Child welfare in Massachusetts: NCCPR releases in-depth analysis of Mass. Mandated Reporter Commission report

Job One now falls to the Massachusetts Legislature.

Regular readers of this Blog know that we’ve been following closely the work of a commission named by the Massachusetts Legislature to study the state’s mandatory child abuse reporting law.  The Commission released its final report on June 30. 

Today we release our in-depth analysis of that report.  Our analysis, called Failing Job One, is available here. The analysis summarizes our overview of the failure of mandatory reporting and our overview of how the Commission was manipulated, something discussed in detail in our previous posts.  We then go on to examine the report page-by-page. 

Though the analysis is specific to the deliberations of a Massachusetts commission, much of it is relevant in every state, since every state has a mandated reporter law with failings similar to, or, in some cases, even worse than the one in Massachusetts. 

The title of the report is derived from something said by a member of the Commission itself, Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan.  Like many Commission members, Ryan was stunned when, after more than a year, the Commission held public hearings and almost every witness opposed the Commission’s draft recommendations.   

That came as a surprise because the Commission chair, the state’s “Child Advocate,” Maria Mossaides, and her allies at the state Department of Children and Families had, in effect, kept the commission in a bubble, staging carefully orchestrated presentations that told the Commission only what Mossaides and DCF wanted them to hear. 

So at the first Commission meeting after hearing from the public Ryan said: 

I spent a lot of years thinking that [mandated reporting] gets us to a better place; I’m disheartened to hear maybe it really doesn’t – and even if it does, perception is reality.  A lot of well-credentialed, well-meaning experts think this doesn’t work. … I was taken aback to hear so much of that conversation. [Finding out if they’re right] should be Job One. 

The Commission wasn’t able to do Job One. Mossaides, and her allies in DCF prevented it.  

Therefore, as we note in the conclusion of our analysis, doing Job One now is the responsibility of the Massachusetts Legislature: 

Unfortunately, most legislators right now are where the dissenting commissioners were before the public hearing – finding it incomprehensible that expanding mandatory reporting is even controversial, much less that it should be curbed or abolished.  In addition to skewing the final report, Mossaides has bragged about her regular meetings with key lawmakers – so she’s had months and months to spin all this without the rest of us even knowing what she’s been saying. 

Maria Mossaides and her allies prevented the Commission from doing “Job One” – taking an in-depth, open-minded look into whether all those scholars, advocates and people with lived experience, and all those researchers who have questioned mandatory reporting for decades, are right.  The Legislature needs to do that job. 

Oops, they’re doing it again 

There’s one more reason why a close examination of the behavior and tactics of Mossaides and DCF is useful: They’re at it again.  Mossaides and DCF Commissioner Linda Spears co-chair a “Data Work Group” studying the gathering and presentation of data about Massachusetts child welfare. 

They have been laboring to whitewash – in every sense of the term – the facts about racial bias in Massachusetts child welfare.  To the extent that there is any bias at all, they argue, it’s almost all because of what happens at the “front door” – that is, because of the people who file reports alleging child abuse – you know, people like mandated reporters.  

Yes, that’s right. After spending nearly two years trying to open the “front door” as wide as possible, Mossaides and DCF now are claiming that any racial bias is due to what happens at the front door – and, they say, they have no control over that! 

READ OUR FULL ANALYSIS HERE.

Child welfare in Massachusetts: A commission report suffers from “The Mossaides Touch.”

The Massachusetts Mandated Reporter Commission was chaired by, staffed by, and repeatedly mislead by the state’s “Child Advocate,” Maria Mossaides.  Despite the best efforts of dissenting commissioners, the Commission’s final report remains largely an exercise in misdirection.  

Here, we single out an example worthy of Orwell: She turned an argument on behalf of doing more to protect the children of battered mothers from being thrown needlessly into foster care into an argument for doing nothing.

Over the past several months, I’ve written repeatedly about the Massachusetts Mandated Reporter Commission.  The Commission was chaired, and staffed, by the office of the Massachusetts “Child Advocate,” Maria Mossaides.  Mossaides has long been among the state’s foremost proponents of expanding the child welfare surveillance state and using what amounts to a “take the child and run” approach to child welfare.

Her strongest allies on the Commission were representatives from the agency that takes those children, the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families and its parent agency, the Executive Office of Health and Human Services.  They seem to believe that a state that already takes away children at a rate 60% above the national average still isn’t taking enough.

For more than a year, Mossaides made sure the Commission heard only those who shared her general outlook.  But then, after already drafting a series of proposed recommendations, the Commission finally held a public hearing.  At that hearing, commissioners finally heard the information Mossaides had kept from them for so long.  Several commission members said they were “shocked” “surprised’ and “taken aback.”

As a result, in its final report, the commission made no actual recommendations to the Massachusetts Legislature.  Dissenting commissioners demanded changes in the way the final report presented the issues.  They got a few of those changes, particularly in a preamble to the report.  But it was not enough to stop Mossaides and her allies from skewing the narrative in the 93-page final report to support the recommendations the commission would not actually make – and oppose one of the very few that might make things a little better.

NCCPR is preparing a detailed, page-by-page analysis of the document. But one application of what might be called “The Mossaides Touch” is so disturbing – and do cruel – that I’m highlighting it now.  That one statement effectively reverses the true meaning of public testimony, in order to advance the goals of Mossaides and her allies.  It concerns one of the biggest problems with mandatory child abuse reporting laws: The harm done to the children of battered mothers.

The issue in context

Let me start by recapping part of a previous post:

Of all the tragedies inflicted on children by the nation’s family policing agencies, few are worse than tearing a child away from a parent (usually a mother) whose only “crime” is to herself be a survivor of domestic violence.  

All of the trauma for a child is compounded if the removal was for this reason.  One expert called it “tantamount to pouring salt into an open wound.”  He testified in a lawsuit that led to making the practice illegal in New York State. (NCCPR’s Vice President was co-counsel for plaintiffs.)  But, as I’ve often written before, in much of the country, family police agency policy on this issue boils down to “please pass the salt.”  That is certainly true in Massachusetts.  And the state family policing agency is fighting tooth and nail to keep things just the way they are. 

As with so much that’s wrong in child welfare, the harm begins with mandatory reporting.  A battered woman works up the courage to break free from her abuser, often for the sake of the children.  But almost anywhere she turns for help, the helper is a “mandated reporter.”   Whether that reporter thinks it’s a good idea or is just afraid to do otherwise, the reporter may well call the family police.  If you want to know what happens next,  please take two minutes – just two minutes – to listen to this excerpt from the testimony of Western Massachusetts Attorney Michelle Lucier before a commission studying mandatory reporting in that state:

NCCPR · Excerpt from Testimony of Attorney Michelle Lucier before Mass. Mandated Reporter Commission

 Then, for additional context, please read the testimony from Jane Doe, Inc, the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence.  That will give a full understanding of how widespread the problem is – and how it places both battered women and their children in danger by deterring them from reaching out for help.  National research confirms it. 

Turning testimony on its head

One of only three draft recommendations from the commission that actually would make things slightly better concerns this issue.  An earlier Commission document put it this way:

[P]ersons who provide direct confidential services to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, or human trafficking should be excluded from mandated reporting responsibility. The reasoning behind the proposed exclusion is to reduce the barriers, or perceived barriers, in the way of persons who may be seeking immediate physical safety. Persons who seek physical safety are likely to be seeking to improve the safety situation for their children. 

Jane Doe, Inc. and others who testified said this did not go nearly far enough – because battered women are likely to come into contact with so many other mandated reporters. 

As Jane Doe’s written testimony explains:

We appreciate the consideration of excluding sexual and domestic violence advocates from mandatory reporting requirements and recognize that this exclusion was considered to address the need to maintain relationships between these providers and survivors in their communities. However, these exemptions will not suffice.

Jane Doe did not say this was a reason to do nothing, rather the group said it was a reason to do far more.

During Commission deliberations, Mossaides and her allies made clear they opposed any exemption for any mandated reporter when a battered mother comes to that mandated reporter seeking help.  So now, behold how the Mossaides Touch stands the argument from Jane Doe, Inc. and others on its head – weaponizing it against the children of domestic violence victims.  According to the final report:

The Commission members expressed some opposing viewpoints on this proposal and Commission discussion ended by discussing that it is unlikely that such an exclusion would have the desired effect as victims of intimate partner violence, sexual assault, or human trafficking come into contact with many other mandated reporters besides those providing direct confidential services.

It's not clear when the Commission as a whole reached any such conclusion (I never heard them say such a thing, though I missed one meeting following the hearings.)  

But more important, since the testimony at the hearing urged the commission to do more, not less, this sounds more like Mossaides misinterpreting the intent of public hearing speakers – in fact, turning that intent upside-down.

I heard no one at the hearing say that because giving battered mothers one or two people in whom they could confide without fear of triggering an automatic report to a child abuse hotline isn’t enough, it made more sense to continue to offer them none. 

Rather, what groups such as Jane Doe, Inc. said is that this meager proposed exemption does not make up for the additional harm to battered mothers and their children that would result from enacting so many of the Commission’s other draft recommendations that would vastly expand who must report and what must be reported.

Though the report’s handling of the domestic violence issue is the most blatant example, it is the approach seen throughout what is technically a report from the Commission, but really a report from Maria Mossaides and her allies. 

That’s not because they are ill-motivated.  It’s way worse than that.  They actually believe massive intrusion into families, especially poor families of color, protects children. (It doesn’t.) They see themselves as what their 19^th Century predecessors proudly called themselves: “child savers.” That breeds an ends-justify-the-means mentality that’s been aptly described as “health terrorism.” 

It would be far better if Mossaides and her allies were ill-motivated.  Then one could appeal to their consciences to get them to change. 

Instead, thousands of children – especially poor children, children of color, and children of battered mothers – are paying the price for Maria Mossaides’ good intentions.

In the end, it was the “Seinfeld” of Commissions: The Massachusetts Mandated Reporter Commission recommends -- NOTHING! (And that is a big step forward.)

This is NOT the Massachusetts Mandated Reporter Commission.
But they and the Commission do have something in common. (Photo by Alan Light.)

● At its final meeting Monday, the Commission refused to endorse recommendations to vastly widen the child welfare surveillance state – in a state that already tears apart families at a rate 60% above the national average.  

The refusal to accept all those bad recommendations is a testament to the growing power of family advocacy, a testament to the growing movement for racial justice and a testament to the power of facts in what is supposedly a post-fact world.  Most of all, it is a testament to the fact that even in our polarized society there are still people of goodwill who are willing to reconsider their assumptions. 

● As one Massachusetts critic of the Commission, Susan Elsen of the Massachusetts Law Reform Commission told CommonWealth Magazine: 

rather than focusing on expanding mandated reporting, the commission should be looking at how to address racial bias in the system; how to avoid undermining families’ trust in child welfare agencies and service providers; and how to get [the state Department of Children and Families] to provide more family stabilization services in the community. 

 “In terms of keeping kids safe, this assumption that the one way to keep kids safe is to expand the mandated reporting is not playing out in reality,” Elsen said. 

● The report remains secret until June 30 (this post is based on what commissioners said at their final public meeting and what could be seen when the report was screenshared). Now we have to start all over again with the Massachusetts Legislature.  But this just might be a turning point in how we protect children – not just in Massachusetts but nationwide. 

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.  It was supposed to be easy: High-profile child abuse cases in another state lead some Massachusetts legislators to spot (or have pointed out to them) a “loophole” in the state’s law that already requires huge numbers of people who work with children to report any suspicion of child abuse to the state Department of Children and Families.  They name a commission to study mandatory reporting with an eye toward closing the “loophole.”  

But they put in charge the state’s “Child Advocate” – Maria Mossaides, among the Massachusetts officials most fanatical about creating an ever-larger child welfare surveillance state.  

Unlike commissions directed by leaders with open minds, the process does not begin with public hearings.  Instead, Mossaides chooses what the commissioners will hear – and most of them were sympathetic state officials anyway, including two from DCF.  

Mossaides and her staff decide what the Commission will learn about and how they will learn it, with carefully staged presentations that leave no clue about the fact that mandatory reporting is, in fact, controversial and many one-time proponents have had second thoughts. 

By the time Mossaides is done, the Commission has produced draft recommendations that would have entrenched an extremist agenda. They would have vastly expanded who had to report, increased penalties for not reporting up to ten-fold, and made it even easier to confuse poverty with neglect. (Details are in a series of previous posts about the Commission.) 

But between the time the Commission started work and the time it issued the draft recommendations, the world changed.  Although the racial justice reckoning has been slow to reach child welfare, in Massachusetts it prompted opposition the Commission never expected.  It began with a letter from six lawyers pointing out case after case of false reports harming children.  

By the time Mossaides finally allowed public hearings, that opposition was fierce.  During a total of four hours of testimony, almost every witness excoriated the draft recommendations.  

It had an impact.  Here’s what one commissioner, Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan said before the hearings: 

“This statute hasn’t had a comprehensive look in a very long time.  It’s been amended a few times, adding things like clergy and certain other groups, but no one stepped back, put it all together and looked at all of it. That’s really where our focus has been. How do you make this work best to protect kids and at the same time be culturally competent?” 

Here's what she said at the first meeting after the hearings: 

I spent a lot of years thinking that [mandated reporting] gets us to a better place; I’m disheartened to hear maybe it really doesn’t - and even if it does, perception is reality.  A lot of well-credentialed, well-meaning experts think this doesn’t work. I don’t know how we’re going to get any legitimacy about finetuning the process if a significant number think the process doesn’t work anyway. … I was taken aback to hear so much of that conversation. 

Others used terms like “surprised” and “shocked.” 

Why didn’t they know? 

The obvious question: How could you have met for more than a year and still been shocked to hear these points of view?  The answer: Mossaides had an iron grip on the process, making sure the commission heard only what she wanted it to hear. 

Once that grip was broken, Mossaides and her allies on the Commission tried desperately to salvage the recommendations, including outvoting (in a sort of informal show of hands) dissenters who didn’t want the recommendations included in the report at all – because they had not been voted on and were not, in fact, Commission recommendations.  They compromised; agreeing to stronger language to make this clear. 

But Mossaides kept spinning right up to the very end, promoting the big lie of American child welfare – that curbing needless intrusion into families is at odds with child safety.  She even tried to suggest that racial justice was at odds with child safety, claiming that the new language in the report should talk about “balancing child protection and disproportionate impact on children of color.” 

But dissenting members of the Commission found that unacceptable.  One of them, Angela Brooks, director of the Children's Justice Unit in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office, called Mossaides out on it.   

It appears that, in the end, a much more nuanced preamble to the report was adopted – though there was still some effort to sneak in the idea that mandatory reporting enhances child safety, which it does not. 

I say “it appears” because, though the meeting where the final report was discussed was public, the report itself was not.   The public had to read whatever it could as it scrolled by when the meeting was in screen share mode.  I managed to get these screenshots which include much, but not all, of the preamble:

But what’s in the other 98 pages?  We should find out tomorrow (June 30).  I think I saw at least one blatant attempt at deck stacking scroll by during the screen sharing; my guess is Mossaides and her staff did as much of that as they could get away with. 

Now it gets even harder 

It’s one thing to move members of a commission singularly focused on this issue.  But now the report goes to the Massachusetts Legislature. Like everyone else, the lawmakers have been exposed to decades of “health terrorism” – the deliberate misrepresentation of the scope of a problem to “raise awareness.”  (The phrase comes not from critics, but from people who admit to having engaged in the practice.)  

That’s why so many people who have good intentions, such as Kate Ginnis of DCF’s parent agency, a commissioner even more extreme than Mossaides, recoil in horror at the very thought of, say, abolishing mandated reporting – even though it almost certainly would make children safer. 

And even as tried to spin the report publicly, Mossaides also has a backchannel to key lawmakers.  We know this because – she said so; repeatedly referring to her conversations with those lawmakers. 

But the fact that there were people of goodwill on the Massachusetts Mandated Reporter Commission who listened to the public, took to heart what they heard and, yes, changed their minds is enormously encouraging.  It suggests the possibility that the health terrorists won’t win in the end, and that this might be the moment child welfare starts to change in Massachusetts and beyond. 

The Legislature today is where the Commission was two years ago.  One key legislator has made clear his views are perfectly aligned with Mossaides and Ginnis; another has shown more skepticism.  So now we have to start all over again and see if we can move them, too. 

As for the idea that this was a “Seinfeld Commission,” that’s meant as a compliment.  Sometimes recommending nothing is really something.

The report of the Massachusetts Mandated Reporter Commission needs an appendectomy

 

Yep; that appendix has really got to go.

Members desperate to expand the child welfare surveillance state are even suggesting that racial justice is contrary to child safety 

So, you chair a commission that spent nearly two years drafting recommendations that would vastly expand “mandatory reporting” of suspected child abuse and neglect – in a state that already tears apart families at a rate 60% above the national average when rates of child poverty are factored in. 

It’s all going soooo well – until that whole racial justice reckoning threatens to get in the way.  And then, when you finally hold public hearings (after the recommendations are drafted, instead of, say, at the very beginning), your draft recommendations are denounced – almost unanimously – for four hours.  More open-minded commissioners are restive – in fact, they pronounce themselves “shocked” “surprised” and “taken aback.” They start to wonder about whether the recommendations are really such a good idea.  There is now so much dissent that your commission does not actually vote on any recommendations. 

As Karl Malden used to say in those American Express commercials: What will you do? what will you do? 

If you’re Massachusetts “Child Advocate” Maria Mossaides, who chairs the Massachusetts Mandated Reporter Commission, you’ll try to sneak all those bad ideas into an “appendix” to your report and use ambiguous language to allow legislators to infer that the commission really does support those bad ideas.  And when it looks like that won’t work, you’ll propose language that suggests racial justice is at odds with child safety. 

That’s what happened at what was supposed to be the Commission’s final meeting Thursday.  Because Mossaides and her allies didn’t quite manage to pull this off, there will be another virtual meeting starting at 10:00 a.m. on Monday.  

Most of the discussion Thursday revolved around a part of a draft final report known as Appendix A.  It’s not entirely clear what’s in Appendix A, or the rest of the report. That’s because though the virtual meeting was public, the document was not.  Except when portions were screenshared, we could only infer what was in the report and the appendix. 

Commission member Lisa Hewitt of the Committee for Public Counsel Services, which represents parents in child welfare cases, suggested dropping Appendix A. Why include an appendix filled with recommendations that predated the public hearings, recommendations for which there often was strong dissent among the commissioners and on which there was no vote? 

And why, she asked, was there so little discussion of the public hearing testimony, most of which trashed many of those recommendations – testimony “which was fantastic and truly impacted a lot of individuals on the [commission]?” She said including the appendix was “misleading.”  If the Commission didn’t get rid of the Appendix completely then “there should be much more explicit language [stating] that this has not been voted on and many of us don’t join in many of the suggestions.” 

One might expect that suggestion from someone whose organization represents parents.  But another commissioner, Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan agreed, saying that the way the appendix is presented “It’s hard not to read it as this is what the commission agrees to … It’s hard not to think this is where we came out.” 

Still another commissioner, Angela Brooks, director of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Children’s Justice Unit, said she had thought that Appendix A would include only the areas where there was agreement.  She was surprised to see included highly controversial ideas, such as drastically increasing penalties for failure to report. 

The Commission voted down the proposal to get rid of Appendix A.  Nor would they accept Brooks’ idea to limit it to where there was consensus.  Since there were no formal votes, Mossaides said, how can we possibly know where there’s consensus?  Actually, anyone who watched the meetings easily could figure that out. 

Mossaides and the rest what should be called the “surveillance-state caucus” would agree only to changing the language to make clear that the recommendations in Appendix A were never put to a vote and there was disagreement over some of them.  Then they immediately worked to undermine such language – by adapting the Big Lie of American child welfare, the false claim that child safety and family preservation are at odds - in a way that reveals a stunning degree of racial bias. 

Katie Ginnis of the state Executive Office of Health and Human Services, who is, if anything, more extreme than Mossaides, suggested that any such language be framed as the commission “trying to balance the welfare of children and these societal issues …How can we make changes in the interest of protecting children and be mindful of the disproportionate impact on Black and Brown families? We need to represent that tension.” 

Mossaides echoed the false framing, saying the language should talk about “balancing child protection and disproportionate impact on children of color.” 

What could be more emblematic of racial bias than suggesting that racial justice is contrary to child safety? 

What Mossaides and Ginnis really are saying is that Black people are inherently a greater
danger to their children than white people – so any attempt at equity puts child safety at risk.  The idea that the disproportionate impact of the child welfare surveillance state on Black families (and, in Massachusetts, Hispanic families) might have something to do with racism is not even on the table.

Also, though nonwhite families are disproportionately harmed by needless removal and the children welfare surveillance state, they are not the only ones harmed.  Impoverished white children also are subjected to needless surveillance, traumatized by needless investigations, and abused in foster care.  And overloading the system with false reports from all those mandated reporters makes it harder to find the few children in real danger – so contrary to Mossaides’ and Ginnis’ claims, most of the recommendations in Appendix A would make all Massachusetts children less safe. 

To her credit, Brooks wasn’t buying Mossaides’ and Ginnis’ framing.  She challenged the idea that “one side is expressed as protecting children and the other is societal inequities.” She said dissenting commissioners “are also [concerned about] protecting children; we’re concerned about the harm to children when unnecessarily removing them.  The tension on how best to protect children is on both sides.” 

Brooks also expressed concern about the “lack of representation by impacted communities and families” on the commission itself.  “We got good and meaningful testimony [at the hearings],” she said, “but that’s not the same thing as having full-time commission members sharing their perspectives.” 

To which Mossaides offered a reply that really amounted to: If she were choosing the commissioners it would have been different, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. 

Shhhh, don’t even mention abolishing mandatory reporting 

In still another indication of the surveillance-state caucus’ extremism, one section of the draft report dared to mention the fact that some hearing witnesses proposed abolishing mandatory reporting altogether.  The reason this idea is getting a lot of new support is that mandatory reporting has backfired; studies show it drives people away from seeking help and overloads the system with false reports, making it harder to find children in real danger. 

But the draft language left the impression that the commission never even thought about having a full discussion of something that, to Mossaides, is so horrifying.  

But even this wasn’t enough for at least one commissioner, who suggested that the fact that this idea came up at the hearings should not even be mentioned (presumably to avoid the possibility of legislators having their minds poisoned by such terrible ideas).  

Brooks said the language wrongly characterized the work of the Commission, or at least some members.  “It seems to discount the public comment period, and it’s not accurate to say we were focused solely on [improving mandatory reporting]. That sounds like we didn’t take into account the public comments.” 

Unfortunately, many commissioners didn’t take into account the public comments.  But it’s encouraging that enough of them did to prompt the kind of debate that took place at Thursday’s meeting – and maybe encourage legislators to do a little of that dangerous thinking after all. 

All NCCPR Child Welfare Blog posts about the Massachusetts Mandated Reporter Commission are available here.

In Massachusetts, the “child welfare” agency regularly throws battered women – and, especially, their children – under the bus. Now they’re fighting to keep it that way

 Of all the tragedies inflicted on children by the nation’s family policing agencies (a more accurate term than “child welfare” agencies), few are worse than tearing a child away from a parent (usually a mother) whose only “crime” is to herself be a survivor of domestic violence.  

All of the trauma for a child is compounded if the removal was for this reason.  One expert called it “tantamount to pouring salt into an open wound.”  He testified in a lawsuit that led to making the practice illegal in New York State. (NCCPR’s Vice President was co-counsel for plaintiffs.)  But, as I’ve often written before, in much of the country, family police agency policy on this issue boils down to “please pass the salt.”  That is certainly true in Massachusetts.  And the state family policing agency is fighting tooth and nail to keep things just the way they are. 

As with so much that’s wrong in child welfare, the harm begins with mandatory reporting.  A battered woman works up the courage to break free from her abuser, often for the sake of the children.  But almost anywhere she turns for help, the helper is a “mandated reporter.”   Whether that reporter thinks it’s a good idea or is just afraid to do otherwise, the reporter may well call the family police.  If you want to know what happens next,  please take two minutes – just two minutes – to listen to this excerpt from the testimony of Western Massachusetts Attorney Michelle Lucier before a commission studying mandatory reporting in that state:

NCCPR · Excerpt from Testimony of Attorney Michelle Lucier before Mass. Mandated Reporter Commission

 (If you want to hear more, a recording of her full testimony is at the end of this post.) 

Then, for additional context, please read the testimony from Jane Doe, Inc, the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence.  That will give a full understanding of how widespread the problem is – and how it places both battered women and their children in danger by deterring them from reaching out for help.  National research confirms it. 

But at a Commission meeting this week, the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) and its parent agency, the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS), responded to that searing testimony with what amounts nothing but contempt for the lives and safety of battered women and their children. 

They opposed even a revision in mandatory reporting laws so small that it would change almost nothing. 

As a commission document explains, the commission is debating recommending that 

persons who provide direct confidential services to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, or human trafficking should be excluded from mandated reporting responsibility. The reasoning behind the proposed exclusion is to reduce the barriers, or perceived barriers, in the way of persons who may be seeking immediate physical safety. Persons who seek physical safety are likely to be seeking to improve the safety situation for their children. 

Now, stop and consider how small that change would be.  First, it does not stop anyone from reporting what they believe to be child abuse or neglect.  It says only that a small subset of mandatory reporters, those specially trained to deal specifically with battered women seeking safety are not required to turn those women in to the family police.  Instead, they can use their professional training and their professional judgment. 

As Jane Doe, Inc. pointed out, this does not go nearly far enough, because survivors 

will likely encounter a mandated reporter in a range of additional contexts such as education, healthcare, or other settings. 

Yet even this tiny proposed change ran into fierce opposition from the representative on the Commission from DCF, Cristina Tedstone, and from EOHHS Katherine Ginnis.  (Ginnis’ comments throughout the commission meetings suggest someone even more virulently opposed to any curbing of the Massachusetts child welfare surveillance state than the commission chair, state Child Advocate Maria Mossaides – and that’s saying a lot.)  

Adding insult to what often are literal injuries, Ginnis and Tedstone suggested the problem of battered women terrified to come forward for fear of mandated reporters turning them in could be solved by – you probably guessed: more training! 

We should just add to the training for mandated reporters, Tedstone and Ginnis say, so they’ll know when to turn in a battered mother and when not to.  And we should train our investigators in when to take away children (after already traumatizing them with needless investigations) and when not to. 

Yes, training, training, training, training, training, training.  It’s all that the family police and those who want them to have unlimited power over families ever suggest in answer to every abuse these agencies inflict on children in the name of “saving” them.  Indeed, this was so predictable, I devoted a section of my own testimony to the commission to why this never works. 

To get a sense of how insulting this is, particularly to families of color, imagine if a special commission were convened to study police brutality in Massachusetts. Imagine if they said that all the problems could be solved if we just gave the police more training. Imagine if they claimed the problem isn’t, say, massive use of stop-and-frisk policing; we just need to give the police more training in whom to stop and how to frisk them.  People would immediately recognize it for what it was: a whitewash – in every sense of the term. 

Yet somehow, in Massachusetts, DCF, EOHHS, and the Office of Child Advocate seem to think they can get away with brushing aside the harm the family police routinely inflict on battered mothers and their children with bromides about training. Sadly, they may be right. 

The idea of training-as-panacea is particularly ludicrous in the context of domestic violence survivors coming forward. 

For starters, DCF doesn’t even admit it has a problem.  How can they train workers to do better when everything supposedly is fine now?  DCF brags about having “domestic violence specialists” on staff who caseworkers can consult right now.  But as the testimony from Jane Doe, Inc., Michelle Lucier and others makes clear – that’s not working. The problem is severe and ongoing. 

But even if training worked in other contexts, it wouldn’t help here.  When it comes to
battered women coming forward, the key issue is fear – they’re afraid to tell someone who is a mandated reporter.  Do Tedstone, Ginnis and Mossaids seriously think that will change if someone posts a notice somewhere that says: “Don’t worry, that mandated reporter you’re thinking of talking to was required to take a new, improved training module – so they might not turn you in after all!”? 

And, of course, DCF and EOHHS’s faith in training reeks of hypocrisy.  The recommendation they oppose says only that people who really do have specialized training in dealing with these issues should be allowed to use that training and exercise their own judgment. 

The opposition from DCF and EOHHS and, it appears, from Mossaides does not automatically mean the proposal will be voted down.  But none of the Commissioners at the meeting this week spoke in favor of it.* 

In the end, all of these issues will be in the hands of the Massachusetts Legislature.  The lawmakers will have to decide whether DCF should continue to have free reign to throw battered women and their children under the bus. 

So I hope they will listen to all of what Michelle Lucier had to say, read Jane Doe Inc.’s full testimony, and go through the rest of the public hearing testimony, which overwhelmingly opposed the approach that has dominated commission deliberations.  They can start here:

NCCPR · Full testimony of attorney Michelle Lucier before the Mass. Mandated Reporter Commission

  

*-In contrast, it was encouraging to hear some opposition expressed to another Commission proposal – inserting into state law a definition of child “neglect” that omits any statement that poverty is not neglect.  Such a statement exists in current DCF regulations. Granted, the fact that Massachusetts regularly tears apart families at a rate 60% above the national average makes clear that no one is really paying attention to the poverty-is-not-neglect caveat, but that’s no reason to make things even worse.

A propaganda document from that commission in Massachusetts

Ever since public hearings of a commission studying mandatory
child abuse reporting in Massachusetts didn't go the way the 
Commission chair wanted, she's been trying to spin the testimony 
like, well, you know ... (Photo by wannapik)

The commission is meeting again today (May 20) at 10:00 AM. 

After spending nearly two years on the task, a Commission studying mandatory child abuse reporting in Massachusetts finally held public hearings on draft recommendations.  Almost all of the recommendations would expand reporting and one would even make it easier to confuse poverty with “neglect.”  The commissioners were not prepared for what they heard during the hearings.  Some members said they were “shocked,” “surprised” and “taken aback” by the hearing testimony.  

That’s because, at two virtual hearings lasting a total of four hours, almost every speaker was opposed to the recommendations.  Speaker after speaker talked about how the proposals would sweep more families, especially poor families of color, into the net of family policing, doing their children enormous harm in the process.  They spoke of how the recommendations would deter families from seeking help and further overload the system, making it even harder to find children in real danger. 

The reason some members of the commission were so shocked is that they’ve been misled by the commission chair (and the state’s foremost advocate of a child welfare surveillance state and a take-the-child-and-run approach to child welfare) state “Child Advocate” Maria Mossaides.  In addition to chairing the commission, her office staffs it. 

For nearly two years, Mossaides and her staff shut out the views heard at the hearings, handpicking speakers for presentations who would reinforce Mossaides’ desire to make the failed system of mandatory reporting even bigger and more powerful.  

That is likely to continue at a Commission meeting today, when a presentation on how screening of reports works will be given not by anyone who has studied it objectively but by, yes, the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families.  That is, of course, the agency that does the screening, investigates the reports, and takes away children at a rate 60% above the national average, even when rates of family poverty are factored in. 

To get the full impact of those public hearings, you had to be there.  Or at least listen to the recording of the hearings.  The staff has made that as inconvenient as possible, posting audio only. 

And in what seems to be the hope that commissioners won’t pour through all that testimony, Mosssaides promised a “summary.”   That summary was presented to the Commission at a meeting on May 10 – but withheld from the public, except for the portions we could make out while a staffer shared her screen during the virtual meeting.  It wasn’t until days later that they finally uploaded the document. 

The summary that’s not a summary 

It turns out it isn’t a summary at all.  Most of the testimony isn’t even mentioned – and readers get no sense of the scope and power of the arguments against Commission draft recommendations.  Worse, the summary is a propaganda document, misstating the arguments and misleading commissioners about the state of research on mandatory reporting.  So we’re going to go through parts of the document point-by-point and try to set at least some of the record straight.  In the sections below, excerpts from the “summary” document are in italics: 

Why mandated reporting?

The Federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) requires that every state have provisions or procedures requiring the reporting of suspected child abuse and neglect. 

CAPTA does indeed require this, but the only penalty for putting children’s needs first and not adopting the failed regime of mandatory reporting is loss of a very small amount of federal funds.  Although Mossaides tried to scare the commission into believing $400 million was at stake, the real number is probably under $2 million. 

There are ethics arguments that children because of their age and abilities are particularly vulnerable to abuse or neglect (as can be seen with other vulnerable populations) and are at a disadvantage in exercising self-protection and self-care. 

Note the implication: If we don’t have mandatory reporting children supposedly are defenseless!  In fact, eliminating mandatory reporting does not eliminate reporting – rather, it allows professionals to exercise their professional judgment.  The failure to allow such judgment has made children less safe. 

Does mandated reporting “work?”

This is a complex question which depends on the framing of the question. 

No, actually it’s not complex at all.  If mandatory reporting makes children safer it works.  If, on the other hand, it deters families from seeking help and overloads the system with so many false reports that workers are less likely to find children in real danger, even as thousands of children, especially children of color, are traumatized by needless investigations and needless foster care, then it doesn’t work.  

The evidence is in: It doesn’t work. That’s why one after another, some of the most prominent proponents of mandatory reporting have had second thoughts. 

But it appears that none of this research and none of this scholarly analysis was shared with the commissioners for nearly two years. 

Also, if you now admit you don’t know if mandatory reporting works, Ms. Mossaides, why have you spent nearly two years desperately trying to expand it? 

The majority of cases reported to DCF come from mandated reporters. Reports from mandated reporters are screened-in at a higher rate than reports that come from non-mandated reporters. 

Again, notice what Mossaides and her staff are trying to do here: imply that without mandatory reporting more reliable reporters somehow will be shut out.  But if there were no mandatory reporting, teachers, doctors etc. still would be free to report.  They simply wouldn’t have to report when, in their professional judgment, they felt there was not actual abuse or neglect or when they thought the report would do more harm than good.  And they wouldn’t have to file “CYA” reports for fear of what would happen to them if they don’t (such as the fines the Commission may recommend increasing up to ten-fold). Eliminating mandatory reporting would increase the reliability of reports. 

Data shows us that there is disproportionality in the rates of Hispanic/Latinx and Black children coming to DCF’s attention relative to their proportion in the Massachusetts population. The data available however is not broken down by mandated reporters versus non-mandated reporters nor is it broken down by reporter type. 

In other words: Maybe mandatory reporters are so wise that they aren’t the cause of the racial bias in the system. Well, if they’re that wise, shouldn’t they be trusted about when to report and when not to report, instead of being forced to report? 

The Commission has also discussed at several meetings the success of the Family Resource Centers in Massachusetts which provide services to families throughout the Commonwealth and who served 10,869 unduplicated families in 2019 providing such services as help with food instability, parenting groups and classes, assistance with housing instability, accessing resources for children including child care and after school care as well as physical products such as diapers, and so on. 

The implication here is: See? People aren’t deterred from seeking help because they go to Family Resource Centers!  But actual research shows that mandatory reporting is a pervasive deterrent to seeking all sorts of help.  The fact that some people are willing to risk being turned into the child abuse police if they go to a family resource center tells us nothing about how many are deterred from reaching out.  

And now, let’s look at the heart of Mossaides’ effort to salvage her awful recommendations: 

It can be true both that some families will retreat from available services feeling they cannot trust mandated reporters and there is no safe place where they can express their needs or be fallible individuals (as we all are), and it can also be true that DCF provides relevant and critical services to communities and families who identify themselves as needing help and are able and willing to access that help through the avenues that are available to them. 

So then the question is: How do we provide the help without forcing any families to retreat? Answer: Abolish mandatory reporting.  And make those “relevant and critical services” available through an agency that does not also have the power to take away children. 

It can be true that mandated reporters operate on implicit bias and that structural racism affects both experiences and perceptions of experiences, it can also be true that mandated reporters serve as critical lifelines to children who urgently need help. 

No, actually it can’t.  Reporters can serve as such lifelines – the fact that they are mandated to report does not make them any more likely – and probably less likely – to be such a lifeline.  Mandatory reporting impedes the lifeline function for the reasons noted previously. 

It can be true that many cases are screened-out by DCF at the screening stage, and it can also be true that a screen-out does not mean that the reporter was incorrect in their analysis of the situation. 

This is one of the most misleading statements in the entire summary.  The canard about screenouts and unfounded reports not being false has been around for decades.  As is so often the case, there is a molehill of truth under a mountain of hype and distortion. 

Obviously, every decision to screen out a report won’t be correct, just as every decision to label a case unfounded after investigation won’t be correct. But, and somehow Mossaides forgot to mention this, every decision to screen in or substantiate a report won’t be correct either. 

But guess which is more likely. 

The only study we know of to actually second guess worker decisions found that they are two to six times more likely to wrongly substantiate an allegation than they are to wrongly declare one to be unfounded.  So the fact that, nationwide, 91% - ninety-one percent – of hotline calls wind up screened out or unfounded is representative of the overall accuracy of a system built on mandatory reporting – in fact, it overstates the accuracy of that system.  It means that false allegations are flooding the system at every turn; again, making it less likely that workers will find children in real danger. 

Now, let’s move on to how the document misrepresents the actual testimony, when it summarizes criticism of mandatory reporting: 

Mandated reporting is surveillance of families that has a far more detrimental effect on society and children than does the abuse or neglect that although real, is less common than is suggested by DCF over-involvement with families. 

No one said that all “abuse or neglect” is inherently less serious than surveillance – by summarizing testimony this way Mossaides wants you to believe all those witnesses were minimizing child abuse.  

Rather, what those witnesses said is that overwhelmingly, the reports are false, and many of the rest are poverty cases – and in those cases the real harm to children comes from the surveillance, the investigation and, worst of all, needless foster care.  At the same time – and yes it’s worth repeating again – the system so deluges workers with false reports that finding the children in real danger is harder. 

Oh, but wait, the summary does address this issue – and promptly distorts it, summarizing the position of critics as follows: 

There will so many new filings, mostly unsupported and biased filings, based on this expansion that DCF will be so burdened current case practice will suffer. DCF would need significant additional resources to handle this burden. 

Except that, during the spoken testimony at least (I didn’t read all of the written submissions) nobody uttered that second sentence.  Rather Mossaides is teeing up the idea that she will try to get her Commission to recommend to the State Legislature both an expansion of mandatory reporting and spending vast new sums of money to cover it. 

But, of course, she knows the new spending is unlikely to be forthcoming.  Then, when she gets the vastly bigger surveillance state she wants and the system is overwhelmed she can say: Well, that’s not my fault, we told the legislature to spend more money! 

But even if you could get the money, we did not hear anybody say even more money would work. If you simply go on still another caseworker hiring binge, all the new workers chase all the new false reports and all you get is the same lousy system only bigger.  This can be seen by the fact that Massachusetts already spends on child welfare at one of the highest rates in the country – because all those needless investigations and all that needless foster care is expensive. 

Not in the summary, but … 

It’s also worth noting here something that’s not in the summary document but that Mossaides mentioned at the last Commission meeting: She argued that there won’t really be a flood of new reports because the last time categories of mandated reporters were expanded there wasn’t much of an increase. 

But that previous occasion included a much smaller expansion than the Commission contemplates recommending now.  And in a state like Massachusetts, which already tears apart families at a rate 60% above the national average, any expansion of false reports endangers children. 

Bottom line: The Commission can’t rely on the summary document to understand what happened at the hearings, or to understand mandatory reporting.  It’s a big ask, but the commissioners really need to listen to all the testimony. 

If they do, they may well be even more shocked, surprised and taken aback.