When Seeking Help Becomes a Crime: How Mandatory Reporting Laws Harm Black Families

Imagine being a parent in crisis—your child is sick, you are late for work, your child care just fell through, you are concerned about how you will stretch your groceries for another week and rent is due. You reach out for help from a school social worker hoping to be connected to resources. Instead of being met with care and support, you are met with suspicion, investigation, and the loss of your children. For too many families, particularly Black families in Illinois and across the country, this scenario is not merely a hypothetical—it is a reality. Mandatory reporting laws play a major role transforming what is touted as the “child welfare system” into a system of surveillance, regulation, and punishment, not of care let alone “welfare.” It operates as a family regulation system that polices families instead of providing care. 

What is Mandatory Reporting

At the federal level, mandatory reporting laws are outlined in the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), passed in 1974. CAPTA requires that a state establishes procedures for individuals—typically professionals like teachers, doctors, law enforcement, social workers, and therapists—to report suspected child abuse or neglect as a condition of receiving federal funding for a  state’s child welfare system (CAPTA, 42 U.S.C. §5106a).

The stated intent behind mandatory reporting may seem noble—require certain professionals to report signs of abuse and neglect to protect children. However, history and current applications tell a different story. Legal scholar Martin Guggenheim argues that the child welfare laws generated in the 1970s are best categorized by a racial backlash to the civil rights era and the Johnson Administration’s War on Poverty, where social safety nets were being put in place for children but being removed from nonwhite parents (Meiners and Tolliver 108). Today these laws leave space for biased interpretations of abuse and neglect that often conflate poverty and cultural differences with parental failure. 

Mandatory Reporting in Illinois

In Illinois, mandatory reporting is enforced under the Abused and Neglected Child Reporting Act (ANCRA). It requires over 40 different professional roles—from school staff to clergy—to report any suspicion of abuse or neglect to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) (325 ILCS 5/). Failing to report is a Class A misdemeanor and can result in criminal charges, civil liability, and disciplinary action by licensing boards (ANCRA, Section 4).

In practice, this means a parent struggling with access to food, housing, or substance abuse can be reported to DCFS just for seeking help. The consequences of being reported are severe: home visits and searches conducted by an investigator and sometimes with a police officer present, investigations, surveillance, and, in a number of cases, family separation. Subjecting a family to an investigation is a traumatic and invasive process, especially when separation is a constant threat (Louras, The Runaway Train of Mandated Reporting).   

When federal funding only accounts for about 0.64% of Illinois Department of Children and Family Services’ $2.47 billion budget, does it make sense to keep mandatory reporting practices in place in Illinois? They harm our families, especially our Black ones. 

Mandatory Reporting and Its Impact on Black Families 

While mandatory reporting laws apply to everyone, their enforcement is deeply racialized. A national study found that over 50% of Black children in the United States will experience a Child Protective Services (CPS) investigation in their lifetime (Louras 153). The investigations are not because Black families are more likely to poorly treat children; however, they are more likely to be impoverished. Still, some researchers have noted that even with the overwhelming correlation between poverty where 85% of families investigated for neglect live 200% below the poverty line, the racial disparities cannot be explained by disproportionate poverty (Louras 153). Instead the “disproportionality is a direct result of the wide net cast by broad mandated reporting laws, and professional reporters are likely to add to the racial and economic disparity in reporting” (Louras 154).

The increased likelihood of Black families being investigated has concerning consequences for the Black community as a whole. Nationally, Black children make up about 14% of the U.S. child population (Child Stats, FY 2022) but 23% of those in the foster system (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, AFCARS National Statistics Report, FY 2022).  In Illinois, the numbers are even more alarming: Black children represent only 15% of the child population (Fuller, Racial and Ethnic Disproportionality in Illinois Child Welfare System: FY2023 Report) yet make up about 44% of the foster system population (Illinois DCFS Youth in Care By Demographic July 2025). 

According to the latest “Racial Disproportionality in the Illinois Child Welfare System” FY 2024 report from the Children and Family Research Center in University of Illinois-Champaign's School of Social Work, Black children were over-represented at every key decision point in an investigation: screened-in investigations, indicated investigations, protective custodies, court screenings, safety plans, and entries into substitute care. Conversely, Black children were under-represented in kinship foster system placements while over-represented in specialized foster system and congregate care placements. 

Additionally, Black children were underrepresented among children who remain out of the home less than 12 months and 12-47 months before exiting the system. Instead they were overrepresented among children who remained separated from their families for 5 years or more. Again, this overrepresentation and underrepresentation in key areas is not because Black families harm their children more often—it’s because Black families are policed more, surveilled more, and punished more for needing to utilize public resources under the same circumstances that might garner care for white families.

Overall, mandatory reporting plays a key role in Black families being reported by feeding a pipeline from public systems—like schools and hospitals—directly into child welfare. Educators and healthcare workers, often with little cultural competency or understanding of structural racism, are legally required to report, even when families are simply facing material hardship (Roberts, Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families, 2022).

How Criminalizing Care Discourages Help

When mandatory reporters are required to treat every need as a potential threat, families become afraid to ask for help. Parents avoid doctors, drop out of mental health treatment, and stop communicating with schools out of fear they’ll be reported to DCFS (National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, 2021). Instead of serving as a safety net, the system becomes a trap.

This criminalization of poverty and race doesn't just harm parents—it deeply affects children. We cannot have safe children without safe families. Removal from the home is traumatic and often exacerbates existing challenges. Children in the foster system are more likely to experience poor educational outcomes, mental health challenges, and involvement in the criminal legal system (Pew Charitable Trusts, 2020).

A Better Way Forward: Decriminalize Support

To truly protect children, we must shift from a punitive to a supportive model—one that recognizes families need resources, not reports. Here's what that could look like:

• Remove Criminal and Civil Penalties for Non-Reporting

No one should face criminal charges or lose their professional license for choosing to support a family instead of reporting them. Removing penalties allows professionals to build and maintain trust and provide meaningful assistance without fear of legal or professional consequences (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2022). 

• Invest in Community-Based Supports 

Redirect funding away from family regulation systems like DCFS and toward mutual aid, housing support, mental health care, and universal child care—services that address the root causes of the crisis (Center for the Study of Social Policy, 2020).

• Train Mandated Professionals in Anti-Racist, Family-Centered Practices

Teachers, doctors, and others working with families need tools to distinguish between harm and hardship—and to understand how their biases may shape their decisions (National Association of Social Workers, 2021). Other jurisdictions like New York and Los Angeles are exploring concepts like mandated supporting. Mandated supporting attempts to train away the “false conception that reporting to CPS is the best way to ensure child safety” and instead provides a framework that “seeks to center families through equitable, harm reductionist, and anti-racist practices, while divesting from systems of surveillance and punishment” (JMAC for Families, “Mandated Supporting”). 

Conclusion

As caring and concerned community members we must ask ourselves, are we invested in protecting children by protecting and supporting families or are we more concerned with criminalizing asking for help? Mandatory reporting laws harm children and families, especially Black ones. It creates a chilling effect where asking for help becomes a risk, not a relief. 

If we are serious about supporting families, then we must decriminalize care and dismantle mandatory reporting laws. Let’s build a future where support replaces suspicion—and where families are met with trust, not trauma.

Call to Action:

If you are a parent or loved one who has been impacted by a DCFS investigation or separation, Please complete the form  to sign up to receive information about the Black Families Organizing for Liberation (BFOL) Initiative where we will be working alongside system impacted parents to identify their needs and support them in acquiring them. We will be hosting our first in-person info session in September 2025 in Chicago.

Resources:

• CAPTA: 42 U.S.C. §5106a

• ANCRA: 325 ILCS 5/

• U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, AFCARS Report, FY 2022

• Tamara Fuller, Racial and Ethnic Disproportionality in Illinois Child Welfare System: FY2023 Report

• Katie Louras, “The Runaway Train of Mandated Reporting,” San Diego Law Review (2024)

• Dorothy Roberts, Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families (2022)

• Child Stats, FY 2022

• National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, Reports (2021)

• Child Welfare Information Gateway, State Statutes: Mandatory Reporters of Child Abuse and Neglect (2022)

• Pew Charitable Trusts, How Foster Care Affects Long-Term Outcomes (2020)Center for the Study of Social Policy, Investing in Families, Not Surveillance (2020)

• National Association of Social Workers, Racial Equity in Child Welfare (2021)

• JMAC for Families, “Mandated Supporting”