1 December 2025
By Greg LaRose
Contributing Writer
(lailluminator.com) —State officials recently prioritized reducing wait times for calls into Louisiana’s child abuse hotline, but achieving that resulted in hundreds of reports to its online portal going unhandled for days.
They included “Priority 1” incidents, involving serious risk or harm that require immediate investigation from the Department of Children and Family Services. Those should be handled within 24 hours, but some sat for up to six days before supervisors assigned them to hotline staff.
“At this point, we’re really jeopardizing the safety of children, and I feel like the public needs to know what’s happening here because that’s completely unsafe,” said Melanie Mann, one of the roughly 50 DCFS employees who staff the hotline. She said she has turned in her resignation, effective Dec. 1, after six years with the agency.
Interviews with other centralized intake staffers confirm Mann’s account of online reports piling up through the first half of November. The employees asked not to be identified because they fear repercussions at work.
Emails and direct messages shared with the Illuminator lay out details of the decision to place online reports on the back burner and the scramble that followed to shrink the stack.
As of the morning of November 19, the online portal backlog had been cleared. Hotline staffers were required to work overtime to accomplish the task.
State Sen. Regina Barrow, D-Baton Rouge, has been among the more prominent voices calling for improvements in the state’s child welfare system. In an interview Thursday at the State Capitol, she said she was still gathering information on the extent of issues with the DCFS hotline and its backlog.
The senator said she has been monitoring a restructuring of the department its leaders launched last month that started with the centralized intake team.
“We are concerned about what’s happening with our children, with our babies, and the response,” Barrow said. “The restructure of the department: What does that really look like? I mean, I don’t think we have a really good handle on what that looks like and what the delivery outcomes are.”
Mann said there was never a specific directive from DCFS leadership for the hotline staff not to handle online reports during their shifts, but she said the lack of personnel and emphasis on handling calls made it inevitable that the digital portal would be neglected.
Supervisors have to assign intake workers reports from the online portal, and they were told earlier this month they could not dole out any reports when call wait times were over five minutes. Mann and others said the hotline has been down for hours multiple days this month, including a 12-hour stretch on Nov. 9. Once the hotline was restored, the staff had to reach out to people who tried to dial in while also fielding new calls.
This left minimal time for supervisors to assign backlogged reports to the staff during their shifts, which was no longer an option once department leadership decided Nov. 13 the backlog would only be handled through overtime. But even when the hotline was working, some staffers said hours would go by without a call, and supervisors would still not assign them online reports.
Officials with Children and Family Services did not respond to an interview request made prior to this paper going to press, nor have they provided answers to questions about the backlog and hotline sent in emails. A reporter was instructed to make a public records request after asking for details Wednesday on how many neglected backlogged online reports had high priority status.
The department did issue a news release Wednesday afternoon, saying it “has not directed staff to prioritize one reporting method over another.”
Employee interviews and internal communication shared with a reporter refute that claim, with staffers explicitly being told as recently as Tuesday they could not start working on backlogged portal reports until their shifts were over.
Who uses the online portal and why
The hotline is supposed to be the first option for the public to report suspected child abuse, along with law enforcement when a situation needs immediate intervention.
The DCFS online portal was set up for mandatory reporters, which include first responders, hospital staff, daycare workers and others who frequently interact with children. Depending on the nature of the abuse, they are required to contact police or the Department of Children and Family Services – and in many instances both must be notified.
Online reporting is also a preferred option for individuals who aren’t comfortable sharing sensitive, graphic details about child abuse with someone over the phone, Mann said.
Mandatory reporters are urged to call the DCFS hotline first when they feel a child is in imminent danger, but Mann said many of them turn to the online portal when they can’t get through.
“No one’s going to sit on the phone for two hours and hope that they’ll get someone to answer the phone,” Mann said, adding that she typically sees three or four online reports during each a normal 8.5-hour shift that involve children who face imminent risk. Her colleagues shared comparable numbers.
Hotline staffers said leadership set a goal earlier his month for calls to its child abuse hotline to be answered in under five minutes. Children and Family Services did not respond to questions about the average wait time.
The most recent state audit from fiscal year 2022 found the average was just under seven minutes with nearly 1,200 calls abandoned each month when people chose not to wait. That was 16 percent of the more than 6,300 calls made monthly.
Last week, the hotline staff was asked to volunteer for overtime to tackle the online portal backlog, though they could only be compensated with paid time off, rather than extra pay, according to DCFS emails. Overtime became mandatory Monday after the volunteer approach didn’t eliminate the backlog.
Questions about the backlog from the news media also put pressure on DCFS leaders to devote more after-hours manpower to the task, Mann said.
“Failure to comply could lead to a recommendation for disciplinary action,” a DCFS manager wrote in an email to the centralized intake staff. The potential consequences include termination, according to state civil service guidelines.
Because the abuse hotline is staffed around the clock, it meant workers had to log extra hours well into the night and early morning working on online reports. Some staffers said they had no advance notice of the required overtime, leaving them little time to arrange care for their children.
Supervisors were also required to clear 10 reports after the end of their shift, which Mann said is the equivalent of five hours of work. They were expected to work 24 hours straight if necessary, she said.
“I believe that was a cover-up for [leadership’s] poor decision-making,” Mann said.
State Rep. Stephanie Berrault, R-Slidell, sits on the Louisiana House Select Committee on Women and Children and the chamber’s health committee, both of which handle matters pertaining to child welfare. In an interview Thursday, she said she was aware of efforts being made to improve the DCFS abuse report intake process.
“Sometimes in transition, transition can look a little messy,” Berrault said. “But we are all closely following to make sure that where we’re going is going to get us to a place where we’re better responding to any reports, whether that’s through a portal or on phone. We are all very concerned to make sure that that’s all being addressed.”
Backlog cleared, for now
The online portal backlog had surpassed 350 reports as of Nov. 13 when staffers were asked to volunteer for overtime. As of 10 a.m. Monday, there were 218 online reports that had yet to be assigned, leading to the mandatory overtime directive.
The backlog was around 100 Nov. 19 when a DCFS manager sent a direct message to the intake staff telling them to notify her when their shift was over so she could assign them reports from the backlog. One hotline worker asked if they could process portal reports if they completed all their tasks before the end of their shift.
“You cannot begin your portals in your No ACD time,” the manager responded, referring to the last 30 minutes of a shift when workers don’t have to answer calls so they can complete required administrative tasks.
The backlog was eliminated as of 7 a.m. Wednesday, according to hotline staffers. The department’s news release in the afternoon said the same, adding there was “no wait time to speak with an agent.”
“I want to publicly thank the many hotline professionals who continue to take calls, process reports, and support their colleagues,” DCFS Secretary Rebecca Harris said in the statement. “Their commitment reflects the mission of this department.”
Mann said responsibility for the online portal backlog lies squarely with Harris and DCFS Assistant Secretary Bret Hanemann, who are restructuring centralized intake. Its staff is currently composed of remote workers, nearly all of whom will have to report to regional DCFS offices next month when they will likely be assigned to jobs handling cases in the field. The department is currently hiring to help staff a call center at the department’s offices in downtown Baton Rouge. These new employees will answer hotline calls and receive online reports.
Just because the backlog has been whittled down does not mean it won’t happen again, according to Mann, who predicted the reorganization and recent policy changes will adversely affect staffing at the department.
“They come in, they make these demands, they don’t understand what meeting those demands will entail, and the result is tragedy for children,” Mann said.
This article originally published in the December 1, 2025 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.