Domestic violence is a pattern of coercive, intimidating, or violent behavior within the home, typically involving a partner's verbal and/or physical abuse. Oftentimes, domestic violence is called into the child abuse hotline and reported to be an abuse of a child, which is then categorized as “general neglect” or “emotional abuse”. However, an incident of domestic violence does not in and of itself necessarily constitute child abuse. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), Child Protection Hotline (CPH) logged a significant increase beyond its 220,000 annual calls that are reported to be child abuse or neglect.
Consequently, there was an 8.1% increase in domestic violence in the high and highest populations in key demographic that includes East LA/Boyle Heights (1st District), Compton/Watts (2nd District), Van Nuys, and Panorama City (3rd District), Long Beach (4th District), and Antelope Valley (5th District). The increase in domestic violence was due, in part, to the additional stressors on the family system such as loss of employment, fear of becoming ill, children not being able to attend school or childcare, and sharing close quarters with multiple family members throughout the day, amongst other COVID-related factors. With families sheltering in place because of COVID-19, increased domestic violence became prevalent, which resulted in more domestic violence calls to the Child Protection Hotline.
Funding will be utilized to address Effective Service Delivery as it relates to the negative impact of Violence and Trauma on victims of Domestic Violence. In addition, the Child Protection Hotline will contract two Domestic Violence Experts (DV Experts) to be embedded within the hotline for a two-year period. The DV Experts will work with the DCFS to train social workers who screen calls coming into the child abuse hotline to accurately assess risk and safety factors when domestic violence allegations are present. The goal is to filter out calls that do not meet the level of Child Abuse and Neglect as defined by the Welfare and Institutions Code.
The Child Protection Hotline will then refer those families, who statistically were most likely to be negatively impacted by COVID 19 to prevention services via our Community Prevention Linkages program (also known as Hotline to Helpline) and provide effective service delivery under the Public Health Emergency. In doing so, the overall impact will create a reduced reliance on the Department of Children and Family Services, lessening the amount of time a family receives intervention by the Child Welfare system and ensuring timely and appropriate service delivery to programs that will address the trauma and violence. DCFS/CPH intention is to build an increased capacity and strengthen the delivery of services to the target population, which is comprised of victims of trauma and violence who have been negatively impacted by COVID-19.