SARASOTA-MANATEE-DESOTO COUNTIES (WSNN) – During the pandemic, child abuse calls are down in Florida and the Suncoast, but that may not be good news.
Florida’s child abuse calls dropped nearly 40 percent in April, according to the Florida Department of Children and Family.
“During the pandemic, while our numbers have dropped some, they haven’t dropped nearly as much as the statewide average numbers have dropped,” Safe Children Coalition’s CEO/President Brena Slater, said.
Safe Children Coalition is a non-profit care provider offering child welfare services in foster care and adoption. CEO and president, Brena Slater says while calls to the hotline have significantly dropped, the Suncoast still has a lot of children coming in. They’re receiving reports from the Manatee County Sheriff’s office and the Department of Children and Family investigators.
“In March alone, we got almost 70 children, and every single month since then, we’ve got over 50 children for the last four months,” Slater said.
Slater says they usually average around 30 to 40 children a month in a given year.
She believes it doesn’t mean there’s less abuse across the state, just fewer reporters because of stay-at-home orders.
“Teachers aren’t calling in abuse reports, people are staying inside, so neighbors aren’t calling in, a lot of people aren’t with family, friends where they see abuse occur,” Slater said.
The pandemic is hitting the foster care system hard.
“It’s definitely put a lot of extra pressure on our system,” Slater said. “There’s been a rise in substance abuse, mental health, and domestic violence.
There are about 200 foster homes in the Sarasota-Manatee-DeSoto counties supervising about 1600 children. Slater says the majority live with relatives, but about 400 children are in foster homes.
“The pandemic has made it harder for a lot of foster parents to accept children, because they do have medically fragile children in their home or medically complex children, and they can’t take the risk of that, so we need them desperately,” Slater said.
Virtual calls may be a silver lining from the pandemic
“We definitely have seen parents spending more time, where they had only seen them once a week for a two-hour visit, now they’re having a phone call with them daily, or a FaceTimeing with them daily,” Slater said.
All Star Children’s Center offers training and support to foster parents, and clinical director, Kimberly Treharne, says teens are communicating better too.
“We actually saw an increase in engagement by teenagers and some caregivers who actually struggled to get to the office,” Treharne said.
Slater says while the courts are operating virtually, they’re still seeing kids move through the system. Just a little slower than they’d like.
Safe Children Coalition is still doing adoptions. Slater says they’ve done about 25 or 30 during the pandemic, celebrating adoptions drive-by style with a judge on FaceTime.