Helping Abused Youth: Identifying Best Practices with Text and Chat for Meaningful Advances in Child Abuse Prevention

Background and Purpose. Given the potential of technology-based interventions like text and chat, it is necessary to determine best practices and models for effectively and safely engaging youth, especially vulnerable children disproportionately affected by systemic injustices. In 2018, the HHS Children’s Bureau funded the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline (Hotline) to provide text- and chat-based services targeting youth ages 13-24, a population not accessing the Hotline by phone. This Hotline differs from others by offering call, text, and online chatting services with trained counselors 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Hotline’s five-year partnership with researchers at the Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Center at ASU led to an innovative quasi-experimental research design with major findings. This study fills a gap by:

• Demonstrating that young victims of child maltreatment would not reach out if text and chat were unavailable,
• Showing when young victims of child maltreatment use text and chat to reach out, they report positive outcomes, including stress reduction and feeling more hopeful, and
• Presenting the potential for academic-community partnerships, and
• Best practices for text and chat.

Methods. In total, 42,538 text and chat help seekers contacted the Hotline between February 1, 2019, and January 31, 2022. Quantitative data were collected through surveys that asked the youth about their demographics, interactions with counselor, perceived level of assistance, hopefulness, and stress. Descriptive statistics and chi-square tests were performed. Also, qualitative data from focus groups were collected throughout 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2023 with 30 Hotline counselors and supervisors.

Findings. Younger help seekers and females would be substantially less likely to contact the Hotline if text/chat services were unavailable. Youth under 25 were significantly more hopeful and less stressed after contacting the Hotline. Specifically, youth of color reported they were significantly more likely to feel less stressed. Stress was also a theme from the counselor focus groups where findings on compassion fatigue and resilience pushed the Hotline organization to become trauma-informed to improve training and best practices.

Conclusions and Implications. Findings highlight how text and chat services are more vital than ever to identifying and helping abused youth. Text and chat are promising ways to reach youth with support and resources to provide hope and decrease stress. The promise of academic-community partnerships’ potential to make meaningful advances in trauma-informed care and health equity is demonstrated. The dissemination of the research has led to social change in creating new safe spaces, for instance a Child Welfare State Department launched text messaging to connect youth and child abuse victims with child welfare workers.