Tiffany Wright (left), director of the Arkansas Department of Human Services’ Division of Children and Family Services, and Major Jeffrey Drew (right), commander of the Arkansas State Police Crimes Against Children Division, answer questions from the Arkansas Legislature’s Joint Children and Youth Committee on Monday, June 23, 2025. (Screenshot/Arkansas Legislature)
Arkansas lawmakers on Monday questioned the head of State Police’s Crimes Against Children Division about the process for deciding which reports to the Child Abuse Hotline to investigate.
The hotline accepted 9,042 of the 16,480 reports it received from Jan. 1 to March 31 of this year, according to a quarterly report CACD commander Maj. Jeffrey Drew presented to the Legislature’s Joint Children and Youth Committee.
The Crimes Against Children Division took on 1,593 of those reports while the Department of Human Services’ Division of Children and Family Services took on the other 7,449.
Law enforcement takes multiple allegations against the same person into account when deciding whether to investigate a report of child maltreatment, Drew said in response to questions from Rep. Jeff Wardlaw, R-Hermitage, and committee co-chair Sen. Ben Gilmore, R-Crossett.
“If we have a call that comes in on Person A again, and we look at that history and say, ‘We’ve got some stuff going on here,’ maybe we need to go ahead and accept this one and at least get an investigator out to take care of it, instead of it ending there at the hotline,” Drew said.
Wardlaw asked Drew and DCFS Director Tiffany Wright how many reports per county the hotline did not accept. Wright said she would provide the committee later with the requested data on “screened out” reports.
Wardlaw said he had hoped the data was already available, and he added that he was frustrated by an instance in his South Arkansas district in which a report of child maltreatment was “screened out” that should not have been.
He told Wright during a meeting of the same joint committee last month that he was disappointed in the apparent shortage of foster care caseworkers in his home of Bradley County, calling it a “neglect” of his constituency.
Many reports to the child abuse hotline result in foster care cases, and the Division of Child and Family Services has consistently reported to lawmakers that its foster care management system is short-staffed.
The hotline received 57,854 calls between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024, of which 24,244 were accepted for investigation, according to a DCFS report Wright presented Monday – 5,185 of those investigations found the reports to be true, and 408 appeals led to 82 investigations being overturned, the report states.
The Children and Youth Committee also heard an annual report Monday from the state’s Infant and Child Death Review (ICDR) Program at Arkansas Children’s Hospital that said more than half of the deaths from unnatural causes among Arkansas children in 2022 were deemed accidental.
The review committee’s reports are by law roughly two years behind. For example, the panel reviewed 2022 deaths between July 2023 and October 2024, according to its report.
The state child death advisory panel reviewed the causes and circumstances of 172 of the 453 deaths among Arkansans under 18 years old in 2022, panelists told the Joint Children and Youth Committee while presenting the program’s annual report.
The remaining 281 child deaths were either under investigation by law enforcement or determined to be of natural causes during the period of review, said Kevin Cleghorn, president of the Arkansas Coroners’ Association and a member of the ICDR panel.
Of the 172 unnatural deaths, the panel recorded 87 as accidental, 13 as suicides and nine as homicides, with the causes of all three kinds of deaths including drowning, firearms, overdoses and asphyxia, according to the report.
Twenty-six of the accidental deaths were caused by motor vehicles.
“Children aged 10-17 accounted for the majority of these deaths, and were most often driving the vehicle,” the report states. “Safety restraints, including seatbelts, boosters and car seats, were not used in more than half of the cases.”
The review panel’s report labeled the remaining 63 child deaths undetermined, including 54 infants who died of Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUID).
“Of these, 66% died co-sleeping in an adult bed with one or more adult (an increase from 47% the previous year), and 54% were placed on their side or stomach to sleep,” the report states.
The panel issued a list of recommendations to reduce child deaths, many of which involved bolstering parents’ education and resources, such as safe sleep practices to prevent SUID and free or low-cost swimming lessons to prevent drowning.
Rep. Mary Bentley, R-Perryville, said the most concerning statistic in the report was the near-doubling of Arkansas children who accidentally drowned, from 11 in 2021 to 19 in 2022. She said she plans to “work and see what we can do with a public-private partnership” to ensure children learn to swim.
To view this story, or more news updates from Arkansas Advocate, click here.
WebReadyTM Powered by WireReady® NSI