Are you a mandatory reporter in New South Wales?

In New South Wales, Australia, the Department of Family and Community Services (the Department) is responsible for the legal protection of the child, which includes maintaining a system for receiving reports on children who have been harmed or who they run the risk of suffering them. Under the Children and Youth (Care and Protection) Act 1998 (New South Wales), a mandatory reporter includes a person who provides services to children, or who has a managerial role in relation to the provision of services to children. The full definition can be seen in section 27 (1) of the law. This is a very broad definition that includes most child doctors, dentists, psychologists and psychiatrists, counselors who work with children, child protection social workers, police officers, hospital workers, school teachers, and health care workers. early childhood, and other employees of schools and -School institutions. Providers of residential services for children are also included. Additionally, managers of institutions providing any of these types of services are likely to be mandatory reporters, as are some non-professional employees who come into contact with children when providing support to professional colleagues or services to children directly. If you are not sure whether you are a mandatory reporter, you should take steps to find out. Failure to comply with the law, by failing to make a required report, can lead to professional misconduct charges being filed against a mandatory reporter. On the positive side, section 29 of the Act states that making a report is not a violation of ethical standards, although it does involve revealing confidential customer information. Mandatory reporters who make a report to 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 decision by the New South Wales Court of Appeals in 2014 upheld the protection of reporters’ identities, noting that the purpose of section 29 is to protect the identities of reporters in good faith “for the obvious reasons that individuals … mentioned in these reports may [otherwise] the consequences of the visit on the informant and the possibility of that happening can dissuade or inhibit people from making complaints. “This protection of the identity of a whistleblower and the other protections under the Act mean that mandatory reporters can confidently report their suspicions when a report is required, knowing that the persons 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, phone 132-111 in New South Wales) if a mandatory 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 cause”, “suspect” and “risk of significant harm”. The risk of significant harm requires more than the risk of harm in general, and can be expected to involve a risk of physical, psychological or developmental harm that could have long-term consequences, including the risk of a child being killed or abducted. or requires hospitalization. treatment. Mandatory reporters should always be alert to the possibility that a child is at risk of harm and use forensic judgment to determine whether the suspicion is based on reasonable grounds. Important indicators of possible risk may include unexplained injuries, increased anxiety or fear of the child, domestic violence in the home, or drug or alcohol abuse by parents. The Department has a comprehensive manual, the “New South Wales Mandatory Reporter Guide,” which includes a structured decision-making system to help mandatory reporters make decisions about their suspected risk to children. Reporting of significant harm risk is critically important to the Department’s work, and the Department relies on the required reporters to be the eyes and ears of the Department in identifying children who may be at this level of risk. Mandatory reporters’ reports can be linked to other reports and information held by the Department, to allow risk to be appropriately assessed and addressed. A single report is rarely the trigger for an intervention on its own, unless the report identifies a critical event as actual harm to a child, but through the aggregation of multiple reports and other available information, the Department can build a complete picture of a child’s situation and the risk factors that are present for the child. Some risk factors considered in isolation may not warrant action, but multiple factors may lead to a reassessment of risk and a higher priority for the child’s case. For example, the Department may initially receive reports about a transitional or homeless family, which in itself may not require immediate action by the Department (parents may only need time to work out accommodations), but If those initial reports are followed by reports of domestic violence between the parents, parental drug use, or the children not being fed or being physically abused, the matter will be examined more closely by departmental social workers. When a report alleges physical or sexual abuse of a child, the report is likely to be passed on to the Joint Investigation Response Team (JIRT) that covers the area where the child lives, so that an investigation can be carried out quickly. to 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 disclose patient or client confidences, the law is clear about the obligations of mandatory reporters. This has been the law in New South Wales since 1978, and in most other states in Australia for more than 20 years. There may be a fine line between the risk of harm and the risk of significant harm, but reporters should not be wrong one way or the other; for example, reporters should not adopt a “if in doubt, report it” attitude, because the obligation to report only arises when a risk of “significant” harm is suspected. It is up to the mandatory reporter to consider whether their suspicions are based on reasonable grounds and to point out that the child is 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 to its attention. When the risk of harm does not reach the threshold level, there are resources available to guide journalists on the best way to deal with these types of situations. The Department’s website has a wealth 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.