Responding to child maltreatment – Authors' reply (original) (raw)
We are grateful to Ben Mathews and Heather Payne for highlighting a long-standing debate about mandatory reporting. In our view, the advantages and disadvantages of mandatory reporting depend on the policy and legislative context. We did not "suggest that mandatory reporting systems… are unhelpful" nor do we consider there is suffi cient evidence to the contrary. However, we did criticise the focus of some systems on substantiation rather than service provision, a call echoed by Kohl and colleagues. 1 We all agree that professionals fail to report suspected maltreatment. One of the many reasons for this is that we do not know whether the process from recognition to reporting, and subsequent interventions by child-protection agencies, improves the lives of children overall. Studies on case ascertainment and parent satis faction do not address this issue, 2 but an expansion of research into the eff ectiveness of interventions on the quality of children's lives, 3 together with studies into the provision of eff ective interventions to those most likely to benefi t, would. In the interim, investment by countries in longitudinal administrative databases for child welfare, 4 and better recording of service provision, 1 would improve the chances of making valid regional comparisons between policy programmes and could help us all learn from diff erent systems. We declare that we have no confl ict of interest.
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