Understanding the Expansion of Social Control and Helping Professionals As Agents of the State: The Passing of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act

Introduction: It is widely known that those in the helping professions are mandated to report suspected incidences of child maltreatment. However, few are aware of the historical resistance to mandated reporting that helping professionals demonstrated before the passing of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) of 1974 and the associated federal mandates that compelled helping professionals to engage in mandated reporting, oftentimes against their will. This paper explores the rationale for the passage of CAPTA. It also evaluates the impact that mandated reporting had on the helping professional-client relationship. The following three research questions inform the present study: 1) What was the rationale for the implementation of CAPTA? 2) How did helping professionals react to the implementation of mandated reporting? 3) What measures were implemented to compel helping professionals to engage in mandated reporting? Arguments that mandated reporting practices are responsible for the overrepresentation of Black children within child protective services is also be reviewed.

Methods: Drawing from a grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2006; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016), language within six historical policy documents before the passing of CAPTA is analyzed to understand the rationale for implementing CAPTA and helping professionals reactions and responses to the implementation of mandated reporting. Historical policy documents include opening statements, hearings, and deliberation involving witness testimonials, research studies, news articles, and other submitted documents used by congress to justify the passing of CAPTA.

Examination of the policy effects on Black children and communities drawn from historical, legal, and empirical social science are integrated to produce an interdisciplinary exploratory policy analysis.

Results: Authors identified three themes that describe the rationale for the passage of CAPTA: 1) identifying national evidence of child abuse to justify the need for federal mandates regarding mandated reporting, 2) resistance to the intrusion of the State in the helping professional-client relationship, and 3) the necessity of immunity waivers for those in the helping professions who reported instances of child abuse and misdemeanor punishment for those in the helping professions who failed to report such instances.

Discussion: In light of conversations around abolishing or reforming child protective services, it is important to understand how the first federal child protective services policy in the United States originated and how these regulations embedded social control into the foundation of the helping professional-client relationship, thus turning helping professionals into agents of the state. Implications of mandated reporting for Black children and families is explored as well as the implications of introducing a penal aspect to the helping professional-client relationship via mandated reporting.