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Mandated or mandatory reporting is a term used to describe legal requirements that certain people report situations of child or elder abuse/neglect, domestic violence, and suicidality to police and other authorities
Healthcare workers and staff who are mandated reporters are essentially deputized to call police
Mandated reporting has not been proven to improve these situations and often makes things worse, going against patient autonomy to make decisions, damaging the therapeutic relationship, and forcing them into under-resourced systems that often place them at greater risk of harm
People who experience harm deserve to seek support and services at their own pace without fear of getting involved in the criminal punishment system

Offer people resources to get out of difficult situations
Communicate to patients your legal role as a mandatory reporter and what resources/limitations reporting offers
Communicate what kind of information might trigger a mandated reporting requirement
Unless people agree to it, do not document or report elder abuse/neglect, domestic violence, or suicidality to authorities
Change hospital policies and laws around mandatory reporting

Mandatory Reporting is Not Neutral
Mandated Supporting - JMAC for Families and Social Workers Against Mandates (SWAM)
Reimagine Support - Movement for Family Power
Criminalizing Domestic Violence - Survived and Punished
Police Responses to Domestic Violence - Interrupting Criminalization
What about the Rapists - Mariame Kaba and Eva Nagao
Erin Miles Cloud, “Toward the Abolition of the Foster System”.
Kendra Hurley, “How the Pandemic Became an Unplanned Experiment in Abolishing the Child Welfare System”.
ProPublica & NBCNews investigation into the child welfare system
Dorothy Roberts, Abolish Family Policing, Too
Read about the work of upEND, Movement for Family Power, Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work (NAASW), JMac for Families

What do you believe the purpose of mandatory reporting is? What have you been taught?
What kinds of things might lead you to make a report about someone under your care to the family regulation system? The criminal punishment system?
What do you think will happen if you make a report? How do you think will improve the situation? How might it make it worse?
What other supports might you offer instead of reporting someone?
What are the harms of a “when in doubt, report” approach?

What are you actually required to report in your state if you are a mandated reporter? Look up Elephant Circle’s guide on this.
Look up the numbers of mandated reports in the United States over time from 1985 to 2019 (most recent available data) on the Mandatory Reporting is Not Neutral website.
- In 1985 150,000 reports were made; in 2019 4.3 million reports were made.
- What is the racial breakup of these numbers?
Also look up the percentage of unsubstantiated reports over time. What does this tell you about what is happening?
Read “There’s No one I can Trust”: A report from the National Institute on LGBTQ Domestic Violence in collaboration with the National DV Hotline. By: Dr. Carrie Lippy, Connie Burk, Margaret Hobart.
Listen to this interview with Dorothy Roberts and Lisa Sangoi on the history of the child welfare system
Read about the consequences of calling the police in a DV situation

If you are a mandated reporter
- Do you always let your patient/ client/ help-seeker know that you are a mandated reporter?
- Are you familiar with your state laws around mandated reporting?
- Have you ever felt that reporting might make a situation worse? In what ways? What are the ways in which mandatory reporting requirements sit in tension with best practices around patient and family-centered care, confidentiality and trust?
- Do you prioritize the mandate to patient confidentiality (also a law) less than fear of “non-compliance” with mandated reporting? Why or why not?
Make Domestic Violence safety plans using toolkits like BAJTC’s pod-mapping worksheet and the Safety Planning and Intimate Partner Violence Toolkit
Watch this video from transformative justice practitioner, Shannon Perez-Darby, and consider what you would do in the Scenarios presented starting at the 1:23:23 mark
How might you start a conversation with other staff or providers about mandated reporting - why you report, why reporting may lead to more harm, and how to live into your ethical commitment to do no harm? Consider using the resources available at Mandatory Reporting is Not Neutral

What if instead of paying a foster family $76,000/year we gave it to the family that needs food/housing/respite care/support/ etc.? How would it look to support the agency of DV/SA survivors by offering them options beyond the criminal punishment system that led to safety and healing?