Education

CSF’s efforts to address child abuse include developing and disseminating child-safety education.

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Training the Front Line of Child Protection

Recent U.S. government and industry data indicates that professionals are the primary reporters of child abuse and neglect, accounting for 70.9% of reports in 2023 (1). These professionals and mandated reporters include teachers, police officers, lawyers, and social services staff.

United States:

• 22 million healthcare workers (2).

• 3.8 million teachers (3).

• 970,000 childcare workers (4).

• 720,000 police officers (5).

• 1 million mental health providers (6).

In total, these fields include 28.4 million mandated reporters, out of the 258.3 million adults in the U.S. (7). This presents a major opportunity to develop a training program that systematically improves reporting practices for both mandated reporters and the general adult population.

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Theory of Change

As a result of our education program, we theorize that:

• The public will develop a stronger ability to recognize and report child abuse, leading to more informed, actionable reports.

• Child protection will shift from being solely a professional duty to a shared community responsibility, fostering collective vigilance and intervention.

• Unconscious bias and subjective assumptions in reporting will decrease, reducing unnecessary child welfare involvement when intervention is not warranted.

• Child protection agencies will receive higher-quality reports, enabling more efficient resource allocation and ensuring timely responses to children at genuine risk.

• A more informed public will help fill critical gaps caused by high turnover in child welfare, reducing the risk of children falling through the cracks.

• Child protection efforts will strengthen sustainably without requiring constant agency expansion—training more individuals over time will create a resilient, community-driven safety net.

• Systemic change will occur as child safety education becomes widely accessible, expanding the child protection network and strengthening efforts at every level.