Witnesses urge clearer goals, more practitioner input for S.239 working group on mandated reporting

Teresa Wood convened the Human Services Committee to take testimony on S.239, an act to create a child abuse and neglect reporting working group, and to consider who should be represented on it.

Ellen Amstets, director of the Vermont Parent Child Center Network, told the committee the network operates 15 centers statewide and that its staff are mandated reporters. She said the centers currently work with “at least 500 families that have open DCF protective services cases” and urged the working group to study how other states handle mandated reporting, to clarify the bill’s expected outcomes and to allow adequate time for a thorough review.

"It's absolutely necessary and good timing to do this," Amstets said, adding that parent-child centers can provide qualitative data and family-centered perspectives even if they do not sit on the working group itself.

Ian Trambulak, counseling director at Memorial Union High School and a board member of the Vermont School Counselor Association, asked the committee to include school counselors among stakeholders the working group consults. He described school counselors as licensed, master’s-level professionals often first to hear disclosures of student trauma and urged that policy development reflect school-based practice.

Trambulak described routine training in schools — annual refresher modules through platforms such as Vector Solutions that commonly take two to three hours — but said state-specific legal training is uneven. "There is a sort of air on the side of caution approach," he said, and estimated that a large share of reports "do not get taken up for investigation," a dynamic that can strain therapeutic relationships with students.

Jay Nichols, senior executive director of the Vermont Principals Association, told the committee that schools typically provide some form of mandatory-reporting training and recommended that, if the committee adds an education representative to the working group, a principal would offer the most direct day-to-day perspective. Nichols and others discussed how districts use different training platforms and model policies, and Nichols warned that past prosecutions tied to reporting practices have made some administrators fearful.

Charlie Gilsner, policy director at the Vermont Network Against Domestic Violence, supported creating a stakeholder working group but urged that it examine the tension between mandatory reporting and access to confidential advocacy. He also recommended the panel review how statutes treat peer-to-peer sexual harm among older youth and whether alternative responses might be more appropriate in some cases.

Committee members repeatedly returned to two technical but consequential topics: definitions and scope. Members asked the working group to prioritize Title 33 provisions the committee cited in testimony — including the statutory sections referenced in committee discussion (49–11, and the definitions and mandated-reporter sections 49–12 and 49–13) — and to identify clear, usable outcomes rather than only producing another report.

No formal votes were taken during the hearing. Chair Teresa Wood said the committee will hold markup sessions on the bill over the next two days and continue outreach to additional perspectives, including clergy and others tied to statutory exemptions.

The committee meeting moved to a break after concluding testimony and public comment; markup is scheduled to follow.