teachers and other school personnel.”
With the exception of two categories, every allegation category saw a drop in investigations for that second quarter. The only two categories that saw increases were "Severe Neglect" and "Caretaker Absence/Incapacity."
The top three allegation categories tend to be General Neglect, Physical Abuse, and Emotional Abuse.
Compared to their 2019 second quarter counterparts, General Neglect investigations were down 22%, Physical Abuse investigations fell 38%, and Emotional Abuse cases fell 7%.
According to Lloyd, that impact was because of a drop in call volumes that came about as communities dealt with the pandemic in its early stages.
However, those impacts seemed to wane in the last half of the year as investigation rates neared pre-pandemic levels. Lloyd said the calls from teachers saw a slight increase and other reporting parties, like law enforcement, started seeing increases as well.
Comparing the quarters to their 2019 counterparts, third-quarter General Neglect cases increased by 6% and Physical Abuse cases were down 4%. In the fourth quarter, General Neglect cases were down 0.4% and Physical Abuse cases were down 11%.
Lloyd said that, during this time, calls to the CPS hotline were leveling out, but, of the calls that came in, more had information that warranted opening an investigation.
“We’re not fully able to determine if child abuse and neglect incidents are actually decreasing or if there’s underreporting, but we absolutely have seen that there are circumstances where the calls coming in… do warrant an open investigation," she said.
"So, it can be a little bit difficult because essentially we're seeing the call volume level but, with that being said, the concerns that are coming to the hotline were opening more investigations,” she added.
Emotional Abuse, in particular, saw more cases investigated in the final quarter of 2020 than in 2019, up by 22% and 31% respectively. Lloyd's team is aware of the increase, but they're still researching exactly what that data is telling them.
“For emotional abuse, one of the things that we saw in 2020, but again we’re still studying this data, is the increase in domestic violence that we were being made aware of that came through our hotline,” she said.
She says it was an increase seen with their community partners and law enforcement as well. With the upward trend in domestic violence, a child might suffer emotional abuse by being in a household where domestic violence is happening.
"We continue to receive calls where we might have people living more in isolation, their stress levels go up and there's not necessarily direct neglect going on with the kid or any type of physical abuse, but maybe the parent is stressed out and there's a higher level of arguing in the home or just concerning behaviors in the home, where based on the content of the calls that come into the hotline, we have seen an increase for what falls under emotional abuse," Lloyd said.
A caveat to the three years of data from Sacramento County is that, while CPS cases were down in 2020, they were also down in 2019 when there was no pandemic.
Lloyd said it's part of a downward trend in the past six years as a result of strengthening supports and services for families. Ultimately, she said it comes down to helping families before the situation becomes a phone call to the CPS hotline.
While 2020 continued that downward trend, it was a different type of decrease. For 2021, Lloyd said CPS data seems to be mirroring 2019.
For the full data set of investigations and allegations requested by ABC10, view the document below.
