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Legislators adopt study to revise Arkansas child-abuse hotline procedures
Summary
A joint Senate and House committee adopted Interim Study Proposal 2025-087 directing a review of the state child-abuse hotline’s acceptance criteria, mandatory reporting and subsequent investigation procedures; the motion was moved by Rep. Mary Bentley and carried without a recorded roll-call in the transcript.
A joint session of the Senate Committee on Children and Youth and the House Committee on Aging, Children and Youth, and Legislative Affairs voted Wednesday to adopt Interim Study Proposal 2025-087, directing a formal review of Arkansas’s child-abuse hotline procedures.
Representative Mary Bentley moved to adopt ISP 2025-087, which the meeting record describes as a study “to study the revision of existing procedures governing the child abuse hotline and subsequent investigations of alleged child maltreatment; and the creation of a more standardized procedure for the acceptance or non-acceptance of a report of alleged child maltreatment to the child abuse hotline, mandatory reporting of suspected child maltreatment to the child abuse hotline, and subsequent investigations of alleged child maltreatment.” Representative Rick McClure seconded the motion, and the record states the motion carried; the transcript does not include a roll-call tally.
Why it matters: the ISP would establish a legislative study of hotline intake and investigative practices, potentially changing how reports are classified and how mandatory reporters are directed to act. Committee minutes indicate the adoption was procedural and does not itself change agency policy; it directs a study that may recommend statutory or administrative changes.
The motion was recorded on the meeting agenda and taken up after the committee approved prior minutes and an appointment to the Child Maltreatment Investigations Oversight Committee. The transcript does not state a timeline for the interim study’s work, who will staff it, or when findings will be reported back to the committees.
Next steps: the committee record shows the ISP was adopted and the meeting continued with agency reports. The transcript does not record further debate, an assigned sponsor beyond the motion, or a deadline for the study’s completion.
