In the second of five meetings, the Interim Legislative Study Committee on the Department of Child Services focused on the Child Abuse Hotline.

The committee took public comment on the service that brought reports of abuse and neglect to one central location in Indianapolis as opposed to the individual county DCS offices. Testimony included the inefficiency of the centralized hotline including long wait times and unanswered phone calls which the committee had heard before.

Several licensed social workers from around the state also reported calling the hotline and having cases ignored and not taken seriously by person less qualified than themselves to make assessments from a brief phone conversation. One former Hotline supervisor described a hostile work environment behind the scenes from lack of leadership and professionalism from supervisors and such a high turnover rate that the training couldn't keep up with the numbers of new hires coming in an out of the system.

All who testified agreed that the good of the children was being compromised by a broken system that is in desperate need of reform.