About This Webinar
This webinar will show how schools can move beyond mandatory reporting towards mandatory supporting practices that truly protect children and strengthen families. This session highlights why the current reporting framework often fails to provide safety and can unintentionally cause harm, especially for Black and Brown families and communities.
Educators have a “front row seat” to students and the challenges their families often face. JMACforFamilies is excited that AFT is already using and building on the mandatory supporting framework, created by our Executive Director, Joyce McMillan. AFT’s Nobody Wins: Educators’ Perspectives on Mandatory Reporting report shows how educators feel caught between legal mandates and their ethical commitment to students, often acting out of fear of penalties rather than confidence in supportive alternatives. This webinar responds directly to those realities.
Participants will explore the core principles of mandatory supporting, including preventing unnecessary reports to CPS. The session emphasizes family support approaches that address underlying needs like housing instability, unmet educational supports, or access to services (without defaulting to family separation).
This participatory presentation gives practical guidance for schools seeking to build systems rooted in trust, prevention, and equity, and attendees will leave with a clearer understanding of how legislation, school practice, and ethical responsibility can align to keep families safely together while promoting student well-being.
Want more sessions to choose from? Check out all of the free, for-credit webinars in Share My Lesson's Summer of Learning 2026 series.
Executive Summary via ON24 AI:
The webinar argues that current mandated reporter training often misleads educators into viewing CPS reporting as the default path to child safety, despite CPS operating primarily as an investigative, policing-style system that can be invasive and traumatic for families. The speakers trace mandatory reporting’s expansion through CAPTA and the inclusion of “neglect,” which they contend frequently conflates poverty with maltreatment and disproportionately impacts Black and Native families; they cite low substantiation rates—about 20% overall in New York State and about 10% for educator-initiated reports—as evidence of overreporting that overwhelms agencies, erodes trust in professionals, and diverts resources from families who truly need help.
They frame family separation as costly and harmful, drawing parallels between foster care and incarceration, and call for a shift from “mandatory reporting” to “mandatory supporting,” prioritizing concrete resources and community-based services whenever safe and appropriate.
The session highlights New York policy wins (shortening time on the state registry and requiring stronger evidence standards; ending anonymous reporting to reduce weaponization) and outlines pending efforts to reduce penalties that drive fear-based reporting and to fund grassroots, trusted supports through a Child and Family Well-being Fund.
Practical guidance for schools includes aligning district practices with state legal thresholds, being transparent with families about reporting obligations, partnering with culturally responsive community organizations, and proactively connecting families to supports (e.g., food, laundry, resource events) to reduce unnecessary CPS involvement while protecting children’s rights.
The conversation is important and ever present. I will certainly take these principles and ideas back to my team.