TUSD Child Abuse Reporting Policy
TUSD Child Abuse Reporting Policy
TUSD Child Abuse Reporting Policy
Abuse/Child Protection
Tucson, Arizona
POLICY REGULATION
CODE: JLF R
LEAD DEPARTMENT: Academic
Excellence
The purpose of this regulation is to provide guidelines for all staff and volunteers in
Tucson Unified School District regarding their roles and responsibilities to report child
abuse.
School personnel generally will receive information about possible abuse in one of three
ways:
the child will self report,
physical injury or unusual behavior will be observed,
a third party will disclose the abuse.
Interaction with child prior to report:
In order to minimize the number of times the child victim is interviewed, minimize
disclosure trauma, and insure that the appropriate and most qualified
professionals conduct the investigation, school personnel should not preinterview children.
If the child has not spontaneously provided the following information about the
abuse, only these exact questions may be asked as needed to provide basic
information needed by the Department of Child Safety (DCS) and/or law
enforcement for triage and prioritization:
o What happened?
o Who did it?
o Where were you when it happened?
It is not the job of school personnel to establish beyond a doubt that abuse has
caused the observed injury or behaviors.
It is completely inappropriate for school personnel to gather additional details in
order to respond to anticipated questions by the DCS Hotline worker. The
Hotline workers questions are for the purpose of gathering information that MAY
be known to the person making the call, but is not EXPECTED to be known.
Effort should be made to remember the childs exact words during the disclosure
and write them down afterward.
In the case of third party reports (someone tells school personnel that a child has
been maltreated), the school personnel should make a report based on the
information provided and should not call in the child for an interview.
School personnel shall maintain confidentiality of all information regarding the
abuse report, except when such information is requested by DCS, law
enforcement, or the County Attorney.
JLF-R-ReportingChildAbuse/ChildProtection 4-24-15FR
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JLF-R-ReportingChildAbuse/ChildProtection 4-24-15FR
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