Bryant and Stratton College Child Abuse Laws in The State of Virginia Essay

Directions

In lecture this week you learned about the ethical principle of confidentiality and the times in which confidentiality must be breached due to the legal requirements of mandated reporting. As you saw in lecture, mandatory reporting laws, which require a therapist to disclose suspicions of child neglect, incest, or abuse, differ by state.

Using the weblinks and Child Welfare Information Gateway PDF provided in lecture and linked below, look up the statutes and laws in your state in terms of mandatory reporting.

Mandatory Reports of Child Abuse and Neglect

Child Welfare Information Gateway State Statutes Search

After reviewing the lecture and the information provided in the weblinks above, write an essay approximately 550 words in length in which you address the following:

• Summarize the laws in your state.

o Identify who your state considers to be mandatory reporters. Who legally must report child abuse and neglect?

o Indicate whether your state requires the reporter to leave a name when filing a report and whether the reporter is protected from having their name disclosed/revealed.

o Explain the circumstances under which a report must be made (the “standards for making a report”).

• Based on your understanding of the lecture material and the links provided, critique mandatory reporting laws.

o Outline anything important you think might be missing from the mandatory reporting laws in your state.

o Describe any potential downsides or complications to mandatory reporting laws.

• Detail the legal or ethical issue (relevant to working with families)you learned about this weekthat you found most interesting or important. Justify why this issue is the most interesting or important to you.

• Finally, predict how the legal and ethical issues you learned about this week might impact your career in the human and social services field.