[T]he Vermont House gave preliminary approval Thursday to a bill that proposes reform to wide-ranging aspects of Vermont’s child protection system.
S.9, which passed on an overwhelming voice vote, is poised to leave the House with strengthened sections on mandatory reporting and risk of harm, but without changes to the crime of cruelty to a child.
The bill evolved from a legislative committee that met last summer to investigate Vermont’s child protection system after the deaths of two toddlers who had been in contact with the Department for Children and Families. It passed the Senate last month.
Four House committees dedicated time to the bill, with the bulk of the changes coming from the Human Services and Judiciary committees. Between the two committees, legislators heard from close to 100 witnesses, according to the chairs.
The House Judiciary Committee altered the bill to clarify the roles and responsibilities of mandatory reporters — generally, people who work with children who are required to report suspected incidents of child abuse or neglect.
That section, in part, responds to testimony about mandatory reporting from the family of a Milton teen who committed suicide after a hazing ritual.
“These changes will go a long way to making it safer, better, and making our families feel secure when they send their children off to our schools,” Rep. Ron Hubert, R-Milton, said on the House floor.
Rep. Maxine Grad, D-Moretown, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said after the vote that many of the changes made in the House address child protection more effectively than making a new criminal law.
“Changing the mandated reporter section is perhaps as powerful, more powerful in terms of protecting children, than perhaps a new crime,” Grad said.
Rep. Ann Pugh, D-South Burlington, who chairs the House Human Services Committee, said that bill takes steps to address structural changes that were revealed by investigations into the deaths of two toddlers last year.
“Those two cases were not an anomaly, in the sense of challenges in the system,” Pugh said, citing high caseloads and lack of communication between parties involved in child protection cases.
“This is not the end, this is the beginning,” she said.
The bill makes a range of changes to the current system, including limiting the scope of special investigative units to cases involving sexual crimes and egregious child abuse, and attempting to break down so-called “silos” that inhibit communication between parties in the child abuse system and opening access to the adult abuse registry.
Concern for accountability
Before the vote Thursday, Public Safety Commissioner Keith Flynn told the House Judiciary Committee that it’s time for lawmakers to look at the current criminal laws about child protection and consider “making a change to our present situation and the pressures that we’ll face as we move forward.”
Flynn noted that the recent strains on the child protection system are linked to the influx of opiate use in Vermont — a different pressure than when the law was originally drafted.
“We are seeing an involvement of drugs … like I haven’t seen in the time that I’ve been in law enforcement,” Flynn said.
The Human Services Committee removed from the bill a controversial provision that passed the Senate that would have created a new crime of failure to protect a child. House Judiciary further altered the bill to return to the current statute on cruelty to a child.
Grad said that her committee decided to leave the law on cruelty to a child as is, preserving a recent Supreme Court interpretation.
However, the committee is weighing the option of proposing a new criminal section of the bill as a floor amendment or when the bill goes to conference committee. Final House approval is expected Friday.
The committee believes the bill needs to address accountability, Grad said.
