Confidential Reporting

View the model as adopted by the American Legislative Exchange Council.

“Weaponizing the system:” That’s what we call it when someone places an anonymous call to a child abuse hotline to gain some personal advantage. It may be a parent in a nasty divorce situation trying to gain custody or more parenting time by making the other parent look bad. It could be a relative who disagrees with a parent’s decision on homeschooling, or vaccination, or any number of other parenting choices we all make every day. It could be an angry neighbor looking to get back at someone they feel has wronged them in some way.

Just place your anonymous call to the hotline, and watch the family suffer an intrusive, yet meaningless, child welfare investigation.

This happens far too often today, and it not only damages families, but it also steals vital resources away from the effort to find children who really are in need of intervention.

Yet, anonymous calls are allowed in more than 40 of the 50 states.

So we’ve proposed a short model that provides a simple fix: stop anonymous reporting. Reporters’ identities can still be kept from the alleged abuser, to keep the caller safe from a truly violent individual. But the system itself needs to know who’s making the call. This will greatly cut down on false calls and will also allow the system to call a reporter back if they need new or corrected information.

This model, drafted by a bipartisan coalition of lawyers and family defenders and adopted by ALEC in 2021, is ready to be modified to address this issue in your state. It will save innocent families from trauma and free up resources to find children truly in need more quickly. It’s a win for everyone—except those weaponizing the system for their personal gain.

Read our full explanation here: https://parentalrightsfoundation.org/why-we-need-confidential-reporting-reform/

• The Problem with Anonymous Reporting with Dale Cecka
• Hope for 2021

• Why We Need Confidential Reporting Reform
• Abolish Anonymous Reporting to Child Abuse Hotlines (Dale Cecka, Catholic University Law Review)