Statewide professionals seeking information on child abuse will soon look to the UA, which will house the only statewide clearinghouse of such information.

The Child Abuse Info Center will maintain statistics, publications and prevention methods regarding child abuse. It will also provide resources for professionals working with children, said Doris Carlson, the program's coordinator.

The center will service professionals involved with children, including attorneys, law enforcement officers, school personnel, church staff and all youth-oriented agencies.

"This is a way to give people information to do their jobs," Carlson said. "This is truly meant to be a tool for the professional."

The information will be distributed through faxes, the Internet and monthly bulletins.

According to the National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect, between 1986 and 1993 the number of abused and neglected children rose from 1.4 million to 2.9 million.

The study was conducted by Westat, a Maryland social science research corporation, done for Human Health Service's National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect.

In 1995, 31,809 reports of child abuse and neglect involving 53,963 children were made to Arizona's Child Protective Services.

Carlson said the University of Arizona was chosen as the site for the information center because of the many resources it has to offer, especially the Arizona Health Sciences Library, which can be used for research.

The Arizona Health Sciences Center Department of Pediatrics received a grant to fund the center from the Governor's Division for Children through the Federal Children's Justice Act Grant, said F. John Meaney, research associate professor for the UA Colleg e of Medicine.

The funding given for the first year, which began last October, was $69,728, Meaney said. The department requested about $66,000 in funding for the second year, which begins in November, he said.

The goal of the center's first year is to gather initial information by talking to experts on child abuse and finding out what types of information the center should provide to professionals throughout the state, Carlson said.

The rural areas particularly need this kind of information to help them diagnose child abuse because of the lack of resources currently available to them, Carlson said.

The second year will focus on distributing the information and using the Internet so professionals can communicate with each other directly and establish a networking system, she said.

"We are trying to combine what is being done nationally and use their information and combine it with state information," Carlson said.

Don Haskell, director of community relations for Casa de los Ninos, crisis nursery for children, said the center will help it to gather statistics.

"Instead of having to look in 10 or 12 different places to find statistics on child abuse, we will be able to go to one place," Haskell said.