Victoria child abuse hotline crisis: Thousands of calls unanswered, others endure long waits

VICTORIA’S child abuse hotline is in crisis with more than 20,000 calls going unanswered in an 18-month period, while some callers waiting more than two hours for an operator.

VICTORIA’S child abuse hotline is in crisis: in an 18-month period more than 20,000 calls went unanswered, and some callers waited more than two hours for an operator.

The dire state of the Child Protection Crisis Line was uncovered by an 11-month Herald Sun investigation using Freedom of Information laws.

Critics warn that children are being left at risk because the call centre cannot cope with demand.

Secret data kept by the Department of Health and Human Services revealed more than one in four crisis line calls went unanswered, the number of lost calls quadrupling between mid-2011 and December 2015.

Call data released to the Herald Sun shows that between July 2010 and December 2015, 56,927 calls to the hotline failed to raise a response.

In the last six months of 2015 alone 7000 calls went unheeded.

After the Herald Sun investigation began early last year, the government increased helpline resources.

It says the number of missed calls has now fallen to one in 16.

“After years of neglect by the previous government Labor has increased funding to this service, resulting in a decrease in the number of abandoned calls and a significant reduction in waiting times,” said the Minister for Families and Children, Jenny Mikakos.

State Families and Children Minister Jenny Mikakos. Picture: David Mariuz

“Labor has also expanded a dedicated after-hours child protection team to increase the safety of children,” Ms Mikakos said.

But the state Opposition said the crisis line program had floundered on the government’s watch.

“(Premier) Daniel Andrews is too soft on violent youths like those in the Apex gang and too harsh on the most vulnerable kids in Victoria,” families and children spokeswoman Georgie Crozier said.

“The Premier needs to step in and fix this mess before it ends in tragedy,” the Liberal MLC said.

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Liana Buchanan, the principal commissioner at the Commission for Children and Young People, said she was monitoring the situation “to ensure response rates continue to improve”.

Ms Buchanan’s spokesman said: “The commission would certainly be concerned about evidence that children are at risk due to capacity issues in the crisis line.

“However, we understand that there have been staffing increases and other improvements in recent months.”

The surge in unanswered or abandoned calls occurred despite just a 15 per cent increase in calls to the hotline between mid-2011 and the end of 2015.

In that time the level of missed calls rose to more than one in four.

And the average time to answer calls leapt sixfold, from 42 seconds in 2010-11 to four minutes and nine seconds in the last half of 2015.

Longest waiting times also rose steadily: one caller last financial year was left holding for two hours and 22 minutes.

The government says the average time taken to answer calls fell in the last six months of last year to one minute and 19 seconds — still almost double the 2010-11 average wait.

And it says a new telephone system including a call-back feature, which is expected to go live next month, would lead to further improvements.

The government said it had committed $15.6 million to boost the after-hours phone service, adding 19 workers, rostering more staff during peak times, and giving a priority access line for police and hospital emergency departments.

A failure to properly resource the crisis line had occurred despite an increasing number of calls to the line leading to investigations and to substantiated complaints.

Of 3250 abuse cases investigated in the last financial year 2121 were proven.

This was up from 1627 substantiated cases from 2511 investigated in 2010-11.

Between mid-2010 and December 2015, 10,865 of the 16,759 abuse tip-offs to the hotline were proven.

These included 1237 cases where the primary allegation was one of sexual abuse, 4342 cases of physical abuse, 4766 cases of emotional abuse, and 820 instances of neglect.

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