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Ready to make calls for help

But residents divided over who's best to contact

Jim Camden  •  Staff writer
Published April 23, 2008

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People in the Spokane and Coeur d'Alene areas seem fairly certain they'd do something to stop child abuse, but not nearly so sure what they'd do.

Call police? Call a child welfare agency? Residents of Spokane and Kootenai counties who were asked recently what action they'd take if they were sure a child was being abused were split fairly evenly between those options.

Slightly more than a third of the adults surveyed last month by Research 2000 said they'd report abuse to law enforcement; almost the same number said they'd report it to a child welfare agency such as Child Protective Services.

Child welfare advocates said either call is right when someone witnesses child abuse, because either should bring about the same result.

"If the system works as it's designed, it probably wouldn't matter (which was called) if the abuse is going on right now," said Dee Wilson, director of the Northwest Institute for Children and Families at the University of Washington's School of Social Work.

Polls conducted for The Spokesman-Review, KSPS, KXLY and KHQ showed that which agency gets the call may depend on the person reporting the abuse.

Women, people younger than 45 and people with children in their home were slightly more likely to say they'd call the child welfare agency if they knew a child was being abused. Men, people 45 and older, and those without children in the home were more likely to say they'd call police.

A child welfare agency that receives a report of an emergency situation – where the child is in danger of injury or death – should automatically call law enforcement, Wilson said.

Police should automatically call the welfare agency. Each has protocols that involve the other.

That wasn't always the case, he added. A few decades ago, law enforcement and child welfare sometimes worked separately, and sometimes at odds.

Today, police and child welfare workers might go separately to the location where abuse is occurring, or they might go together, he said.

Once there, they have different roles. Only someone in law enforcement can remove a child from a home without a court order.

But the welfare agency becomes responsible for children after they're removed.

If the situation involves neglect or abuse that's not happening immediately, it's usually better to call the child welfare agency, Wilson said.

Police rarely become involved in neglect cases unless they involve emergencies, such as a small child being left alone or in a dangerous situation.

About 70 percent of the cases now handled by Washington's Child Protective Services involve neglect, Wilson said. About 20 percent involve physical abuse, and 5 percent involve sexual abuse.

The rest can't be easily classified.

The willingness of respondents in both counties to report abuse – about nine in 10 said they'd intervene if they suspected a child was being abused or neglected – didn't surprise Wilson. But one figure in the poll results was troubling, he said.

About one person in eight said they didn't know how to report a child abuse if they were sure it was happening.

"That's a little disturbing, after 30 to 40 years of trying to raise the profile of child abuse," he said.