Support Don’t Report, Urge California Bills Focused on Struggling Families

By law, teachers, nurses, child care providers, social workers, police officers and therapists must call authorities if they suspect potential child maltreatment. But too often, advocates say, these requirements result in more harm than help: Unnecessary government intervention can drag parents into the child welfare system simply for being impoverished, not abusive.

Bolstered by a year-long reform effort, the California Legislature will soon consider an alternate path. A pair of early-stage bills aim to change how professionals report suspected child neglect, and involve community-based organizations in lieu of CPS agencies.

Roger De Leon Jr. is among those promoting the legislative effort, aimed at curtailing current requirements that he says sweep too many families of color into the child welfare system unnecessarily, causing trauma and distracting social workers from more serious cases.

More than 15 years ago, De Leon’s family was investigated by Riverside County caseworkers, after school administrators incorrectly believed his child’s bruise was the result of physical abuse. The repercussions of that report were far-reaching. His wife was arrested by police, and De Leon Jr. had to watch his daughter drive away with social workers. The next day, when he told co-workers what had happened, De Leon was fired from his job at a trailer manufacturing company.

He didn’t see his daughter for two and a half weeks.

“A day without your child feels like a thousand years,” he said. “That trauma doesn’t go away — it stays with you even though it happened years ago.”

De Leon served as co-chair of the state’s Mandated Reporting to Community Supporting Task Force, a group that spent a year looking at ways to reform mandated reporting in California. He said child welfare agencies are still needed to deal with serious threats facing children. But in his case, what he most needed was steady guidance, like the church pastor who helped him through his family’s difficulties. 

California’s Mandated Reporting to Community Supporting Task Force published its report in September, resulting in the two bills now being considered.

Democratic Assemblymember Corey Jackson is the author of Assembly Bill 601, which seeks to create an alternative way for CPS agencies to respond to reports of child neglect. Instead of sending out social workers to investigate, hotline workers would coordinate outreach by a community-based organization.

The bill would also create a standardized training for all mandated reporters in the state, require monitoring of the racial disparities in CPS reports and create a statewide advisory committee to monitor the changes.

Assembly Bill 970, carried by Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, would test a new model of mandated reporting. The bill would create a pilot program in Los Angeles County that would require professionals such as teachers to use a specific, pre-approved decision-making tool that would recommend whether or not to call a CPS hotline. Participating in the program, which is optional under current bill language, would shield mandated reporters from legal liabilities.

The bill aims to allow more discretion among mandated reporters, who can be faced with arrest, job termination, the loss of professional credentials and fines for failing to report the suspicion of child maltreatment. Those sanctions incentivize more reports, bill proponents said.

“The broad and imprecise language” of current laws, the task force’s report reads, “encourages over-reporting and reliance on liability-driven interpretations, rather than focusing solely on the safety and welfare of children.”

Some in Sacramento have expressed initial skepticism.

Assemblymember Tom Lackey said he is not opposed to Jackson’s bill, and is awaiting public comment. But he said encouraging fewer CPS reports could lead to “hurtful outcomes.”

“That’s not only shortsighted, but extremely dangerous to these children who are at risk,” Lackey said in an interview with The Imprint.

More than 100 advocates, parents, caregivers, teachers, social workers and educators participated in the Mandated Reporting to Community Supporting Task Force. Its work wrapped up in September with a final report: Shifting From Reporting Families to Supporting Families. The report described reform of the mandated reporting system as necessary in order to tackle the overrepresentation of people of color in the child welfare system.

“This is a societal crisis, a system that unnecessarily over-surveils and over-reports children and families — especially Black/African American and Native American — inflicting trauma instead of finding new ways to support them to safely stay together,” the task force report reads.

Black and Indigenous children are about three times more likely to be reported and investigated than their white peers in California, according to state data. That leaves one out of every two Black and Indigenous kids here subject to a CPS investigation by the time they turn 18, a 2024 report by the California Legislative Analyst’s Office found.

The downsides to reporting neglect

Last year, the state received more than 433,000 calls to its child maltreatment hotlines, but only about 11% were found to be legitimate. An even smaller share of those calls ended up being confirmed, or substantiated.

Additionally, the majority of calls generated by mandated reporting — nearly 200,000 a year — are filed under the catch-all category of “general neglect.” That allegation, critics say, is often a reflection of poverty — such as insecure housing or food instability — rather than child safety.

The task force has built on similar work nationally and in the state to “narrow the front door” of the foster care system.

Under the 2018 Family First Prevention Services Act, states can receive Title IV-E Social Security Act funds not just for placing children in foster care — but also for preventing them from entering the system. In California, as in other states, counties have been encouraged to provide “community pathways”: access to local organizations that provide food, housing and voluntary treatment programs outside of the child welfare system.

Former federal Administration for Children and Families Commissioner Rebecca Jones Gaston — who departed in January — is quoted in the California report, underscoring these goals.

“We have a lot of work to do if we think the only way for children to be safe is if they’re being surveilled and reported to the child welfare system,” she wrote.

National efforts to re-examine mandated reporting

Yet over the past half-century, states have expanded mandated reporting laws, with more categories of maltreatment added and more professions requiring reports. In approximately 17 states and Puerto Rico, any adult who suspects child abuse or neglect is required to report, regardless of profession.

In recent years, several states have veered away from such broad-based approaches.

Last month, Washington state announced it would update its training to better educate mandated reporters about the difference between neglect and poverty, and provide them with community-based referrals as an alternative to CPS reports.

“When poverty or other family circumstances are mistaken for neglect, this creates disparities in reporting, impacting some individuals or groups more than others,” said Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families Assistant Secretary of Partnerships, Prevention, and Services Vickie Ybarra.

Like California, Colorado created a task force to examine whether its mandatory reporting policies could be streamlined to address the over-reporting of Black and Indigenous parents. A report released last month concluded Colorado’s “vague and ambiguous” laws bring too many families into contact with CPS agencies and cause some parents to avoid interacting with doctors or educators for fear of being reported.

And in Connecticut, legislation passed last year allows school employees to “conduct a preliminary inquiry to determine if reasonable cause exists” before educators place a call to CPS hotlines.

Texas lawmakers went further. In 2021, they passed a law that amended the definition of neglect with new requirements. Rather than calling CPS agencies because of a “substantial risk” of harm to a child, mandated reporters must see a “blatant disregard” for the consequences of a parent’s behavior, or other actions that place a child in “immediate danger.” That reform has contributed to a 40% drop in the number of Texas kids in foster care.

Several counties, including Los Angeles County, have embraced “mandated supporting,” a framework that involves connecting families to preventative social services. Since 2018, the county’s Hotline to Helpline program transfers thousands of cases a month that do not meet the standards of abuse and neglect to one of several community-based providers. These organizations can provide parents with resources such as free diapers or link them to housing.

This is not the first time that Assemblymember Jackson — a former social worker representing Moreno Valley — has attempted to reform mandated reporting laws. A bill he introduced late last year was delayed after spirited debate, with some lawmakers wanting to wait until the task force’s report was finalized.

As he prepares again to make his case to the California Legislature, Jackson said reform will likely be a “long slog.” In an interview with The Imprint, he said more education is needed to counter lawmakers’ worst-case fears. Last year, some of his colleagues were “so emotionally invested into it that they couldn’t focus on the data,” Jackson said. This year, he hopes more information and analysis will encourage legislators to think differently.

“People need to understand that even things that are well-meaning like mandated reporting, if it’s not done correctly and through the right lens,” Jackson said, “it can actually do more harm than good.”

Jeremy Loudenback is a senior reporter for The Imprint. The Imprint is a partner of The Intersection and CVJC.