More than 60 years ago, policymakers in Colorado embraced the idea that early intervention could prevent child abuse and save lives.
Apr 25 2024KFF Health News The state's requirement that certain professionals tell officials when they suspect a child has been abused or neglected was among the first mandatory reporting laws in the nation.
Stephanie Villafuerte, Colorado's child protection ombudsman, oversees a task force to reexamine the state's mandatory reporting laws. She said the group is seeking to balance a need to report legitimate cases of abuse and neglect with a desire to weed out inappropriate reports. Black and Native American families, poor families, and parents or children with disabilities experience even more oversight. Research has found that, among these groups, parents are more likely to lose parental rights and children are more likely to wind up in foster care.
These calls don't reflect a surge in mistreatment. More than two-thirds of the reports received by agencies in Colorado don't meet the threshold for investigation. Of the children whose cases are assessed, 21% are found to have experienced abuse or neglect. The actual number of substantiated cases has not risen over the past decade.
Hotline callers may mean to help, but the families who are the subjects of mistaken reports of abuse and neglect rarely see it that way. The Colorado task force includes health and education officials, prosecutors, victim advocates, county child welfare representatives and attorneys, as well as five people who have experience in the child welfare system. It intends to finalize its recommendations by early next year in the hope that state legislators will consider policy changes in 2025. Implementation of any new laws could take several years.
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