Average waiting time to report suspected child abuse to Families SA has blown out to more than an hour, latest figures show

THE average waiting time to report suspected child abuse to Families SA has blown out to more than an hour, latest figures show.

Key data published online by Families SA shows the average waiting time to make a report to the Child Abuse Report Line in August was an hour and two minutes.

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THE average waiting time to report suspected child abuse to Families SA has blown out to more than an hour, latest figures show.

The delay has grown from about 10 minutes in mid-2012 and 20 minutes at the end of June last year.

However, many people still say they are waiting hours to get through to an operator in the Families SA call centre.

The latest update of key data published online by Families SA shows the average waiting time to make a report to the Child Abuse Report Line in August was an hour and two minutes.

A Families SA spokesman said the longer wait was the result of an influx of calls by teachers – who make a large proportion of reports, as well as doctors and police – returning from the July school holidays.

Many people say they are waiting hours to get through to an operator in the Families SA call centre.

He said the volume of calls “fell off” during the two-week break and “picked up strongly in the first few weeks back at school when mandatory notifiers come back into contact with students”.

The agency’s August update also reveals:

6448 calls were made to the CARL call centre but only 3365 were answered.

185 children were living in emergency accommodation, such as hotel rooms, on the night of August 31 – down from 212 a month prior.

3280 children in total were under the care of the state in August, up from 3249.

The Families SA spokesman said reducing the use of emergency accommodation was “a priority” and the agency was “actively campaigning to encourage more foster carers to open their homes to a vulnerable child”.

The CARL call centre operates 24 hours a day, every day of the year.

Many callers would be mandatory notifiers.

If they abandoned a call, they would be obligated to ring back and make a report at another time or make an online report.

To ease pressure on the overstretched call centre, the State Government pledged in September last year to hire 10 “trained calltakers” to triage calls to the abuse hotline.

Eight extra staff were appointed in July but the Nyland Royal Commission recommended in early August that the call centre trial be scrapped.

The Government agreed and has redeployed the new staff.

Opposition child protection spokeswoman Rachel Sanderson said South Australians could no longer “trust a government that repeatedly claims it is fixing the system when all the statistics continue to demonstrate the situation is actually getting worse”.

“It is completely unacceptable for individuals to be waiting more an hour to report suspected child abuse,” she said.

“How many people hang up and don’t report their suspicions because they don’t have an hour to wait?”