Colorado's child abuse hotline can't process tips from social media or email -- despite a memo urging

Colorado’s child abuse hotline can’t process tips from social media or email — despite a memo urging change


Colorado’s statewide hotline to report child abuse and neglect has no process in place to accept texts, social media tips or even emails, a concern raised by an employee a year ago in an internal child welfare division memo.

The hotline — launched in 2015 to give Coloradans a single 800-number instead of expecting them to call in tips to one of 64 different county phone numbers — was never set up to include email.

That fact has child advocates raising questions after the alarming revelation last week that more than 100 emails alleging child abuse and neglect sat in a hotline inbox that went unchecked for four years. Five child neglect allegations are now under review after officials recently discovered the unchecked inbox and read its contents.

The emails, first reported by KCNC-TV, were sent to a group address for hotline staff. The email address was created internally so that child welfare division employees could forward email and social media tips to the hotline. But due to a technological error, there were two similar addresses that went to two different inboxes — one that was checked and one that wasn’t.

Read more: https://coloradosun.com/2019/07/16/colorado-child-abuse-hotline-emails/