From Mandated Reporters to Mandated Supporters: Educators Rebuilding Safety to Challenge the Family Policing System

• In Event: Building Abolitionist Futures in Education Now: Critical Engagements with Freedom, Belonging, and Police-Free Schools

Abstract

This paper presents explores he urgent need for educators to challenge the family policing system and to reimagine their role in promoting authentic safety for children and families. The study is situated within a critical socio-political moment marked by increasing recognition of the racialized harms of child welfare surveillance and a broader movement to dismantle carceral systems. It responds to calls from abolitionist educators and organizers to shift from being mandated reporters to becoming mandated supporters—professionals who prioritize care, trust, and relational accountability over punitive surveillance.
The objectives of the study were to (1) examine how educators perceive and navigate their roles within the mandated reporting system; (2) explore alternative frameworks rooted in restorative and transformative justice; and (3) highlight practices that resist the carceral logic embedded in child welfare approaches. Using in-depth interviews and focus groups with educators, social workers, and community organizers, the research draws from critical race theory and abolitionist pedagogies to analyze how institutional practices both reproduce and resist family policing.
Findings reveal that many educators experience tension between their legal obligations and their ethical commitments to students and families. Participants described strategies of resistance, including building deep relationships with families, advocating for material support, and engaging in community-based safety planning. The data underscores the need for structural shifts in educator training, school policy, and social work partnerships that emphasize healing, mutual aid, and restorative justice.
This research contributes to the growing discourse on abolition in education and argues for a redefinition of safety that centers care, not control. It invites educators to embrace their power as transformative agents in dismantling systems of surveillance and punishment, and to imagine new futures rooted in support, solidarity, and collective care.

Author

• Erica R. Meiners, Northeastern Illinois University