The Misguided Effort to Diminish Mandated Reporting

Five children are killed each day in the United States of America due to child neglect and abuse (CDC 1019). That the equivalent of Sandy Hook School shooting, every four days.

And yet some in child welfare are working to “strengthen” the only hope victims of childhood violence have – mandated reporting.

In short, they claim, the laws to protect our children “does more harm than it does good.”

In the early 1960s, with the amendment of the Social Security Act, mandated reporting laws began to take effect across the nation. Previously, a child could come to school with a black eye, bruised, slovenly dressed and suffering from malnutrition, or presenting symptoms of severe depression and anxiety – and the teacher could ignore the symptoms of maltreatment. Soon, teachers and others were required to report the signs of maltreatment.

For over fifty years, mandated reporters, literally, saved the lives of countless children. By current estimates, nearly 2,000 children are killed each year because of neglect and abuse. Since the mandated reporting standard, nearly 100,000 children have died.

Can we imagine how many would have died without these life-saving laws?

And yet in Colorado, an effort is underway to dilute the one safeguard to keep these children alive.

Of course, the current system isn’t perfect. No social service is. And yet when we, as a nation, are talking about protecting children from indescribable abuse and neglect – and in many cases torture – we must ask why we would lessen measures to protect our most vulnerable population.

Sadly, the United States has a long history of nonsensical (and frankly cruel) polices toward the protection of children. On what “child protection” basis did we refuse to join the rest of the world (192 countries) in ratifying the 1992 U.N. Convention on right of the child, where child imprisonment was forbidden? (Somolia was the only other country that didn’t sign.)

If children are being severely neglected and abused in their homes, including five deaths each day, we must resist the temptation of false equivalencies.

A CPS knock on the door can be distressing to a child.

But not as distressing as a dead child.

The Child Rights Foundation exists to advocate on behalf of children against insidious forms of neglect, abuse, and abandonment.