Session: Mandated Reporting Policy, Practice, and Outcomes: A Closer Look at a Hotly Debated Topic (Society for Social Work and Research 29th Annual Conference)

Background and Purpose: Mandated reporting is a hotly debated topic with some arguing that mandated reporting should be repealed due to the harm it causes families, its contribution to racial disparities and overburdening an already overwhelmed system, and the mixed research regarding its effectiveness. Other researchers argue that it serves an important role and that further research and evidence-based modifications to policy are necessary to address the noted concerns that would not necessarily result in fully abandoning mandatory reporting. This symposium combines four research papers using both quantitative and qualitative methods to inform the debate to help researchers, policymakers, and practitioners better understand the dynamics among mandated reporting policy, different groups of reporters, and numerous outcomes including reports, substantiations, placements, and disparities.

Methods: The four papers offer critical insights from an array of inquiries into the debate regarding mandated reporting policies by combining various research strategies. Three papers utilize quantitative analyses to examine individual-level and state-level factors on numerous child maltreatment report outcomes with national data. The last paper utilizes qualitative data with educational personnel (the second largest reporter group nationally) to identify themes related to their experience reporting child maltreatment.

Results: The first paper provides an overview of mandated reporting to set the stage on how state policy variability and report source impacts outcomes. State policies did not affect substantiations though states utilizing alternative response had increased odds of placements. In contrast, reports from professional reporters were significantly associated with substantiations and foster care placements. The second paper examined changes in mandated reporting practices and their associations with reporting disparities by report sources pre-, during, and post-COVID lockdown. The study found that Black-to-White racial child-level disparities decreased during COVID in urban areas and among educational personnel, which persisted even after COVID lockdowns abated. The third paper examined short-term and long-term outcomes of anonymous reports due to concerns that anonymous reports enable malicious and false calls. Findings indicated that short-term outcomes (substantiation and placement) were higher for other reporting sources relative to anonymous reports though long-term outcomes (re-reports and placements) were not significantly different (and were most similar to those made by friends and neighbors) suggesting that anonymous reporters may be identifying nascent concerns of future risk. The last paper consisted of qualitative interviews with educational personnel that resulted in two themes related to mandated reporting—1) Mandated reporting as a form of protection and 2) Inadequacies of the current mandated reporting system. Participants discussed their unique role and position to protect children, which is sometimes hampered by an inadequate system that at times seemed ineffective and alienating.

Conclusions and Implications: Collectively, these findings suggest that some certain aspects of mandated reporting may serve an important role in the detection of suspected child maltreatment. There remains substantial room for improvement, and elements of current mandated reporting policy may sometimes not work as intended. Future work should more rigorously examine existing and new reporting policies, with the goal of improving our ability to protect children and connect families to needed services.