AFT tells teachers: Don't report child neglect -- or chronic absentees

Instead of reporting suspicions of child neglect to child-protective services, teachers should ask themselves, "How can I support this family better?," argues researcher Mathangi Swaminathan on The 74. Investigations could trigger trauma or end up with a child in foster care, she argues.

"Educators are mandatory reporters of child abuse and neglect, notes the American Federation of Teachers in Nobody Wins. "But reporting rarely helps protect children from harm. We need an alternative model that prioritizes family relationships and addresses family challenges."

New York City’s children’s services commissioner, Jess Dannhauser, also wants teachers to connect low-income parents to support services before reporting suspicions of child neglect. He's pleased that teachers are making fewer reports of child abuse and maltreatment.

It's a troubling trend, write Emily Putnam-Hornstein and Naomi Schaefer Riley, who lead Lives Cut Short, which documents child deaths from maltreatment. "Teachers are essential early-warning detectors in our efforts to protect children." If they're discouraged from reporting evidence of neglect and abuse, children will be left in danger.

Some argue that neglect is a sign of poverty, not of bad parenting. But teachers have no way of knowing "whether students just need material resources or whether their parents are having significant mental health challenges or substance abuse issues," write Putnam-Hornstein and Riley.

Child-protection agencies can "examine patterns of reports, cross-report with law enforcement, and decide whether to investigate," they write. "It often takes multiple allegations from adults with different pieces of information before agencies can intervene."

I think it's unfair to ask teachers to be teachers and therapists and social workers.

The AFT also discourages teachers from reporting chronic absenteeism, saying it could push children into the "school-to-prison pipeline," Putnam-Hornstein and Riley write. But "chronic absenteeism is often a sign that something is seriously amiss in a family, especially when it involves younger children. If a parent is unable to consistently get a child to school, what does that signal about other struggles the parents may be facing?"

Baby Phoenix Photo: Edward Morillo

In San Jose,"Baby Phoenix" was sent home with her addicted father, despite the warnings of child-protective services workers, reported Julia Prodis Sulek in the Mercury News. Her addicted mother went to jail, and then to a mental-health program, while the father was alone with the newborn.

Two toddler siblings were being raised by family members "after police found the mother delusional," the father with meth and the kids sucking on AAA batteries. A social worker said the risk to Phoenix was "very high." Another caseworker warned the neglect could lead to the baby's death. They were overruled.

Phoenix died of fentanyl and meth exposure at the age of three months. (Before calling 911, say prosecutors, her father called a friend to ask for clean urine.) A few months later, her mother died of a drug overdose.

In 2021, Daniel Little, the director of Santa Clara County’s Department of Family and Children’s Services, informed staff that social workers and lawyers would work together to keep families together in the name of "racial justice and . . . healing the historical underlying disproportionate representation of children of color in the child welfare system,” Sulek reports. The focus would be on helping families with parenting classes, drug treatment and other services.

Many blame the foster-care system, rather than the parents, for traumatizing children, said Steve Baron, a member of the county’s Child Abuse Prevention Council. “The goal shifted from protecting children from abuse and neglect to diverting them from the system almost at all costs,”  Baron said. “And it’s gone way over the deep end.”