In New South Wales, Australia, the Department of Family and Community Services (the Department) is responsible for the legal protection of children, which includes maintaining a system for receiving reports of children who have been harmed or are the risk of being damaged. Under the Children and Young People (Care and Protection) Act 1998 (NSW), a mandated reporter includes a person who provides services to children, or who has a management role in relation to the provision of services to children. The full definition can be seen in section 27(1) of the Act. This is a very broad definition that includes most doctors, dentists, child psychologists and psychiatrists, counselors working with children, child protection social workers , police officers, hospital workers, school teachers and early care workers, and other school and preschool employees. -school institutions. Children’s residential service providers are also in scope. In addition, managers of institutions providing any of these types of services are likely to be mandated reporters, as are some lay employees who come into contact with children when providing support to professional colleagues or services to children directly. If you are not sure if you are a mandated reporter, you should take steps to find out. Violating the Law, by failing to make a required report, can lead to charges of professional misconduct being filed against a mandated reporter. On the positive side, section 29 of the Act states that making a report is not a breach of ethical standards, although it does involve disclosing confidential client information. Mandated reporters who file a report with the Department are protected from charges of professional misconduct, defamation proceedings, and civil proceedings in connection with the report, and the identity of the reporter is protected in most circumstances. A 2014 New South Wales Court of Appeal decision upheld the protection of reporters’ identities, noting that the purpose of section 29 is to protect the identities of bona fide reporters “for the obvious reasons that people … referred to in such reports may [otherwise] The consequences of the visit on the reporter and the prospect of that happening may deter or inhibit individuals from making reports.” This protection of a reporter’s identity and the other protections under the Act mean that mandated reporters can report with Trust your suspicions when a report is required, knowing that the people named in the report are unlikely to know the source of the report.
When is a report required? A report to the Department (usually made to the Child Protection Helpline, telephone 132-111 in New South Wales) if a mandated reporter, in the course of their work, has reasonable grounds to suspect that a child (or a particular group of children) is at risk of significant harm. The critical terms here are “reasonable grounds,” “suspicious,” and “risk of significant harm.” Risk of significant harm requires more than just risk of harm in general, and can be expected to involve risk of physical, psychological, or developmental harm that could have long-term consequences, including the risk of a child being killed or killed. kidnapped or requires hospital treatment. Mandated reporters must always be alert to the possibility that a child is at risk of harm and use forensic judgment to determine whether suspicion is based on reasonable grounds. Important indicators of possible risk may include unexplained injuries, increased anxiety or fear in the child, domestic violence in the home, or parental drug or alcohol abuse. The Department has a comprehensive manual, the ‘NSW Mandatory Reporter’s Guide’, which includes a structured decision-making system to help mandated reporters make decisions about their suspected risk to children. Significant harm risk reporting is critical to the Department’s work, and the Department relies on mandated reporters to be the Department’s eyes and ears in identifying children who may be at this level of risk. Reports from mandated reporters may be linked to other reports and information held by the Department, to allow the risk to be appropriately assessed and addressed. A single report is rarely the trigger for an intervention by itself, unless the report identifies a critical event, such as actual harm to a child, but by aggregating multiple reports and other available information, the Department can build a comprehensive picture of a child’s situation and the risk factors that are present for the child. Some risk factors viewed in isolation may not warrant any action, but multiple factors may lead to the risk being reassessed and the child’s case being given higher priority. For example, the Department may initially receive reports of a family that is transient or homeless, which in itself may not require immediate action by the Department (parents may just need time to sort out accommodation), But if those initial reports are followed by reports of domestic violence between the parents, drug use by the parents, or children not being fed or physically abused, the matter will be looked at more closely by the department’s social workers. . When a report alleges physical or sexual abuse of a child, the report is likely to be forwarded to the Joint Investigative Response Team (JIRT) that covers the area where the child lives, so that an investigation can be carried out quickly to find out. ensure that the child is protected from harm and any perpetrator of such abuse is prosecuted if a crime has been committed. JIRT staff are drawn from the Department, NSW Police and NSW Health to facilitate joint investigations of crimes against children.
While it may be uncomfortable for a professional to reveal patient or client confidences, the law is clear about the obligations of mandated reporters. This has been the law in New South Wales since 1978 and in most other Australian states for over 20 years. There can be a fine line between the risk of harm and the risk of significant harm, but reporters should not err on one side or the other – for example, reporters should not adopt a “when in doubt, report” attitude. – because the obligation to report only arises when the risk of “significant” harm is suspected. It is up to the mandated reporter to consider whether her suspicions are based on reasonable grounds and point to the child being at risk of significant harm. The Department receives more than 100,000 relevant reports each year, and reporting other (non-significant) situations to the Department may affect the Department’s ability to quickly assess and assign more serious cases for attention. When the risk of harm does not reach the threshold level, resources are available to guide reporters on how to best deal with these types of situations. The Department’s website has a lot of material and professional associations also provide guidance to members. If this information does not answer a specific question, an experienced juvenile law attorney will be able to provide helpful advice.
