Child Abuse

I had a staff meeting this morning. Part of it was spent on Child Abuse Prevention training. One of the newer things I learned is that now as a mandated reporter, I'm not supposed to ask the child a lot of questions. I'm just supposed to call if I have reasonable suspicion. They found that after a couple of people asked the kids a bunch of questions, by the time the investigators got to the kids, they were tired of it and tended to clam up leaving little evidence for the police to go on. So now they just want us to call and leave the investigating to CPS.

This makes a pretty hard situation. There is such a delicate balance between protecting the kids and causing problems for a family when there is nothing going on. I have been on the side of the kids. I had the kids who had been abused or neglected at my last job and I have called CPS on a family before. At the same time, I have heard from parents who haven't really done anything wrong and have had CPS called on them. Such a fine line.

I wish there were ways to fix CPS and the foster care system in general. I hate to say though, I don't have many ideas. I want the kids to be protected and loved and I don't want the rights of good parents to be infringed upon, but I don't know how to balance the two.

And a slightly related comment, I just don't understand how people can do some of that stuff to kids. I understand that some of it is just ignorance about what a child needs and I can somewhat understand that. But how can someone not know that having sex with a tiny child isn't wrong? Or how can someone not know that repeatedly burning a child is wrong? I mean I just look at my little kids and I can't imagine ever hurting them!