Crimes: mandated reporters: severe neglect.

Plain English Breakdown

The official source material does not specify exact reporting timelines for professionals.

Rules for Reporting Child Severe Neglect

AB-1566 updates how certain professionals must report severe child neglect and revises what 'severe neglect' means under the law.

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 severe malnutrition or medically diagnosed nonorganic failure to thrive, or situations where the child's health is endangered due to lack of adequate food, clothing, shelter, or medical care.
• Requires teachers, social workers, and other professionals to report if they know or reasonably suspect severe neglect has occurred.
• Makes it against the law for these professionals not to report known cases of abuse or severe neglect.
• Specifies that hiding a failure to report can be punished up to four years after the incident is discovered.

Who It Names or Affects

• Teachers and social workers who must report child abuse or severe neglect.
• People in charge of children, like parents or guardians, if they fail to protect them from serious harm.

Terms To Know

mandated reporters

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

severe neglect

When a person in charge of a child fails to protect them from serious harm, such as severe malnutrition or medically diagnosed nonorganic failure to thrive, or situations where the child's health is endangered due to lack of adequate food, clothing, shelter, or medical care.

Limits and Unknowns

• The bill does not specify how long after an incident professionals must report it.
• It is unclear if the bill will change how often these reports are checked by law enforcement.

Official Summary Text

AB 1566, as introduced, 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