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Comment by eba7keb | Hacker News Reader

To clarify, a mandated reporter is a person who has to disclose child abuse if a child is in danger. I think this is an important protection for children. These are the same standards any psychologist, therapist, school, pediatrician etc. are held to. All those service providers are mandated reporters.

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Both "danger" and "abuse" are open for interpretation, and some people take "better safe than sorry" to an unhealthy extreme. Your response suggests to me that this is the case with you.

Even if there is a problem, how is it not better to address that? If the parents don't feel safe, they will avoid all those service providers. The kids don't get help if using the service providers is too risky for the parents.

There are actually really clear guidelines on what is reportable and what is not. CPS generally can't and won't do anything beyond take a call if the content of the call doesn't suggest a valid safety concern and meet the guidelines. Any parent talking to any service provider (or educator or doctor) will be talking to someone who follows these same guidelines.

LOL. Maybe.

In any case, there will be no talking if the parent would need to trust you but doesn't. That doesn't help kids.

You can't change the law, but you can avoid having identity information to report. Parts of the solution probably involve non-attributable cryptocurrency and tor browsers.

Thanks for your input!

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