Indiana mandated reporter law

Indiana’s governor recently signed an amendment to the state’s mandated reporter law. It has two new provisions that youth organizations in the state need to note when it goes into effect on July 1, 2025.

The first change is that it specifically restricts the ability report to a supervisor instead of child protective services or law enforcement. The law now says that a mandated reporter “does not have discretion to decide not to report known or suspected child abuse or neglect, unless a report has already been made and documented by [a designated administrator].” Furthermore, they cannot “delegate the duty to report” to someone else, unless (1) that person “is part of the child’s care team and has personally be involved in the child’s care;” and (2) the initial mandated reporter puts their notification in writing. The law also specifies details that the second reporter must put in a written report to child protection or law enforcement.

The new law did not substantially change the requirement that anyone making a mandated report afterward notify administrators of the organization about the report. Youth organizations, therefore, can still require staff and volunteers to notify the program about any mandated reports. They simply have to specify that the notification comes after the mandated report, and they need to train staff about the proper order of people who need to know about any concerns.

The second change is that whenever a mandated report names a staff member or volunteer of a program as the abuser, then law enforcement “shall investigate” the program to determine whether the program failed to report the abuse. The bill’s sponsor said that the intent of the new provision was to address the USA Gymnastics scandal, where people in the organization allegedly knew about the abuse and didn’t report it.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that a statute designed to address past misconduct will deter future misconduct and make kids safer. What the law is certain to do is clog the system with dubious reports. In 2022 (the last year for which I was able to find data), the child protection agency investigated 123,644 claims of child maltreatment, and substantiated 19,185 of those claims. That’s a substantiation rate of 15.5%. In other words, the agency found almost 85% of the reports to have no factual foundation. This law, by making staff in youth organizations worry about law enforcement’s second-guessing their decisions, is almost certain to simply increase the number of unfounded reports in the state.

Nevertheless, it is the law, and youth organizations in Indiana need to start training staff and volunteers about it. The penalty for failure to report remains a Class B misdemeanor, but organizations will face more investigations when they report suspected child maltreatment. Given that the process often is the punishment, organizations need to start developing a process to handle those inquiries as part of their mandated reporting process.

To get more information about developing that process, check out the book that Tom Rawlings and I wrote about child protection policies, or our checklist for responding to significant claims.