A bill that would require reporting all sudden infant deaths and other unexpected child fatalities to the state child abuse hotline passed in an Arkansas House committee Wednesday.
Senate Bill 786 by Sen. Stephanie Flowers, D-Pine Bluff, was recommended by a voice vote in the House Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative and Military Affairs Committee and now goes to the full House of Representatives for consideration. The bill was already passed by the Senate.
State law now requires a child death to be reported to the hotline if there's a reasonable suspicion that the death occurred as the result of child maltreatment.
SB786 would make the hotline accept reports of a broader type of child fatalities, including those that are sudden, unexpected or caused by an illness for which the child wasn't being treated by a physician at the time.
The Arkansas State Police and the Arkansas Department of Human Services would then have to investigate the death within 24 hours.
In addition to the child-death reporting bill, the committee recommended two other bills Wednesday that would change the state's child abuse hotline and maltreatment investigation procedures.
State Rep. Charles Blake, D-Little Rock, who co-sponsored SB786 and handled it in the committee, said the law change would ensure that unexplained child deaths are properly investigated and any possible related maltreatment discovered.
"If you don't have a child abuse hotline taking those calls and conducting a proper investigation, then I hate to say it, but you could have people claiming [sudden infant death syndrome] in any toddler deaths. What this does is make sure it's investigated, and it protects the welfare of the surviving children," Blake said.
Blake referred to another provision in the bill that requires investigators to assess the safety of the home environment for any surviving siblings.
Unexplained deaths of children ages 1 week to 1 year, commonly referred to as sudden infant deaths, now by state law must be reported to county coroners or sheriffs. SB786 would require the coroners or sheriffs to then report those deaths to the hotline.
Also, under the bill certain people who work in law enforcement, health care, schools and child care -- so-called mandated reporters -- would be required to report unexpected deaths that occurred as a result of an accident, suicide, homicide or "other undetermined circumstances."
Human Services Department Attorney Mischa Martin, who testified on behalf of the bill, told legislators that the bill also covers car accidents that result in the deaths of children.
"[Investigators] would do a quick assessment and look to see if the parent was driving under the influence, or were drugs involved. They would then be able to determine whether there was child maltreatment or not," Martin said.
Arkansas State Police spokesman Bill Sadler said the agency's Crimes Against Children Division, or CACD, worked with Flowers to draft SB786 because investigators were worried that they weren't being notified of all child deaths.
"It was apparent to them that some deaths possibly weren't being reported that should have been, particularly those where they were able to go back and say, 'Wait a minute, CACD investigators or DHS was in that home in the weeks or months prior to,'" Sadler said.
According to state police internal numbers, at least 122 child deaths were reported to the agency in the past two years. Of those, 75 were accepted by the child abuse hotline for investigation of possible child maltreatment.
Of those accepted calls, Sadler estimated that 70 percent were substantiated as child maltreatment by investigators with the Crimes Against Children Division, which is run by civilians.
Sadler said he didn't have an estimate on how many deaths hadn't been accounted for in the agency's numbers.
Human Services Department spokesman Amy Webb said the bill would help the state know how many child deaths are occurring each year and spot any trends.
"From a public health perspective and child welfare perspective, we want to see how many deaths are out there," Webb said. "This should give us better data on that."
Flowers also sponsored SB787, which would allow a Crimes Against Children Division investigator to rule that a child maltreatment investigation had no merit after conducting a shorter series of steps than what's now required.
Under the bill, the investigator would be required to interview a child and his purported offender separately, and both would have to deny the maltreatment allegations. The investigator would ensure that the child had no injuries related to the allegation of maltreatment, the child's home environment was safe, and that there was no other health or safety threat to the child.
The investigator also would be required to interview, or at least make a good faith effort to contact, the person who called in the complaint to the hotline.
Sadler said the bill aims to help investigators close clearly unfounded cases without having to go through additional steps currently required to complete the investigation.
"There are cases where you obviously get to a point where it's not adding up to a maltreatment issue. I don't need to go talk to these other people. I'm going to close it out right now," Sadler said. "The objective is to free up the resources that we have to devote for those cases that are screaming for attention."
Webb noted that SB787 wouldn't apply to the Division of Child and Family Services, which also investigates allegations of maltreatment and neglect. Those investigators would still be required to complete full investigations, she said.
SB810, sponsored by Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, would require the hotline to accept reports of educational neglect -- a parent's failure to make sure his child is getting some form of schooling.
Rep. Mary Broadaway, D-Paragould, who handled the bill in the committee, said it would help correct an unintended consequence of a law change in 2013 that allowed the hotline to turn away educational-neglect calls.
"There were child abuse cases, rather severe ones, that were falling through the cracks because they came in as educational neglect and got denied," Broadaway said, noting that educational neglect is considered one of the early warning signs of other problems, such as drug use or physical abuse in a child's home.
Connie Hickman-Tanner, director of juvenile court programs at the administrative office of the courts, told committee members that passing the bill would allow caseworkers to quickly identify those more serious problems and possibly head them off.
"When these cases can be caught upfront, we can keep kids in the home safely," she said.
Metro on 03/26/2015