Mandated Child Abuse Reporting in a Multicultural Environment

The abuse and neglect of children has been linked to their cognitive, academic, psychological, and behavioral demise. As a result of the deleterious effects that abuse can have on children’s development and well-being, all 50 states, including the District of Columbia, have enacted child abuse reporting laws for mental health professionals. These laws typically require a mandated child abuse report when child maltreatment has been reasonably suspected. Although mandated child abuse reporting laws appear straight-forward, mandated reporting often entails complex and nuanced decision-making, particularly when a child is from a diverse cultural background. Thus, this article offers a discussion for mental health professionals (e.g., psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, social workers) regarding mandated child abuse reporting within a multicultural environment.

Conditional Nature of Policy as a Stabilizing Force: Erin’s Law and Teacher Child Abuse Reporting Practices

This article uses Erin’s Law, a law establishing consistent teacher reporting practices for child abuse, to test the multiple streams framework (MSF) implementation hypothesis in a policy area where inconsistent state-level policies have been the norm. Findings indicate that Erin’s Law has a conditional impact on teacher reporting that are dependent on problems and politics streams. While the conditional relationship between the streams in affecting implementer behavior is consistent with previous tests of the MSF implementation hypothesis, findings indicate that this conditional relationship manifests differently when the intended goals of new policies are to establish a consistent norm for administrative behavior.

An Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior in Predicting Child Abuse Reporting Intention of Malaysian Society

The incidence of child abuse is increasing at an alarming rate. However, it is widely believed that only a few cases are reported to the authorities. Under-reporting of child abuse is therefore a grave concern, especially in Malaysia. Why is it that, even though society in general agrees that child abuse is a heinous crime that must be stopped and prevented, only very few of them played their role by reporting suspected abuse? The answer is unclear due to scarce research conducted in this area. This study is therefore directed towards finding answers to this question. By applying the Theory of Planned Behavior, this paper examines the relationship between attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and child abuse reporting intention. A multi-stage stratified cluster sampling method was used by this cross-sectional study in selecting the respondents from the Southern ( Johor, Malacca, Negeri Sembilan) and Central (Selangor) regions of Malaysia. A total of 384 questionnaires was distributed to the individual citizens of Malaysia aged between 19 to 64 years old. The return rate was 90.4% and analysis was carried out on 347 completed questionnaires. The findings show that subjective norms and perceived behavioral control were found to have a significant relationship with the intention to report suspected child abuse. Subjective norm was found to be the most influential factor towards intention to report suspected child abuse. Interestingly, the study found that there was no significant relationship between attitude and intention to report suspected child abuse in Malaysian society. The findings of this study are useful to policy makers and child protection authorities. Keywords: child protection policy, attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, Theory of Planned Behavior