New directions in child protection and well-being: making a real difference to children's lives. Prof Bob Loone,Queensland University of Technology Brisbane, Australia Prof Brid Featherstone, The Open University, Milton Keynes, England. Prof Maria Harries, University of Western Australia, Perth Australia Prof Mel GrayUniversity of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia

1. Queensland University of Technology
CRICOS No. 00213J
Mandatory Reporting and Neglect:
Impacts and Issues
Prof Bob Lonne1Prof Brid Featherstone2, Prof Maria
Harries3, Prof Mel Gray4,
Contact b.lonne@qut.edu.au
1Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia; 2 The Open University, Milton
Keynes, England; 3 University of Western Australia, Perth, Western Australia, Australia; 4
University of Newcastle, Newcastle, Australia.
New directions in child protection and wellbeing:
making a real difference to children’s lives

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The child protection context
• Mandatory reporting
• a variety of forms (legislative, policy & procedural) and different requirements
• cumulative service demand increases
• Yet under reporting to authorities (prevalence)
• Neglect
– is the major form of maltreatment ( e.g. 78.3% of US 2012 substantiated
cases were for neglect (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2013).
– associated with
• Poverty
• Marginalised groups (Indigenous, single parents, etc)
• Inequality and disadvantage generally

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Mandatory reporting
• Extends social surveillance of at risk groups
• Changes responsibilities & behaviours of social actors
• Rationale:
• a necessary measure to help families
• increases public and system awareness of CA&N
• prevents harm to children from hidden maltreatment
• early advice to protective authorities facilitates coordinated protective
interventions – prevents tragedies
• quantifies the social problem of CA&N
• addresses legal and ethical issues
• elevates maltreatment issues in professional and organisational
discourses

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Mandatory reporting -
the downsides
• promotes risk & safety considerations at the expense of well-being and
relational aspects – investigation becomes the service
• net widening – definitions & reporters expand
• overwhelms system capabilities
• reliant upon interagency collaborations but promotes risk shifting &
demand management strategies
• deeply stigmatising for families and communities
• distorts social responsibilities from help to reporting & thereby disrupts
informal helping processes
• ethical issues for professionals who report but then see little done in
response by authorities – erodes system integrity

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Neglect – diversity & imprecision
• Global term yet messy & uncertain interplay
• Socially constructed - individual, collective & normative
– thresholds – a continuum (Dubowitz, 2013)
– Personal, professional and organisational influences - a
practice–moral activity as much as a technical–rational one, head-
heart (Horwath, 2007)
– Incident-based, reactive, lengthy & cumulative impacts
– Often difficult to prove to the satisfaction of a court
• Multi-facetted types (physical, supervisory, medical, educational,
abandonment, emotional)
• Crittenden’s forms (1999) – depressive (most common), disorganised,
emotional
• Variety of causes (Tanner & Turney, 2003) – personal,
ecological, psychiatric, sociological, attachment etc

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Aetiology
• Often dissimilar to physical and sexual abuse
• Occurrence is less binary
• Sometimes chronic nature
• Increases exposure to other harms
• Different intentions of parents/carers
• Clear association with poverty and inequality
• Intergenerational and cumulative features
• Impacts on life narratives and relationships

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Powerful life narratives evident
• “I cannot trust or depend on others because they let me down”
• “You have to fight hard to stop others from treating you badly – don’t trust
them”.
• “My life is just never ending episodes of being abandoned by others”.
• “My life will never get any better because people like me are destined to
be losers.”
• ‘Most people round here don’t have happy endings’
• ‘I’d like to be a decent mum but that’s unlikely to happen in this place. Too
many bad things always happen’.

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2011-12 AIHW data
• Notifications 252, 962 (34.0 per 1000 children)
• Investigations 106, 754
• Substantiations 48,240 (7.4 per 1000 children)
• Approximately 60% of notifications come from
mandated reporters – although it varies across
jurisdictions

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Australia-Norway reporters (Kojan & Lonne, 2012)
AUSTRALIA
(2009/2010)
NORWAY (2009)
Police 26.5 11.8
Parent 5.6 15.8
School personnel 13.4 5.7
Health care personnel/hospital 9.6
Social worker / Social Security’s staff 8.0 2.6
Medical practitioner 4.0 4.9
Other relative 6.2 7.8
Friend/neighbour 4.4 2.5
Other 6.2 7.8
Departmental officer/public body 3.4 4.0
Other health personnel 2.5 5.6
Childcare personnel/kindergarten 1.4 4.2
Non-government org 6.7 0.2
Child 0.4 1.5
Child welfare services (N) n.a. 12.1
[1] An average based on the total number of notifications from all states (AIHW, 2011)
[2] Included in the category ‘medical practitioner’

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Issues in mandatory reporting
and investigation of neglect
• Difficulties establishing thresholds and harm
• Short-term intervention but neglect is long-term
• Feeds parental negative life narratives &
reinforces parental sense of abandonment
• Suspicion damages helping relationships
• Fear decreases motivation to seek help
• Punitive neo-liberal discourses increase
stigmatization, alienation & ‘othering’
• Individualizes issues & ignores social structural
factors at play

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Conclusions
• Neglect has significant definitional and operational
complexities for child protection
• Mandatory reporting and investigation of neglect
– overwhelms already overloaded systems
– reinforces stigma & marginalises particular groups
– Compounds parental distrust, hostility & withdrawal
• More harm than good for those experiencing
inequality and marginalisation
• We need to rethink this approach

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Thank you
for your
appreciative
attention
The End
Contact
b.lonne@qut.edu.au
References follow

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References
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reported to the Department of Child Protection in Western Australia. British Journal of Social
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action agenda. British Journal of Social Work. First published online: May 3, 2013, 1‒18. doi:
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Crittenden, P. (1999). Child neglect: Causes and contributors. In H. Dubowitz (Ed.),
Neglected Children: Research, Practice and Policy,pp. 47-69, Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Dubowitz, H. (2013). Neglect in children, Pediatric Annals, 42(4), 73-77.
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(2009a). Recognising and Responding to Child Maltreatment, The Lancet, 373 (9658), 167-
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References
Horwath, J. (2007). The missing assessment domain: Personal, professional and
organisational factors influencing professional judgements when identifying and referring
child neglect, British Journal of Social Work, 37, 1285-1303.
Kojan, B. & Lonne, B. (2012). A Comparison of Systems and Outcomes for Safeguarding
Children in Australia and Norway. Child and Family Social Work, 17(1), 96-107.
Lonne, B. (2015). Mandatory reporting and the difficulties in identifying and responding to
risk of severe neglect: A response requiring a rethink. In B. Mathews &. Bross, D. (Eds.),
Mandatory reporting laws and the identification of severe child abuse and neglect, (pp. 245-
273). New York: Springer.
Lonne, B., Harries, M., Featherstone, B., & Gray, M. (forthcoming). Working ethically in child
protection. London: Taylor & Francis.
B. Mathews &. Bross, D. (Eds.) (2015). Mandatory reporting laws and the identification of
severe child abuse and neglect. New York: Springer.
Mathews, B., Goddard, C. Lonne, B., Short, S. & Briggs, F. (2009). ‘Developments in
Australian laws requiring the reporting of suspected child sexual abuse’, Children Australia,
34(3), 18-23.
Mathews, B., Goddard, C. Lonne, B., Short, S. & Briggs, F. (2009). ‘Developments in
Australian laws requiring the reporting of suspected child sexual abuse’, Children Australia,
34(3), 18-23.

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References
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