Child Safety and Education

Failing in the child protection arena has two possible worst-case outcomes for organizations. You need to get these policies right the first time. Organizations need to work on their child protection policies.

If your organization is in the United States or other countries with well-established child abuse reporting laws, then reporting is simple. If the alleged abuse happened in a country where reporting protocol is not established—or you have a multijurisdictional nightmare—or abuse that is historic—it may not be clear whether and how to report.

In a perfect world, no one would file reports of child abuse unless they were really true. But it happens all the time—in fact, most of the reports that go to the Department of Human Services are unfounded. What should you do if a DHS caseworker shows up at your door?

We all agree that child abuse must be investigated.

DHS has no specific rules about how children are photographed, or chain of custody for the pictures.

Right now in Colorado, we have a government job description (social worker in the Department of Human Services) where the job gives the worker discretion to view naked children and take pic

We carefully teach children to protect their private areas and not to let strangers touch them or view them except in a medical setting.

Yes! The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that educators must be very careful about school searches that go as far as a strip search, even under the more relaxed school standards.

Government workers may or may not ask for consent. The position of the Department of Human Services (DHS) is that it does not need consent from parents.

DHS justifies its position by a statute in Colorado that allows social workers to take color photographs of “visible injuries.” C.R.S. § 19-3-306.