During a ceremony at the State Capitol Thursday Governor Jim Pillen proclaimed April as Child Abuse Prevention Month in Nebraska. Dannette Smith is the CEO for the Department of Health and Human Services and says the Child Abuse Hotline has been very active since last year.
“Our hotline calls, those numbers from April 1, 2022 to March 31, 2023 were 41,000.” Smith says about 4,600 hundred of those calls involved kids that were emotionally or physically abused. She also says there are about 10,000 kids in Nebraska who deal with neglect.
She says thanks to a bill that was passed last year all three branches of government are working together with communities to prevent neglect and abuse in children.
Smith is traveling around the state to get community input about ways to lessen the numbers.