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Dentists have legal and moral obligations to notify the appropriate authorities if there is a well-founded suspicion that a child has suffered harm resulting from neglect and/or abuse.

The Department of Family and Community Services has an online tool, the Mandatory Reporter Guide. The MRG is a Structured Decision Making (®SDM) tool.  It aims to assist the reporter to:

• determine whether a report to the Child Protection Helpline is needed to progress concerns about possible abuse or neglect of a child or young person; and/or
• identify alternative supports for vulnerable children, young people and their families.

It consists of a series of prompts intended to complement your professional judgment and critical thinking as a mandatory reporter and does not prevent you from taking any course of action you believe is appropriate.

• The MRG focus is on the most critical pieces of information required to facilitate the decision at hand through a set of ‘decision trees’ and definitions.
• It works by posing specific questions in each decision tree that help you work systematically through the issues relating to your concerns about a child or young person.
• At the end of each decision tree process, a decision report will guide you as to what action to take.

The MRG is reviewed regularly to reflect legislative, policy and practice changes, and incorporates feedback from government, non-government mandatory reporters. 

Additional guidance may be obtained from:

https://reporter.childstory.nsw.gov.au/s/article/Guide-To-Selecting-A-Decision-Tree

https://reporter.childstory.nsw.gov.au/s/

The DBA outlines our responsibilities to children and young persons under our care in the “Code of Conduct”.  https://www.ahpra.gov.au/Resources/Code-of-conduct/Shared-Code-of-conduct.aspx

More resources and information on reporting suspected child abuse can be obtained from the Australian Institute of Family Studies:   https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/publications/mandatory-reporting-child-abuse-and-neglect