Important Guidance Regarding Mandatory Reporting

Dear District Administrators,

I'm providing you with an update on the mandatory reporting training that was released on August 2, in collaboration with the Department of Children and Families (DCF) and other stakeholders.

TOPLINE

This information matches what was sent out today from the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators and the Wisconsin School Attorneys Association.

This new training has generated important conversations and feedback from stakeholders. In response, we are revamping the updated training content. We are committed to working quickly on the training content while ensuring stakeholders have time for review and input. We hope to have the revamped training available early in 2024. In the meantime, we have now posted the prior version of the training alongside the updated training on the Child Abuse and Neglect Training webpage to provide local school leaders with choice for training new staff in the interim. You do not need to make staff retrain and the department will produce a memo detailing the changes made to the training for those who took the training previously.

BACKGROUND

The revamped training, which is designed to equip school staff with current research and guidance in reducing harm and improving the quality of reports, will be streamlined to reduce the overall completion time, provide more clarity on the responsibility to report when there is reasonable cause and the right and wrong times to ask follow-up questions of students and caregivers, and how to respond to resource needs in partnership with families.

Guidance on effective practices in mandated reporting is shifting nationally. Research and lived experience highlight the harm caused to children, families, and our systems due to the overreporting of concerns when no reasonable cause to suspect child maltreatment is present. Child protective services (CPS) involvement is not benign, and unwarranted reports can have traumatic impacts on children and families. In Wisconsin and nationally, this overreporting disproportionately impacts Black and Indigenous families, furthering their disproportionate involvement in all aspects of the child welfare system. We all have an obligation to promote effective systems that reduce harm and improve the system’s ability to serve the families who need it most.

Thank you for your attention to this important training, and to all of you who have provided valuable feedback.

If you have any questions about the specifics of the training, please contact Julie Incitti, Student Services, Prevention and Wellness School Social Work Consultant at julie.incitti@dpi.wi.gov.

Sincerely,