AUSTIN, Texas — April is Child Abuse and Awareness Month. KVUE looked into the number of child abuse and neglect cases across the state.
The numbers that were provided from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) found that more people are making calls than before.
In 2022, DFPS received 317,928 reports related to child protective services. Two years before, there were 279,128 calls. That's a difference of 38,800 calls.
During the pandemic, children were tucked away at home and going to school virtually. This means that there were fewer eyes on kids and fewer people to report them as a child in danger.
"Now that kids are back in school, you know, routine medical care is up to date," said Katherine DeTemple, a DFPS investigator specialist. "We are getting more calls ... from law enforcement, teachers, and medical."
DeTemple said these calls range in age from babies to 18-year-old children. A lot of the time, teachers and doctors are reporting bruises, physical marks or even changes in behaviors.
While many calls are received, a lot of them turn out to not be much.
"Kids will get very dirty, so maybe somebody sees a kid with dirty clothes and is concerned and calls and says, 'Hey, this kid's got dirty clothes,' right?" said Mark Wilson, a DFPS media relation specialist. "It's like, 'OK, yeah, well, he was at day care playing in the mud.'"
There could also be a case where a student fell in school and bruised his knee. If another teacher saw it happen but it wasn't communicated to other teachers, other school staff could make the call.
To put the numbers into perspective, in 2022, there were 317,928 reports of people who suspected a child was being abused or neglected across the state. Of those hundreds of thousands of calls, 37,081 advanced to be investigations with reason to believe findings.
While this is a big difference, the good thing is people are calling even if it's just a suspicion. If you suspect a child is either being abused or neglected, make the call and let the investigators look into it.
In Region 7 – which is comprised of about 30 counties including Travis, Hays, Williamson, Bastrop and other central Texas counties – there were 4,628 investigations with reason to believe findings.