Crimes: mandated reporters: severe neglect.

Plain English Breakdown

The bill summary and digest do not specify the exact new definition for 'severe neglect', only that it will be recast.

Rules for Reporting Child Severe Neglect

AB-1566 changes how certain professionals must report severe child neglect and extends the time they can be punished if they do not report it.

What This Bill Does

• Defines 'severe neglect' as when a person in charge of a child fails to protect them from serious harm, such as lack of food or medical care.
• Requires certain professionals, like teachers and social workers, to report severe neglect if they know about it in their job.
• Makes it a crime for these professionals not to report known cases of severe neglect.
• Allows law enforcement to charge someone who does not report severe neglect up to four years after the incident was discovered.

Who It Names or Affects

• Teachers and social workers who are required to report child abuse or neglect.
• People who take care of children and might be guilty of severe neglect.

Terms To Know

mandated reporters

Professionals like teachers and social workers who must report when they know about child abuse or severe neglect.

severe neglect

When a person in charge of a child fails to protect them from serious harm, such as lack of food or medical care.

Limits and Unknowns

• The bill does not specify the exact new definition for 'severe neglect'.
• It is unclear when this law will officially start because there is no effective date listed.
• This bill has been passed by the legislature but it needs further action before becoming a law.

Official Summary Text

AB 1566, as amended, Jackson.
Crimes: mandated reporters: severe neglect.
Existing law, the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act, makes certain persons, including teachers and social workers, mandated reporters. Under existing law, mandated reporters are required to report whenever the mandated reporter, in their professional capacity or within the scope of their employment, has knowledge of or observes a child whom the mandated reporter knows or reasonably suspects has been the victim of child abuse or neglect. Failure by a mandated reporter to report an incident of known or reasonably suspected child abuse or neglect is a misdemeanor. Existing law, for the purposes of the act, defines “severe neglect” as the negligent failure of a person having the care or custody of a child to protect the child from severe malnutrition or medically diagnosed nonorganic failure to thrive, as well as those situations of neglect where any person having the care or custody
of a child willfully causes or permits the person or health of the child to be placed in a situation such that their person or health is endangered as proscribed by specified law, including the intentional failure to provide adequate food, clothing, shelter, or medical care.
Under existing law, prosecution of a misdemeanor must generally be commenced within one year of the commission of the offense, unless otherwise specified. Under existing law, if a mandated reporter intentionally conceals their failure to report an incident known by the mandated reporter to be abuse or severe neglect, it is a continuing offense until discovered by the appropriate law enforcement agency and may be prosecuted within one year of the discovery of the offense, but not later than 4 years after the commission of the offense.
This bill would recast the definition of “severe neglect” for the purposes described above.

Current Bill Text

Download Bill PDF