Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Child Abuse legislation in Oregon

We have an abnormal amount of legislation running through Salem right now regarding Child Abuse.

There's Senate bill 203, which deals with the statute of limitations in reporting child abuse. It states that the statute applies only to when the offense is reported to the Department of Human Services, instead of some other government entity (if you told your teacher, it counted). It clears up a loophole that was exposed in a court case last year.

Senate bill 755 requires schools to release disciplinary records of employees convicted of certain crimes, including sexual offenses. Also requires school workers to report possible child abuse by other employees. Seems ridiculous that this law is required, but it is. The number of teacher sex abuse cases in Oregon is staggering, and this stuff still happens.

Senate bill 947 would require schools to withhold names of children or witnesses if releasing them would compromise their safety. Think about it. This one and the last one meant that the Schools COULDN'T release the records of sex offenders, but they had to release the names of children in fishy situations?

Senate bill 749 requires schools to train employees to spot child abuse.

House bill 2485 makes it a child abuse offense to expose a child to cooking of meth (it's an amendment. The bill does a whole host of things).

Senate Bill 895 and House bill 2335 both deal with how the Dept of Health and Human Services investigates child abuse. You can tell this bill was instigated by organizations that are sympathetic to parents. They both deal with requiring social workers to inform parents of their rights and what any possible allegations are when an investigation is initiated.
The bills are getting opposition from the District Attorneys Association, and considering its influence, the requirement to inform the parents of the allegations upon first contact appears to be dead.
An effort is underway to modify the bills so that at least the social workers to be trained about the rights of families in these situations.

My information on Bill 895 and 2335 comes from OCEAN.

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