NCCD Presents Before the Wisconsin Legislative Council

NCCD was invited to present on October 11 before the Wisconsin Legislative Council’s Special Committee on Reporting of Child Abuse and Child Neglect, which is chaired by Senator Alberta Darling (pictured).

NCCD was invited to present on October 11 before the Wisconsin Legislative Council’s Special Committee on Reporting of Child Abuse and Child Neglect, which is chaired by Senator Alberta Darling (pictured). Kathy Park presented on the Mandatory Reporter Guide (MRG), which is a structured protocol developed by NCCD’s Children’s Research Center in partnership with the Department of Communities in New South Wales, Australia, to improve mandatory reporting of child abuse and neglect. The MRG is based on a paradigm of child protection as a continuum of community responses. This paradigm recognizes that most families with needs can be best served outside the statutory child welfare system, reserving statutory child welfare intervention for the most serious situations. Essentially, the MRG provides mandatory reporters with consistent criteria for determining whether concerns about a child’s safety or well-being meet the threshold for reporting to child protection.

In New South Wales, child protection reports doubled from about 150,000 per year to 300,000 per year between 2001 and 2008. CRC’s collaboration with the NSW Department of Communities and stakeholders from the mandatory reporting community resulted in implementation of the MRG in 2009. Within one year following the implementation of the MRG, reports to child protection declined by 32%.

For more information on the MRG, contact Raelene Freitag, Director of NCCD’s Children’s Research Center.