By Nia Bender
El PASO COUNTY – This month is National Child Abuse Prevention month and after a very rough year last year because of Covid-19, the adults who are considered mandatory reporters, like teachers and other health care professionals, weren’t seeing kids as often during the pandemic.
The Department of Human Services says they saw a decrease in reporting to the Child Abuse and Neglect hotline. Officials with the El Paso County Health Department, say those calls are trending right back up again now that everything is starting to reopen.
In 2019, there were 25-thousand calls made to the DHS hotline in the County. In 2020, that number shrank to just over 20-thousand calls. The number for the hotline is 844-264-5437.
