Clinicians’ Description of Factors Influencing Their Reporting of Suspected Child Abuse: Report of the Child Abuse Reporting Experience Study Research Group

Abstract

Decisions about reporting to child protective services are guided by injury circumstances and history, knowledge of and experiences with the family, consultation with others, and previous experiences with child protective services.

To Report or Not Report: A Physician's Dilemma

“…This study indicates that decisions to report suspicious injuries were less tied to definitions, statistics, and reporting laws than to a variety of factors related to patient-physician relationships and experiences with CPS [4,5].…”

“…A 2008 study found that pediatricians in an office-based setting do not always report suspicious injuries [4,5]. Physicians from two national pediatric practice-based research networks were recruited and 434 reported information from more than 15,000 injuries seen in their offices.…”

Mandatory Reporting of Human Trafficking: Potential Benefits and Risks of Harm

“…Also, when reports are made to law enforcement rather than, or in addition to, child welfare, the law enforcement agencies may be similarly ill-prepared to connect trafficking victims and survivors to the most appropriate services. These factors have contributed to reluctance on the part of some health care and other professionals to submit mandated reports [27][28][29].…”

Who’s Your Daddy? Potential Labeling Bias in Mandatory Reporting - a Vignette Study

“…In both Jones et al (2008) and Flaherty et al (2006) the researchers found that physicians saw previous history with the family and their own experiences in working with child protective services as key factors influencing their decision-making processes in the intentionally ambiguous vignettes posited by the researchers. The introduction of history with the family into the situation makes the replicability of the data difficult because the history of particular subjects will trump other factors.…”