Defending Queer Youth, Refusing Mandated Reporting: Considerations for Research and Practice

Anti-transgender policies are sweeping U.S. state legislatures. Queer and trans youth and their families are caught in the political crossfire as anti-transgender rhetoric and policy-making have escalated into a national wedge issue. Especially concerning for social workers are efforts to reframe gender-affirming parenting and care provision as child abuse. In 2022, for example, the Texas Governor and Attorney General instructed the Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) to begin investigating cases of youth receiving trans-affirming medical treatment under the definition of “child abuse� in the Texas Family Code, and reminded DFPS of the state’s mandatory reporting laws. In deploying mandated reporting as a tool, Texas leaders aimed to weaponize social workers, among others, in their political efforts. The strategy relies on the cynical assertion that the child welfare system is a source of protection for trans and queer youth rather than a longstanding site of colonial and racialized gender control. While the directive was ultimately overturned by the courts, efforts to criminalize queer and trans youth and their caretakers are gaining ground. This roundtable conversation brings together anti-violence scholars, researchers, and advocates working to expose mandatory reporting as a political tool with disproportionate harms for Black and Indigenous families, poor families, families of color, and queer families (Dettlaff 2023; Gruber, 2023; Roberts, 2020). As increasing numbers of social workers challenge the profession’s complicity in systems of surveillance and control, this roundtable focuses specifically on how mandated reporting intersects with queer youth and familial relationships, the vulnerability of queer youth to violence and their ability to seek support, and the anti-trans legislation targeting youth and families. To contextualize the conversation, one panelist will provide a brief overview of mandated reporting and summarize critiques of mandated reporting from social work scholars, practitioners, and community members. Next, one panelist will explore the implications of mandated reporting for queer and trans young people experiencing violence and discuss how social workers can support queer and trans young people without further subjecting them to carceral systems. Another panelist will then share their work on mandatory reporting and interpersonal violence (IPV), exploring how mandated reporting policies can become barriers for individuals experiencing violence to access needed services and implications for future research. Finally, two panelists will speak to the ongoing onslaught of anti-trans legislation seeking to limit trans young people’s access to gender-affirming care and the response of both individual social workers and the social work profession to this legislation. They will interrogate the race, gender, and class politics of refusing the criminalization of trans-affirming medical care while remaining silent on other forms of policing and violence faced by trans and queer youth, especially youth of color who are already impacted by social welfare systems. In closing, they will build on a politics of relationality as an alternative to exceptionalism, as a strategic opportunity to rethink mandatory reporting policies and their purpose.