On July 28, the Health and Human Services Task Force of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) voted unanimously to endorse model legislation to require confidential reporting to child abuse hotlines.

The model, drafted by the Parental Rights Foundation and their allies, would put an end to anonymous hotline reports, which too often are used to “weaponize” the system.

Children's Rights issues a landmark report calling on child welfare to stop unnecessary state involvement in the lives of Black families, dramatically reduce the number of children entering state foster care and prevent the numerous harms that systems impose on Black youth. One of the key strategies identified in the report is ending anonymous child abuse reporting.

"Asking neighbors and friends to spy on their communities and report back to a big brother agency is not the cure-all to the problem of child abuse that CDHS seems to think that it is. Not only will CDHS waste more resources to screen out the call, which has a high probability of happening, but that neighbor has now undermined their relationship with a family they were probably just trying to help. "

"Each year, about 3.4 million calls are made to these state-run phone lines. Tragically, only a fraction of these calls are made by trained professionals reporting actual abuse or neglect. The others are made, often anonymously, by people who don’t know what constitutes abuse (or, more nefariously, by those who want to punish the parent). But because child protective service agencies are required to act, these calls can result in innocent parents losing their kids, tangling families in a complicated system."