Lessons · Teaching · mandated reporting
Mandated reporting: you report a suspicion
A teacher who suspects that a child is being harmed reports it, and the report is a suspicion rather than a conclusion; the finding out is done by somebody else.
Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
What it is for
The thing that stops people reporting is wanting to be sure first. Being sure is not your job and cannot be, because asking the questions that would make you sure is exactly what damages the process somebody else has to run.
How to think about it
Write down what you saw or heard, in the words that were used, as soon as you can. Report it to the person or body your jurisdiction names, inside the window it sets, both of which will be given to you. Ask no follow-up questions, tell nobody who does not need to know, and record what you did and when.
Worked example
Write it down in the words used, within the hourWords, not your interpretation of them, with quotation marks around anything quoted.
Report it to the named person or body, inside the windowBoth the name and the window are set where you work and are handed to you.
Ask nothing further and gather no evidenceQuestions asked now can make what was said unusable later.
Record what you passed on, to whom, and at what timeYour own note, and the only record that you did what you were required to do.
Your turn
Write the line that says who finds out whether a suspicion is true.
You report a suspicion; somebody else does the .
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Waiting until you are certain. The standard is suspicion, the window is short, and a report that turns out to be nothing is the system working exactly as designed.