Harvard Legal Aid Bureau Partners with Boston Medical Center for Child Abuse Reporting Training | News

The Harvard Legal Aid Bureau launched a partnership with Boston Medical Center in April to educate the hospital’s residents about their legal responsibilities as mandated reporters of child abuse.

Created by Harvard Law School legal aid student volunteers, the project aims to minimize the number of families falsely reported by mandatory reporters to the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families for abuse or neglect.

HLAB Clinical Fellow Erin M. Hegarty, who leads the initiative, said unfounded allegations of child abuse are frequently reported to DCF, placing a strain on the agency’s time and resources.

HLS clinical instructor Elizabeth Tuttle Newman added that “due to the high volume of cases in Massachusetts, it can take months, if not years, for parents to assert their rights in court and have their children returned to their care.”

Hegarty and her team, including three clinical instructors – Tuttle Newman, Jacob Chin and Stephanie E. Goldenhersh – worked with Ariana Witkin, a member of BMC’s child protection team, to develop a training program on the duties of interns as mandated reporters.

Tuttle Newman said she hopes the program will help “educate practitioners about the real harm this system causes to families.”

“The goal,” Hegarty added, “is to reduce the number of families that ever have to come into contact with the system.”

The first iteration of the training, held on April 30, walked health professionals through the legal definitions and their duties as reporters, clarified the cases that are not reportable, and focused on concrete skill building to support families who do have been reported to the DCF.

Hegarty said HLAB and BMC are working on a more comprehensive training program for the coming year, which will be included as a mandatory component of the BMC curriculum.

A BMC spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Goldenhersh, an HLS faculty member who worked with Hegarty on the collaboration, said she believes this training will be critical to supporting families in Massachusetts.

“We are expanding the way we support families and how we help parents maintain and improve safe family environments for their children, often when they find themselves in difficult circumstances,” Goldenhersh said.

Because the partnership is still fresh, Goldenhersh said HLAB will collect data on the training program’s impact on DCF reporting, adding that she hopes the BMC partnership expands into something larger.

“It’s an incredible start to a relationship. I’m really excited to see how it grows. I think it will influence the way we develop different types of partnerships with community stakeholders,” she said.