West Virginia Code 49-2-809 – Reporting procedures
(a) Reports of child abuse and neglect pursuant to this article shall be made immediately to the department of child protective services by a method established by the Bureau for Social Services: Provided, That if the method for reporting is web-based, the Bureau for Social Services shall maintain a system for addressing emergency situations that require immediate attention and shall be followed by a written report within 48 hours if so requested by the receiving agency. The Bureau for Social Services shall establish and maintain a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week telephone number to receive calls reporting suspected or known child abuse or neglect.
Terms Used In West Virginia Code 49-2-809
- child: means an individual who meets one of the following conditions:
(A) Is under thirteen years of age. See West Virginia Code 49-1-202
- child abuse or neglect: means any act or omission that creates an abused child or a neglected child as those terms are defined in this section. See West Virginia Code 49-1-201
- Joint committee: Committees including membership from both houses of teh legislature. Joint committees are usually established with narrow jurisdictions and normally lack authority to report legislation.
- Serious physical abuse: means bodily injury which creates a substantial risk of death, causes serious or prolonged disfigurement, prolonged impairment of health, or prolonged loss or impairment of the function of any bodily organ. See West Virginia Code 49-1-201
- Sexual abuse: means :
(A) Sexual intercourse, sexual intrusion, sexual contact, or conduct proscribed by §. See West Virginia Code 49-1-201
(b) The department shall have a redundancy for its system in the event of an outage to receive reports. This redundancy system shall be transparent, meaning that it shall allow for reporting in the same means as if the outage had not occurred and no time delay shall occur from when the outage occurs to when the redundancy system begins to operate. This redundancy system shall be operational no later than July 1, 2023. If the department contends that it currently has a redundancy system, it shall describe the system, provide an operational date for the system, and explain why calls to centralized intake were unanswered to the Joint Committee on Government and Finance by July 1, 2023.
(c) A copy of any report of serious physical abuse, sexual abuse, or assault shall be forwarded by the department to the appropriate law-enforcement agency, the prosecuting attorney, or the coroner or medical examiner’s office. All reports under this article are confidential. Reports of known or suspected institutional child abuse or neglect shall be made and received as all other reports made pursuant to this article.
(d) The department shall annually submit a report in an electronic format, via the legislative webpage, on July 1 to the Joint Committee on Government and Finance, which shall contain: How many calls were made to centralized intake on a per county basis, how many calls were referred to centralized intake on a per county basis, how many calls were screened out centralized intake on a per county basis, and the time from referral to investigation on a per county basis.