Illinois Department of Children and Family Services Will Adopt All Recommendations in Audit of Hotline

Illinois Department of Children and Family Services Will Adopt All Recommendations in Audit of Hotline

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) will adopt all recommendations from an audit of the agency’s Child Abuse and Neglect Hotline, and has already started efforts to address key recommendations, particularly increasing staffing and upgrading technology.

DCFS released the findings from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Children and Family Research Center (CFRC) after a five-month review of the hotline’s operations.

Because the hotline is critical to all DCFS operations, the department commissioned the CRFC to conduct a comprehensive review focusing on call volume, staffing levels and training, business processes and technologies and data systems.

“The DCFS hotline is often the first interaction families and concerned individuals have with our department, and I am committed to ensuring we are responding efficiently and accurately to every report we receive,” said Marc Smith, acting director of DCFS. “This roadmap will help us continue to make impactful improvements to better serve the state’s most vulnerable children after years of disinvestment and neglect. The department is already hard at work to bring on additional hotline staff thanks to the Governor and bipartisan members of the General Assembly, who approved increasing our funding. Over the coming weeks, we will be adopting all recommendations included in this report with urgency.”

The hotline (1-800-25-ABUSE) is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week and serves as the “front door” of the Illinois child welfare system and is the first way most children who are abused or neglected are identified. In FY19, the hotline received 268,406 calls, a 20% increase from 222,719 in FY15; and during peak volume times, the Hotline receives over 950 calls a day.

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