Reporting Laws and Requirements - VIC

As part of your service’s Child Protection Policy, families should be advised upon enrolment of your duties as mandatory reporters. The decision is yours to make, and you should use professional judgment and bear in mind principles of working in partnership with families and involving children in decisions about them where age appropriate.

Should you advise families when you make a report?

This is a question only you can answer in consultation with your Senior Supervisor/Team Leader/Coordinator. You should take into account your service’s Child Protection Policy when making this decision.

As a general rule – we recommend you don’t inform families of your intention to report.

Doing this may:

• Cause conflict between yourself and the family
• Confuse the situation as the parent or caregiver tries to talk you out of reporting – by arguing, or pleading or just making promises and buying time.
• It is too stressful for you – particularly if you do not enjoy confrontational situations
• It can personalise the situation to the extent that you question whether you are doing the right thing – you lose objectivity.

But there are certainly times when you absolutely should not inform families of your intention to report such as when informing them may:

• Place a child at risk of significant harm eg a child may be punished for disclosing or silenced from further disclosures – as an investigator I have had to travel around the country to bring children back home after they’ve been ‘abducted’ by parents who feared having abuse exposed.
• Place an adult at risk of serious harm eg a person who provided you with information may be targeted and harassed or harmed by family members taking revenge or attempting to silence them from providing further evidence
• Interfere with the investigation of a criminal offence eg a member of the family is the alleged perpetrator of the abuse and they may try to distort the child’s evidence or delay access to the child – as an investigator it was always difficult interviewing a child and trying to obtain the truth when parents have ‘schooled’ them in what to say.
• Lead to a delay in the assessment of allegations of serious harm to a child eg alleged perpetrators may remove the child from the area to delay assessment of injuries because once an injury has faded or healed then there is less evidence for them to worry about.