Copyright 1996 Information Access Company, a Thomson 
Corporation Company

                                      ASAP


                    Copyright 1996 Transaction Publishers   
                                    Society

                                   May, 1996

SECTION: Vol. 33 ; No. 4 ; Pg. 40; ISSN: 0147-2011  

LENGTH: 5552 words  

HEADLINE: Child abuse reporting.  

BYLINE: Besharov, Douglas J. ; Laumann, Lisa A.  

BODY: 

    For 30 years, advocates, program administrators, and 
politicians have joined to encourage even more reports of 
suspected child abuse and neglect. Their efforts have been 
spectacularly successful, with about three million cases of 
suspected child abuse having been reported in 1993. Large numbers 
of endangered children still go unreported, but an equally 
serious problem has developed: Upon investigation, as many as 65 
percent of the reports now being made are determined to be 
"unsubstantiated," raising serious civil liberties concerns and 
placing a heavy burden on already overwhelmed investigative 
staffs.  

    These two problems--nonreporting and inappropriate 
reporting--are linked and must be addressed together before 
further progress can be made in combating child abuse and 
neglect. To lessen both problems, there must be a shift in 
priorities--away from simply seeking more reports and toward 
encouraging better reports.  

    Reporting Laws  

    Since the early 1960s, all states have passed laws that 
require designated professionals to report specified types of 
child maltreatment. Over the years, both the range of designated 
professionals and the scope of reportable conditions have been 
steadily expanded.  

      Initially, mandatory reporting laws applied only to 
physicians, who were required to report only "serious physical 
injuries" and "nonaccidental injuries." In the ensuing years, 
however, increased public and professional attention, sparked in 
part by the number of abused children revealed by these initial 
reporting laws, led many states to expand their reporting 
requirements. Now almost all states have laws that require the 
reporting of all forms of suspected child maltreatment, including 
physical abuse, physical neglect, emotional maltreatment, and, of 
course, sexual abuse and exploitation.  

    Under threat of civil and criminal penalties, these laws 
require most professionals who serve children to report suspected 
child abuse and neglect. About twenty states require all citizens 
to report, but in every state, any citizen is permitted to 
report.  

    These reporting laws, associated public awareness campaigns, 
and professional education programs have been strikingly 
successful. In 1993, there were about three million reports of 
children suspected of being abused or neglected. This is a 
twenty-fold increase since 1963, when about 150,000 cases were 
reported to the authorities. (As we will see, however, this 
figure is bloated by reports that later turn out to be 
unfounded.)  

    Many people ask whether this vast increase in reporting 
signals a rise in the incidence of child maltreatment. Recent 
increases in social problems such as out-of-wedlock births, 
inner-city poverty, and drug abuse have probably raised the 
underlying rates of child maltreatment, at least somewhat. 
Unfortunately, so many maltreated children previously went 
unreported that earlier reporting statistics do not provide a 
reliable baseline against which to make comparisons. One thing is 
clear, however: The great bulk of reports now received by child 
protective agencies would not be made but for the passage of 
mandatory reporting laws and the media campaigns that accompanied 
them.  

    This increase in reporting was accompanied by a substantial 
expansion of prevention and treatment programs. Every community, 
for example, is now served by specialized child protective 
agencies that receive and investigate reports. Federal and state 
expenditures for child protective programs and associated foster 
care services now exceed $6 billion a year. (Federal expenditures 
for foster care, child welfare, and related services make up less 
than 50 percent of total state and federal expenditures for these 
services; in 1992, they amounted to a total of $2,773.7 million. 
In addition, states may use a portion of the $2.8 billion federal 
Social Services Block Grant for such services, though detailed 
data on these expenditures are not available. Beginning in 1994, 
additional federal appropriations funded family preservation and 
support services.)  

    As a result, many thousands of children have been saved from 
serious injury and even death. The best estimate is that over the 
past twenty years, child abuse and neglect deaths have fallen 
from over 3,000 a year--and perhaps as many as 5,000--to about 
1,100 a year. In New York State, for example, within five years 
of the passage of a comprehensive reporting law, which also 
created specialized investigative staffs, there was a 50 percent 
reduction in child fatalities, from about two hundred a year to 
less than one hundred. (This is not meant to minimize the 
remaining problem. Even at this level, maltreatment is the sixth 
largest cause of death for children under fourteen.)  

    Unreported Cases  

    Most experts agree that reports have increased over the past 
thirty years because professionals and laypersons have become 
more likely to report apparently abusive and neglectful 
situations. But the question remains: How many more cases still 
go unreported?  

    Two studies performed for the National Center on Child Abuse 
and Neglect by Westat, Inc., provide a partial answer. In 1980 
and then again in 1986, Westat conducted national studies of the 
incidence of child abuse and neglect. (A third Westat incidence 
study is now underway.) Each study used essentially the same 
methodology: In a stratified sample of counties, a broadly 
representative sample of professionals who serve children was 
asked whether, during the study period, the children they had 
seen in their professional capacities appeared to have been 
abused or neglected. (Actually, the professionals were not asked 
the ultimate question of whether the children appeared to be 
"abused" or "neglected." Instead, they were asked to identify 
children with certain, specified harms or conditions, which were 
then decoded into a count of various types of child abuse and 
neglect.)  

    Because the information these selected professionals provided 
could be matched against pending cases in the local child 
protective agency, Westat was able to estimate rates of 
nonreporting among the surveyed professionals. It could not, of 
course, estimate the level of unintentional nonreporting, since 
there is no way to know of the situations in which professionals 
did not recognize signs of possible maltreatment. There is also 
no way to know how many children the professionals recognized as 
being maltreated but chose not to report to the study. Obviously, 
since the study methodology involved asking professionals about 
children they had seen in their professional capacities, it also 
did not allow Westat to estimate the number of children seen by 
nonprofessionals, let alone their nonreporting rate.  

    Westat found that professionals failed to report many of the 
children they saw who had observable signs of child abuse and 
neglect. Specifically, it found that in 1986, 56 percent of 
apparently abused or neglected children, or about 500,000 
children, were not reported to the authorities. This figure, 
however, seems more alarming than it is: Basically, the more 
serious the case, the more likely the report. For example, the 
surveyed professionals reported over 85 percent of the fatal or 
serious physical abuse cases they saw, 72 percent of the sexual 
abuse cases, and 60 percent of the moderate physical abuse cases. 
In contrast, they only reported 15 percent of the educational 
neglect cases they saw, 24 percent of the emotional neglect 
cases, and 25 percent of the moderate physical neglect cases.  

    Nevertheless, there is no reason for complacency. Translating 
these raw percentages into actual cases means that in 1986, about 
2,000 children with observable physical injuries severe enough to 
require hospitalization were not reported and that more than 
100,000 children with moderate physical injuries went unreported, 
as did more than 30,000 apparently sexually abused children. And 
these are the rates of nonreporting among relatively well-trained 
professionals. One assumes that nonreporting is higher among 
less-well-trained professionals and higher still among 
laypersons.  

    Obtaining and maintaining a high level of reporting requires 
a continuation of the public education and professional training 
begun thirty years ago. But, now, such efforts must also address 
a problem as serious as nonreporting: inappropriate reporting.  

    At the same time that many seriously abused children go 
unreported, an equally serious problem further undercuts efforts 
to prevent child maltreatment: The nation's child protective 
agencies are being inundated by inappropriate reports. Although 
rules, procedures, and even terminology vary--some states use the 
phrase "unfounded," others "unsubstantiated" or "not 
indicated"--an "unfounded" report, in essence, is one that is 
dismissed after an investigation finds insufficient evidence upon 
which to proceed.  

    Unsubstantiated Reports  

    Nationwide, between 60 and 65 percent of all reports are 
closed after an initial investigation determines that they are 
"unfounded" or "unsubstantiated." This is in sharp contrast to 
1974, when only about 45 percent of all reports were unfounded.  

    A few advocates, in a misguided effort to shield child 
protective programs from criticism, have sought to quarrel with 
estimates that I and others have made that the national unfounded 
rate is between 60 and 65 percent. They have grasped at various 
inconsistencies in the data collected by different organizations 
to claim either that the problem is not so bad or that it has 
always been this bad.  

    To help settle this dispute, the American Public Welfare 
Association (APWA) conducted a special survey of child welfare 
agencies in 1989. The APWA researchers found that between fiscal 
year 1986 and fiscal year 1988, the weighted average for the 
substantiation rates in thirty-one states declined 6.7 
percent--from 41.8 percent in fiscal year 1986 to 39 percent in 
fiscal year 1988.  

    Most recently, the existence of this high unfounded rate was 
reconfirmed by the annual Fifty State Survey of the National 
Committee to Prevent Child Abuse (NCPCA), which found that in 
1993 only about 34 percent of the reports received by child 
protective agencies were substantiated.  

    The experience of New York City indicates what these 
statistics mean in practice. Between 1989 and 1993, as the number 
of reports received by the city's child welfare agency increased 
by over 30 percent (from 40,217 to 52,472), the percentage of 
substantiated reports fell by about 47 percent (from 45 percent 
to 24 percent). In fact, the number of substantiated cases--a 
number of families were reported more than once--actually fell by 
about 41 percent, from 14,026 to 8,326. Thus, 12,255 additional 
families were investigated, while 5,700 fewer families received 
child protective help.  

    The determination that a report is unfounded can only be made 
after an unavoidably traumatic investigation that is inherently a 
breach of parental and family privacy. To determine whether a 
particular child is in danger, caseworkers must inquire into the 
most intimate personal and family matters. Often it is necessary 
to question friends, relatives, and neighbors, as well as school 
teachers, day-care personnel, doctors, clergy, and others who 
know the family.  

    Laws against child abuse are an implicit recognition that 
family privacy must give way to the need to protect helpless 
children. But in seeking to protect children, it is all too easy 
to ignore the legitimate rights of parents. Each year, about 
700,000 families are put through investigations of unfounded 
reports. This is a massive and unjustified violation of parental 
rights.  

    Few unfounded reports are made maliciously. Studies of sexual 
abuse reports, for example, suggest that, at most, from 4 to 10 
percent of these reports are knowingly false. Many involve 
situations in which the person reporting, in a well-intentioned 
effort to protect a child, overreacts to a vague and often 
misleading possibility that the child may be maltreated. Others 
involve situations of poor child care that, though of legitimate 
concern, simply do not amount to child abuse or neglect. In fact, 
a substantial proportion of unfounded cases are referred to other 
agencies for them to provide needed services for the family.  

    Moreover, an unfounded report does not necessarily mean that 
the child was not actually abused or neglected. Evidence of child 
maltreatment is hard to obtain and might not be uncovered when 
agencies lack the time and resources to complete a thorough 
investigation or when inaccurate information is given to the 
investigator. Other cases are labeled unfounded when no services 
are available to help the family. Some cases must be closed 
because the child or family cannot be located.  

    A certain proportion of unfounded reports, therefore, is an 
inherent--and legitimate--aspect of reporting suspected child 
maltreatment and is necessary to ensure adequate child 
protection. Hundreds of thousands of strangers report their 
suspicions; they cannot all be right. But unfounded rates of the 
current magnitude go beyond anything reasonably needed. Worse, 
they endanger children who are really abused.  

    The current flood of unfounded reports is overwhelming the 
limited resources of child protective agencies. For fear of 
missing even one abused child, workers perform extensive 
investigations of vague and apparently unsupported reports. Even 
when a home visit based on an anonymous report turns up no 
evidence of maltreatment, they usually interview neighbors, 
school teachers, and day-care personnel to make sure that the 
child is not abused. And even repeated anonymous and unfounded 
reports do not prevent a further investigation. But all this 
takes time.  

    As a result, children in real danger are getting lost in the 
press of inappropriate cases. Forced to allocate a substantial 
portion of their limited resources to unfounded reports, child 
protective agencies are less able to respond promptly and 
effectively when children are in serious danger. Some reports are 
left uninvestigated for a week and even two weeks after they are 
received. Investigations often miss key facts, as workers rush to 
clear cases, and dangerous home situations receive inadequate 
supervision, as workers must ignore pending cases as they 
investigate the new reports that arrive daily on their desks. 
Decision making also suffers. With so many cases of 
unsubstantiated or unproven risk to children, caseworkers are 
desensitized to the obvious warning signals of immediate and 
serious danger.  

    These nationwide conditions help explain why from 25 to 50 
percent of child abuse deaths involve children previously known 
to the authorities. In 1993, the NCPCA reported that of the 1,149 
child maltreatment deaths, 42 percent had already been reported 
to the authorities. Tens of thousands of other children suffer 
serious injuries short of death while under child protective 
agency supervision.  

    In a 1992 New York City case, for example, five-month-old 
Jeffrey Harden died from burns caused by scalding water and three 
broken ribs while under the supervision of New York City's Child 
Welfare Administration. Jeffrey Harden's family had been known to 
the administration for more than a year and half. Over this 
period, the case had been handled by four separate caseworkers, 
each conducting only partial investigations before resigning or 
being reassigned to new cases. It is unclear whether Jeffrey's 
death was caused by his mother or her boyfriend, but because of 
insufficient time and overburdened caseloads, all four workers 
failed to pay attention to a whole host of obvious warning 
signals: Jeffrey's mother had broken her parole for an earlier 
conviction of child sexual abuse, she had a past record of 
beating Jeffrey's older sister, and she had a history of crack 
addiction and past involvement with violent boyfriends.  

    Here is how two of the Hardens' caseworkers explained what 
happened: Their first caseworker could not find Ms. Harden at the 
address she had listed in her files. She commented, "It was an 
easy case. We couldn't find the mother so we closed it." Their 
second caseworker stated that he was unable to spend a sufficient 
amount of time investigating the case, let alone make the minimum 
monthly visits because he was tied down with an overabundance of 
cases and paperwork. He stated, "It's impossible to visit these 
people within a month. They're all over New York City." Just 
before Jeffrey's death every worker who had been on the case had 
left the department. Ironically, by weakening the system's 
ability to respond, unfounded reports actually discourage 
appropriate ones. The sad fact is that many responsible 
individuals are not reporting endangered children because they 
feel that the system's response will be so weak that reporting 
will do no good or may even make things worse. In 1984, a study 
of the impediments to reporting conducted by Jose Alfaro, 
coordinator of the New York City Mayor's Task Force on Child 
Abuse and Neglect, concluded that "professionals who emphasize 
their professional judgment, have experienced problems in dealing 
with the child protective agency, and are more likely to doubt 
the efficacy of protective service intervention, are more likely 
not to report in some situations, especially when they believe 
they can do a better job helping the family."  

    Shifting Priorities  

    The emotionally charged desire to "do something" about child 
abuse, fanned by repeated and often sensational media coverage, 
has led to an understandable but counterproductive overreaction 
on the part of the professionals and citizens who report 
suspected child abuse. For thirty years, advocates, program 
administrators, and politicians have all pushed for more 
reporting of suspected child abuse and neglect.  

    Potential reporters are frequently told to "take no chances" 
and to report any child for whom they have the slightest concern. 
There is a recent tendency to tell people to report children 
whose behavior suggests that they may have been abused--even in 
the absence of any other evidence of maltreatment. These 
"behavioral indicators" include, for example, children who are 
unusually withdrawn or shy as well as children who are unusually 
friendly to strangers. However, only a small minority of children 
who exhibit such behaviors have actually been maltreated.  

    Thirty years ago, even fifteen years ago, when many 
professionals were construing their reporting obligations 
narrowly to avoid taking action to protect endangered children, 
this approach may have been needed. Now, though, all it does is 
ensure that child abuse hotlines will be flooded with 
inappropriate and unfounded reports.  

    Few people fail to report because they do not care about an 
endangered child. Instead, they may be unaware of the danger the 
child faces or of the protective procedures that are available. A 
study of nonreporting among teachers, for example, blamed their 
"lack of knowledge for detecting symptoms of child abuse and 
neglect." Likewise, few inappropriate or unfounded reports are 
deliberately false statements. Most involve an honest desire to 
protect children coupled with confusion about what conditions are 
reportable.  

    Confusion about reporting is largely caused by the vagueness 
of reporting laws and aggravated by the failure of child 
protective agencies to provide realistic guidance about deciding 
to report. In 1987, a national group of thirty-eight child 
protection professionals from nineteen states met for three days 
at Airlie House, Virginia, under the auspices of the American Bar 
Association's National Legal Resource Center for Child Advocacy 
and Protection in association with the American Public Welfare 
Association and the American Enterprise Institute. The "Airlie 
House group," as it has come to be called, developed policy 
guidelines for reporting and investigative decision making. (I 
was the rapporteur for the effort.) One of the group's major 
conclusions was that "better public and professional materials 
are needed to obtain more appropriate reporting." The group 
specifically recommended that "educational materials and programs 
should: (1) clarify the legal definitions of child abuse and 
neglect, (2) give general descriptions of reportable situations 
(including specific examples), and (3) explain what to expect 
when a report is made. Brochures and other materials for 
laypersons, including public service announcements, should give 
specific information about what to report--and what not to 
report."  

    Based on these recommendations, a relatively clear agenda for 
reform emerges; we must  

    1. clarify child abuse reporting laws,  

    2. provide continuing public education and professional 
training,  

    3. screen reports,  

    4. modify liability laws,  

    5. give feedback to persons who report, and  

    6. adopt an agency policy.  

    Clarify child abuse reporting laws. Existing laws are often 
vague and overbroad. They should be rewritten to provide real 
guidance about what conditions should and should not be reported. 
This can be accomplished without radically departing from present 
laws or practices. The key is to describe reportable conditions 
in terms of specific parental behaviors or conditions that are 
tied to severe and demonstrable harms (or potential harms) to 
children.  

    It would help, for example, to make a distinction between 
direct evidence, meaning firsthand accounts or observations of 
seriously harmful parental behavior, and circumstantial evidence, 
meaning concrete facts, such as the child's physical condition, 
that suggest that the child has been abused or neglected. 
Behavioral indicators, however, should not by themselves be 
considered a sufficient basis for a report.  

    Direct evidence includes eyewitness observations of a 
parent's abusive or neglectful behavior; the child's description 
of being abused or neglected, unless there is a specific reason 
for disbelief; the parent's own description of abusive or 
neglectful behavior, unless it is long past; accounts of child 
maltreatment from spouses or other family members; films, 
photographs, or other visual material depicting sexually explicit 
activity by a minor; newborns denied nutrition, life-sustaining 
care, or other medically indicated treatment; children in 
physically dangerous situations; young children left alone; 
apparently abandoned children; demonstrated parental disabilities 
(for example, mental illness or retardation or alcohol or drug 
abuse) severe enough to make child abuse or child neglect likely; 
and demonstrated parental inability to care for a newborn baby.  

    Circumstantial evidence includes "suspicious" injuries 
suggesting physical abuse; physical injuries or medical findings 
suggesting sexual abuse; for young children, signs of sexual 
activity; signs of severe physical deprivation on the child's 
body suggesting general child neglect; severe dirt and disorder 
in the home suggesting general child neglect; apparently 
untreated physical injuries, illnesses, or impairments suggesting 
medical neglect; "accidental" injuries suggesting gross 
inattention to the child's need for safety; apparent parental 
indifference to a child's severe psychological or developmental 
problems; apparent parental condonation of or indifference to a 
child's misbehavior suggesting improper ethical guidance; chronic 
and unexplained absences from school suggesting parental 
responsibility for the nonattendance; and newborns showing signs 
of fetal exposure to drugs or alcohol.  

    Provide continuing public education and professional 
training. Few people fail to report because they want children to 
suffer abuse and neglect. Likewise, few people make deliberately 
false reports. Most involve an honest desire to protect children 
coupled with confusion about what conditions are reportable. 
Thus, educational efforts should emphasize the conditions that do 
not justify a report, as well as those that do.  

    Screen reports. No matter how well professionals are trained 
and no matter how extensive public education efforts are, there 
will always be a tendency for persons to report cases that should 
not be investigated. Until recently, most states did not have 
formal policies and procedures for determining whether to accept 
a call for investigation. Such policies should be adopted by all 
states and they should provide explicit guidance about the kinds 
of cases that should not be assigned for investigation.  

    Reports should be rejected when the allegations fall outside 
the agency's definitions of "child abuse" and "child neglect" as 
established by state law. Often, the family has a coping problem 
for which they would be more appropriately referred to another 
social service agency. (Prime examples include children beyond 
the specified age, alleged perpetrators falling outside the legal 
definition, and family problems not amounting to child 
maltreatment.) Reports should also be rejected when the caller 
can give no credible reason for suspecting that the child has 
been abused or neglected. (Although actual proof of the 
maltreatment is not required, some evidence is.) Reports whose 
unfounded or malicious nature is established by specific 
evidence, of course, should also be rejected. (Anonymous reports, 
reports from estranged spouses, and even previous unfounded 
reports from the same source should not be automatically 
rejected, but they need to be carefully evaluated.) And, finally, 
reports in which insufficient information is given to identify or 
locate the child should likewise be screened (although the 
information may be kept for later use if a subsequent report 
about the same child is made).  

    In questionable circumstances, the agency should recontact 
the caller before deciding to reject a report. When appropriate, 
rejected reports should be referred to other agencies that can 
provide services needed by the family.  

    Modify liability laws. Current laws provide immunity for 
anyone who makes a report in good faith but give no protection to 
those who, in a good-faith exercise of professional judgment, 
decide that a child has not been abused or neglected and hence 
should not be reported. This combination of immunities and  
penalties encourages the overreporting of questionable 
situations.  

    Give feedback to persons who report. If persons who report 
are not told what happened, they may conclude that the agency's 
response was ineffective or even harmful to the child, and the 
next time they suspect that a child is maltreated, they may 
decide not to report. In addition, finding out whether their 
suspicions were valid also refines their diagnostic skills and 
thus improves the quality and accuracy of their future reports. 
Reporters also need such information to interpret subsequent 
events and to monitor the child's conditions.  

    Adopt an agency policy. Appropriate reporting of suspected 
child maltreatment requires a sophisticated knowledge of many 
legal, administrative, and diagnostic matters. To help ensure 
that their staffs respond properly, an increasing number of 
public and private agencies are adopting formal agency policies 
about reporting. Some state laws mandate them. The primary 
purpose of these policies, or agency protocols, is to inform 
staff members of their obligation to report and of the procedures 
to be followed. Such formal policies serve another important 
function: They are an implicit commitment by agency 
administrators to support frontline staff members who decide to 
report. Moreover, the very process of drafting a written document 
can clarify previously ambiguous or ill-conceived agency 
policies.  

    Prospects for Change  

    The problem of inappropriate reporting was entirely 
foreseeable. In fact, as early as 1977, sociologist Saad Naji 
predicted that unfounded reports would increase as total 
reporting rose. In describing the effect of contemporary 
increases in the number of reports on confirmation rates, he 
wrote: "As the rates of reporting increased, the rates of 
confirmed maltreatment increased rapidly up to a certain point, 
after which the rate of increase tended to lessen 
considerably.... The relations between the rates of reporting and 
the estimated probability that maltreatment cases will be 
confirmed, however, exhibited the reverse pattern: the 
probability of confirming reports of suspected cases dropped 
sharply as the rates of reporting increased." As mentioned above, 
some level of inappropriate reporting is the inescapable result 
of a system that relies on reports from hundreds of thousands of 
friends, neighbors, and family members--as well as often poorly 
trained professionals.  

    What was thoroughly unpredictable was the great resistance to 
doing something about the problem. As described below, some 
efforts to reform the system have been made, but many advocates 
still deny that there is a problem (or at least try to minimize 
its importance).  

    Why has it proven so difficult to mount a concerted effort to 
reduce the number of inappropriate or unfounded reports? First 
and foremost has been the well-intentioned fear that any attempt 
to limit inappropriate reporting would inevitably reduce the 
number of real cases reported. The more careful people are about 
reporting and the more aggressive agencies are about screening, 
the more likely it is that a child in serious danger will escape 
notice. A formal legal opinion from Iowa's attorney general 
explained the rationale for this broader approach to reporting: 
"We will never know if a report of child abuse is valid or not 
until the appropriate investigation is made."  

    But this practical wisdom has been taken to unreasonable 
extremes. Too many advocates have ignored the severe burden that 
so many inappropriate cases place on the system's resources. They 
seem unwilling to make--or even to recognize--the trade-off 
between gaining large numbers of additional reports and the 
system's ability to respond.  

    Second, there has been a certain expediency to well-
publicized increases in reports. Ever rising numbers of reports 
have helped mobilize public and professional support for expanded 
funding. News stories about brutal cases of child abuse make our 
hearts go out to its innocent victims. We all want to do 
something to alleviate their pain and to prevent other children 
from suffering a similar fate. Thus, advocates and program 
administrators have had an incentive to remain quiet about the 
number of cases closed after an initial investigation.  

    Third, although many inappropriate reports do not amount to 
"child abuse" or "child neglect," they nevertheless involve 
families who need social service assistance. Thus, accepting and 
investigating unfounded reports is seen as a means of providing 
needed services to families in trouble. In effect, the child 
protective system is being used to fill gaps in what should be 
community-wide child welfare systems. Even if this strategy was 
more likely to succeed, it should be shunned. The child 
protective process is coercive--and often traumatic--and should 
be limited to situations in which the child is so endangered that 
social services must be forced upon unwilling parents.  

    Fourth, for many years, the child protective system was able 
to absorb the increase in reports by hiring more staff. Although 
money was never plentiful, the 1970s and much of the 1980s saw 
expansion in many states. But, of course, by the end of the 
1980s, state budgets became progressively tighter--and programs 
were being cut rather than expanded.  

    Change is apparent, however. Most states, as well as most 
research studies, are now careful to distinguish between total 
reports and substantiated ones. And as mentioned above, the 1987 
recommendations of the Airlie House group gave a legitimacy to 
those concerned about inappropriate reporting and provided the 
outlines for reform. In scattered communities across the nation, 
various elements of the recommendations listed above (as well as 
other ideas) are being adopted.  

    And there is reason to expect still more change. Recently, 
the flood of unfounded reports has involved more middle-class 
families than before. Unlike the poor, who have grown used to 
governmental intrusions, middle-class parents who feel that they 
have been wrongly accused and unnecessarily investigated fight 
back. Thousands have joined groups like Victims of Child Abuse 
Laws (VOCAL) to lobby for changes in state and federal laws as 
well as in agency procedures.  

    The continuing pressure of state budget cuts has added 
another group of players to the process. In many states, senior 
managers have, for the first time, focused their attention on the 
issue. They are eager, if not desperate, for any ideas that would 
enable them to do more with existing or pared down resources. If 
they could be convinced that a shift away from simply seeking 
more reports and toward encouraging better ones would save money 
without unreasonably endangering children, they would push for 
the change.  

    Hence, it seems that the coming years will see an 
acceleration of this shift. And, notwithstanding the opposition 
of advocates, I believe that reasonable efforts to reduce the 
number of unfounded reports would strengthen the overall child 
protective system as well as public support for it.