SECTION 1.

 The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(a) When a mandatory reporter is required to report a child’s exposure to domestic violence, the fact that a child witnessed domestic violence or was present during a domestic violence incident, far too often non-violent, protective survivor parents are charged with neglect, which discourages non-violent those survivor parents from seeking services and support. Paradoxically, abuse survivors are treated as culpable as the abusive parent survivor parents are often treated as responsible for the violence they seek to escape and can lose custody of their children at the point when they seek help escaping violence. The abusive parent is often aware of this false equivalency and threatens reporting or makes bad-faith reports. help.

(b) The mandatory reporting to child welfare of abused survivor parents has increased unnecessary state intrusion and the needless removal of children from their non-abusive traumatic separation of a child from their survivor parent, even as studies show that experiencing abuse does not compromise an abuse a survivor’s ability to effectively parent.

(c) Children are frequently removed from the non-abusive survivor parent and placed in foster care, although the harms of separation from a non-abusive survivor parent are well established.

(d) “Failure to protect” laws operate contrary to research findings, which show that the best ways to keep a child who has been exposed to domestic violence safe are to help the non-offending survivor parent be safe and to support the abused that parent’s ability to engage in a nurturing relationship with the child. Indeed, the child’s continued relationship with the abused survivor parent is the most critical resiliency factor and predictor of lifetime positive outcomes for a child who has witnessed domestic violence.

(e) Mandatory reporting also disproportionately surveils and investigates low-income Black, Latino, and indigenous families. One in three children nationwide, and half of Black children, experience a child welfare investigation during childhood. Additionally, mandated reporting has negative impacts on linguistically marginalized communities, particularly with Asian and Pacific Islander families, who experience their children being unnecessarily detained due to cultural and linguistic barriers and misunderstandings. These families are also often ordered to complete programs that are not available or have limited availability in their primary language, which adversely affects and prolongs the period of family separation and their legal cases. The racial discrimination of the child welfare system reflects prevalence and vectors of inequality, produces mass insecurity in neighborhoods of color, and results in racialized family separations.

(f) This section is not meant to apply to how a child witnessing abuse or neglect or residing in a home where domestic violence occurs might be the fact that a child witnessed domestic violence or was present during a domestic violence incident is relevant to a determination of custody or visitation or the issuance of a domestic violence restraining order under the Family Code.