It Is Better to Be Safe than Sorry When Reporting to DHS
Video Transcribed: When should you call DHS? My name is Brian L. Jackson. I am an Oklahoma father’s rights lawyer here with Dads.Law, where fathers are not disposable.
I want to talk to you guys today about when you need to be calling DHS. From a starting standpoint, you should understand that any citizen of this state is a mandatory reporter if they have direct knowledge or have reason to believe that child abuse or child neglect is going on towards a particular child. So what does that mean to you? Well, if you have a legitimate belief or direct knowledge that any adult in your child’s life has abused them and also other children have abused them, so things like if the child has suspicious marks if the child tells you anything that is disturbing like they were hit, they were frightened, somebody did something inappropriate, you witness some obvious ones, you would witness criminal behavior or that’s dangerous to the child.
For example, somebody’s driving around with a child in the car and they’re intoxicated. Those are all examples of mandatory reports. Generally, it’s any time the child is placed in peril, either abusively or neglectfully, you have to report it. Any time you’re looking at withholding due to the threat of harm to the child or you’re thinking about filing an emergency, the first thing you should be doing before you do anything else, is calling DHS. Call DHS. Because if the situation requires extraordinary action by the court, it is a situation that requires a report to DHS. And understand if you don’t report it, that is actually a problem for you. At a minimum, it could result in a negative adjudication against you in child welfare court, but it also could be a crime. Failure to report child abuse is a criminal misdemeanor, and you don’t want that to be you.
So if you think something’s going on and you have a good faith belief, even if it turns out to be incorrect later, better to be safe than sorry. Now, this is not to say that you willy nilly call DHS anytime something upsets you or whatever, because that can also cause a problem and lead to issues that you don’t need to deal with. But if you really do believe there is a problem, call DHS. That should be your first phone call, even before your lawyer.
In that situation, you definitely do want to get a lawyer. And one place you can find a good Tulsa CPS investigation attorney is Dads.Law, where fathers are not disposable.
