Number of abused, neglected children cases down slightly in Iowa

The number of Iowa children who were abused or neglected declined slightly last year, according to the latest statistical report issued Monday by the state Department of Human Services.

DHS officials reported that a total of 11,637 children were the subject of abuse or neglect last year, a drop of about 1 percent from the 2011 report.

“Any abuse is not something we want to hear about,” said Sen. Amanda Ragan, D-Mason City, chair of the Senate Human Resources Committee.

“When you talk about 11,000, that's a big number and, when we're talking about children, it makes it an even more concerning number,” she said. “We want to make sure that goes down.”

Most of the abuses – 8,801 – were classified as “founded” cases, while the rest were the less-serious “confirmed” cases in which the abuse was minor and not likely to reoccur, according to DHS spokesman Roger Munns.

Nearly eight in 10 cases involved neglect – defined as “denial of critical care” in Iowa -- a category in which the caretaker's action or inaction places the child in harm's way, according to DHS officials. Common examples are parents who are incapable of supervising a child because judgment is impaired by drug or alcohol abuse.

According to the DHS report, the rate of abuse has hovered within a narrow range in recent years, with lower rates generally coinciding with positive economic trends. Nine percent of abuse was physical and 4 percent was sexual in calendar 2012, both comparable to levels to past years.

About half of all abused or neglected children were age five or younger, a long-standing trend, the DHS report indicated.

Also, about 6 percent of all abuses involved the “presence of illegal drugs in a child's body,” which marked a slight increase from a year earlier. Some of those children are newborns, while others were toddlers who were exposed to unlawful drugs in their homes.

Overall, the department reported there were nearly 29,000 assessments for abuse or neglect made last year. DHS social workers conduct assessments when the department's centralized intake unit receives a credible allegation, with about two thirds of the assessments yielding a conclusion of “unfounded,” according to the department's report.

In 2012, 2,836 children were the subject of a “confirmed” abuse – cases where the abuse was considered minor, isolated, and not likely to reoccur, and the perpetrator is not placed on the child abuse registry. The total was down about 5 percent from the previous year.

The department reported that186 DHS child protective workers were assigned an average of 14 new cases a month, including cases alleging adult abuse. Also, 389 DHS case managers had an average child welfare caseload of 27 – both statistics were similar to previous year. In addition to supervising child welfare services, those DHS workers attempt to visit every child on their caseload and every child's parent every month, according to department data.