A bill in Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives would require schools to include child abuse awareness and prevention in their curriculum, aiming to educate students from a young age.
Abbie Newman, CEO of Mission Kids Child Advocacy Center in Norristown, testified in support of the bill during a hearing before the House Children and Youth Committee. She emphasized the urgency of early education. “We need to educate children when they are young. Sometimes by second grade, it’s already too late, and they’ve already been abused. But if they hear the program, we can help them,” Newman said.
This legislation, introduced by Rep. Mary Jo Daley (D-Montgomery), aims to address a gap in child protection education. While similar laws are already in place in over half of U.S. states, Pennsylvania has not yet passed such a mandate. Daley’s bill, House Bill 460, would require the Department of Education to collaborate with other state agencies, likely the Department of Human Services, to create an age-appropriate curriculum for students from kindergarten to high school.
Tuesday’s hearing did not include votes, but was an informational session with expert testimony. This is the farthest the bill has advanced, with versions introduced in every legislative session since 2019.
Ryan Kline, a legislative researcher, noted that the bill is still a work in progress. “We want to make sure we get this right,” he said, adding that the legislation could undergo changes as it moves forward.
Advocates for the bill stress the importance of involving experts, such as local child advocacy centers, to help develop and deliver the curriculum. Their involvement could prevent unintended consequences, like traumatizing students or overburdening teachers, they argued. The bill’s supporters also suggested modeling the program after evidence-based initiatives, such as the Safe and Healthy Communities program, which was recently highlighted in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The program, which was implemented in five Pennsylvania counties from 2018 to 2020, successfully reduced reports of child sexual abuse, according to research. Nearly 15,000 second graders were reached, along with over 14,000 adults through training and public education campaigns.
While many experts support the bill, some raised concerns about its implementation. Benjamin Levi, a professor at Penn State College of Medicine, cautioned that the timeline for launching the program may be too ambitious. “This is too important an issue,” Levi said. “We need to be careful, deliberate, and evidence-based.”
Levi also warned that a spike in child abuse reports could overwhelm the state’s ChildLine reporting system. He noted that ChildLine currently has half the staff of similar services in Illinois and Michigan, which have comparable populations.
The bill’s supporters and experts agree that more time and resources are needed to ensure the program is effective without unintended negative effects.
