Hypothetical about Child Protective Services

S’pose you know or have strong evidence that physical and sexual abuse is happening to children at a certain address. It happens on an almost daily basis and has been going on for years.
What’s located at this address? A public school.

What do you suppose the outcome would be if it were reported to CPS?
Would animinstrators be removed from providing any services dealing with children until they had completed courses demonstrating their fitness to act as a parent?

If investigators find out that the administration of this school was negligent in letting this happen, there’s a good chance that a healthy number of people will lose their jobs.
Really, I can’t imagine the crapstorm this would unleah.
PS - If this is not a hypothetical, call CPS and the cops now.

From what I understand, CPS deals with situations in which the parent, guardian, or family member is being abusive to the child.

If a neighbor, teacher, or someone else who is not related to the child or who does not live in the home abuses a child, then the police deal with the situation. CPS could get involved if the parent does not adequately protect the child from this abusive person.

What happens to a school adminstrator who gets accused of abusing a child or allowing the abuse of a child? That would probably fall under the district policies or state or local laws. I doubt CPS would have anything to do with it.

If all you do is report the address, it will be useless to CPS. The school could have anywhere from dozens to hundreds of employees, and they wouldn’t know who to investigate (and it might not even be an employee.) In addition, chriscya is correct about jurisdiction, at least here in California, CPS deals with the situation (in collaboration with the police) when family members or guardians abuse children. The police deal with the situation if someone from outside the family is abusing the child. The family is assumed to be supportive in cases of abuse from outside the family unless there’s evidence to the contrary.

As a person who has had the unfortunate duty of reporting cases of child abuse to CPS :frowning: I can tell you that the form you use to report has spaces for the child’s name, home address, and suspected cause of the abuse, but no place on the form for ‘address where the suspected abuse occurred.’ They’d much rather get information like that directly from the child or family rather than from some outside third reporter.

For your second question, no. Merely reporting an incident to CPS causes an investigation. No one would be removed from working with children unless allegations of abuse are made to the police, who will arrest those responsible if there is sufficient evidence. CPS has no power to impose training, remediation, or punishment on school employees - if school employees are abusing children the proper recourse is the police and the courts, not CPS.

§ 63.2-1503. Local departments to establish child-protective services; duties.

(Emphasis added.)

http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+63.2-1503

Apparently, if a school is involved, it is a mult-jurisdictional thing.

And see, http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+63.2-1511 (Complaints of abuse and neglect against school personnel; interagency agreement)

Interesting, apparently in Virginia CPS is responsible for responding to abuse by schools or hospitals.

I tried to check California’s code for CPS, but it’s not easy to search for, so take my words above with a grain of salt about whether CPS has jurisdiction. I still would report such an incident directly to the police (like during the commission of any other crime), who can take more direct action, rather than CPS.

Found this (pdf) which talks about mandatory reporting. It is less helpful than it could be because it is part of a criminal statute requiring certain people to report child abuse:

It seems pretty clear that any of the agencies described above must accept a complaint:

(Emphasis added.)

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate?WAISdocID=85889025535+0+0+0&WAISaction=retrieve

This leaves open the possibility that CPS, Child Welfare, or the county welfare department more generally lacks jurisdiction to investigate a complaint about abuse in a school. But if that’s the case, they still have a duty to promptly get the complaint to the right agency. So it looks like you can report abuse to the police or the welfare agency and let them route it from there.

There are also plenty of hotline numbers availabe:

http://www.capcsac.org/crisisnumbers/cps.html
http://www.childsworld.ca.gov/res/pdf/EmergencyR_315.pdf (pdf)

School officials claim authority in loco parentis… seems like that’d make them fair game for CPS. The case would be analogous to one sibling abusing another while the parent’s neglect and/or lack of supervision allows it to happen.

However, the state recognizes that it has a compelling interest in ensuring that parents have a relationship with their biological children - that’s why children can be taken away and later returned to the same family if the courts and CPS are satisfied that the children will not be in danger, it’s also why courts attempt to ensure both parents can be involved in the raising of children in divorce cases.

In a school, the state has no compelling interest in ensuring that a particular teacher or administrator has a relationship with a given child. The only state interest is that the child have a teacher and the school a administrator. Individuals who commit crimes in this situation will not necessarily be afforded an opportunity to return and work with the same children - in fact, I’d wager most courts would think it a bad idea.

“in loco parentis” just means “in the place of parents,” not that school employees actually assume all the responsibilities of parents in a legal sense.