Mandatory Reporting
50-State Comparison of Mandatory Reporting Laws
A mandatory reporter is a person who is legally required to make a report of suspected child abuse or neglect. In many states, including Colorado, people often have questions about mandatory reporting laws. For years, the Office of the Colorado Child Protection Ombudsman (CPO) has received questions from mandatory reporters who are unclear on what Colorado law requires them to do.
In 2022, Colorado’s Mandatory Reporting Task Force was created through legislation. The task force was created and placed within the CPO. The task force is tasked with analyzing 19 specific policy considerations regarding child abuse, neglect and legal requirements for mandatory reporters. The task force was also charged with analyzing best practices regarding these policies, as well as analyzing the disproportionate impact of mandatory reporting on under-resourced communities, communities of color, and people with disabilities.
To aid the task force in this analysis, the CPO has created this 50-State comparison of mandatory reporting laws. The CPO has also created a resource that captures which groups in each state are required in statute to be mandatory reporters. To view this resource as a PDF click here, and to access a spreadsheet of this resource, click here.
This resource was prepared by the CPO’s Public Policy Analyst Bryan Kelley, who can be contacted by email.
Resource Guide
Below, you will find questions regarding mandatory reporting, child abuse and neglect and related laws in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Please note that research for this resource was completed in December 2023, and will not be updated. When you click on a question, you will see a map that presents how each state answers that question in its laws. When you click a state, a new box will appear with both a quote of the statute that provides the answer to the question, and a full citation of where that portion of state statute can be found. Each map contains a legend that explains what each color indicates. Clicking on the button labeled “Additional Info” will let you learn more about the trends found in law, the CPO’s data collection process and some important context for fully understanding the information presented in the map. You can also download a spreadsheet containing all the information used to create the map by clicking the “Download Data” button.
The CPO would like to thank and acknowledge Child Welfare Information Gateway for having collected state law information in the past; their resources were a valuable starting point for this work.