Medical forum cites holes in child abuse prevention programs

A sweeping slate of child protective services laws adopted 10 years ago in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse scandal stretched the state’s safety net, creating areas for vulnerable children to fall through, a report released Monday concluded.

The report, from the Keystone State Child Abuse Medical Forum, included multiple recommendations for improving the state’s safety net and reducing the number of abuse deaths and injuries. It comes on the heels of a TribLive report that documented a spike in child abuse and neglect fatalities fueled, in part, by a growing number of drug-related deaths and close calls among very young children.

Experts who participated in the yearlong Forum study, funded by a grant from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, said the number of preventable deaths and injuries should raise alarms.

“As a commonwealth, we have grown numb to the almost daily reports of another child dying from unfathomable and preventable circumstances, ” said Dr. Frank Maffei, chairman of Janet Weis Children’s Hospital at Geisinger Medical Center. “Each year, Pennsylvania will lose more children because of fatal abusive injuries than deaths due to RSV, influenza and covid-19 combined.”

The Forum called on policymakers to address what it called the unintended effects of the 2013 post-Sandusky laws and shortcomings in programs designed to protect vulnerable children. The study included medical experts, child welfare workers and legal experts under the direction of the Pennsylvania Academy of Pediatrics.

The 2013 laws increased the pool of individuals required to report suspected abuse. They triggered a dramatic increase in reports to the state’s abuse hotline. But lawmakers failed to expand the resources needed to investigate such reports. Moreover, the panel found vast inconsistencies in how such reports are handled from one county to the next, leading to a lack of reliable data and questions about how individuals are relegated to the child abuse registry.

“The lingering effects of the 2013 law changes were front and center during the Forum as diverse stakeholders routinely lamented that individuals and systems are stretched thin and the consequences so very harsh for vulnerable infants, youth and families,” said Annette Myarick, executive director of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The Forum found Pennsylvania has a deep well of professional expertise but must work to connect health care experts to frontline workers in county child welfare agencies and provide standards for reporting and gathering data, Myarick said. The Forum also called on state officials to prioritize services designed to prevent death and injury to children 3 years old and younger.

It also called for the creation of a pilot program that would connect child welfare workers and staffers at the abuse hotline with experts from the state’s six children’s hospitals who could help standardize data gathering and decision-making. When necessary, those experts could direct the hotline workers to specialized medical care for children suffering from abuse and neglect.

Cathleen Palm, founder of the Center for Children’s Justice, was optimistic the recommendations could mend holes in the state’s safety net for children.

“The Forum’s interdisciplinary approach revealed two coexisting realities: The Commonwealth has a robust and deeply committed array of individuals and systems (local and state) dedicated to keeping kids safe. Still, too often practices fail to be child-centered, decisions are not driven by standardized or research-informed criteria, and outcomes go unmeasured,” she said.