ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The stakes are high when someone falsely reports an incident. When those false calls are made to Child Protective Services, the stakes can be even higher. 

The report, Cost of a False Alarm, was published in 2025 and looked at data from 2024. The goal of the report was to help get community members in Monroe County thinking more deeply about the best practices to support system-impacted families and young people. 

The report found that Monroe County carried out more than 6,700 investigations in 2024. More than 5,100 of them proved to be unfounded. 

Ashley Cross is the executive director of Hope 585, the organization that published the report. She explains that false calls can overwhelm the system and overload workers. False alarm calls to Child Protective Services cost Monroe County nearly $14 million annually, according to the report. The cost to the county comes from having to pay salaries, travel costs and legal fees for these investigations. 

“That then comes down from the SCR (Statewide Central Register of Child Abuse and Maltreatment) that requires the county to then investigate. The calls, I mean, in the report, it’s roughly, you know, $2,200 every single report. I think that the heart of the report was to get people thinking about what else could we do with $2,200 per family,” said Cross. 

One of the takeaways from the report was working with mandated reporters to help determine the difference between poverty and neglect. Cross says many of the calls aren’t coming from a malicious place. Many of them are from those mandated reporters, who believe placing a call to CPS is the best thing for those families. 

“We’ve heard from families, dozens of families, and mothers and fathers who say, ‘I was seeking support, I was seeking help. And because I disclosed an element of lack that a mandated reporter didn’t necessarily know how to address, they just call CPS on me.’ And so that is the harm. It breaks trust,” explains Cross. 

Under the newly passed Anti-Harassment in Reporting Act, New York state no longer allows anonymous CPS calls. Agencies like Hope 585 believe this will reduce the number of false calls.