The Case for Mandatory Supporting

A mother in Chicago lost her children not because she harmed them, but because her apartment’s heat had gone out in the middle of winter. She wrapped her kids in coats and walked them across the street to a neighbor’s apartment to keep them warm overnight. By morning, Child Protective Services was at her door. The children were removed for neglect.

She didn’t need surveillance. She needed heat.

The Myth of Safety: What We’re Told vs. What Actually Happens

The public is told that mandatory reporting protects children, that involuntary psychiatric holds prevent suicide, that Adult Protective Services safeguard elders, and that police wellness checks stop tragedies before they unfold. These interventions are framed as lifelines, as if they are the only way to keep people safe.

But when you look closer, a different story emerges.

The majority of child welfare cases are not about physical or sexual abuse. They are about neglect. And neglect is overwhelmingly tied to poverty: broken utilities, housing instability, missed childcare, inadequate medical care. None of these conditions are solved by surveillance or removal.

Mandatory reporting does not fix poverty. It criminalizes it.

When Protection Turns Punitive

The same pattern repeats in mental health. Involuntary hospitalization often leaves patients more traumatized than before. Nearly 40% of people describe their hold as harmful or unnecessary. Black and brown clients are disproportionately subjected to police transport, physical restraint, and forced sedation — practices that echo punishment more than care.

In elder care, Adult Protective Services investigations can end in forced institutionalization, accelerating cognitive decline, depression, and early death. Families lose autonomy, and older adults lose their communities — all in the name of protection.

What these interventions consistently protect are not people, but systems: agencies from liability, practitioners from moral culpability, and states from addressing structural harm.

Care or Control? The Carceral Roots of Helping Systems

Liberation psychology, developed by Ignacio Martín-Baró during El Salvador’s civil war, argued that mental health cannot be separated from power. Systems designed to “help” often reproduce oppression when they rely on coercion instead of collaboration.

Mandatory reporting and involuntary holds were built alongside prisons, policing, and surveillance. Their function is not only care but also control. They ask: how do we contain people deemed risky? Not: what would help people thrive?

And here’s the paradox: the nervous system doesn’t regulate because a form was filled out. It regulates in relationship, in trust, in connection. Yet the very systems tasked with safety routinely sever those conditions.

Toward a Different Model: Mandated Supporting

Alternatives already exist.

JMACforFamilies is pioneering a framework called Mandated Supporting. Instead of defaulting to reports and investigations, practitioners are trained to respond with collaborative safety planning that starts on day one.

This approach asks different questions:

• Who do you trust when things feel unsafe?

• What community, faith, or cultural practices help you cope?

• What kind of support feels like safety to you?

The answers to these questions build living safety plans that adapt over time. They are rooted in dignity, culture, and agency — not just institutional checkboxes.

Evidence That Connection Works

This isn’t just an ideal. It’s backed by research.

Peer-run crisis respite centers have been shown to reduce hospitalization rates while increasing empowerment and trust. Collaborative safety planning interventions cut suicide attempts without coercion. Culturally adapted therapy and community-driven care models consistently show better outcomes for marginalized populations.

The lesson is clear: bodies don’t calm down from being watched. They calm down from being believed.

Why This Shift Matters Now

In 2019 alone, 4.4 million reports were made to child welfare. Over half were unsubstantiated — but the families were still surveilled, investigated, and stigmatized. In mental health, the overuse of involuntary holds continues to fracture trust between providers and the very communities most in need of care.

Every time we conflate surveillance with safety, we risk making crisis worse. We retraumatize those already vulnerable. We break down the trust needed to build healing relationships.

Final Reflection: From Surveillance to Solidarity

The mother in Chicago didn’t need a case file. She needed heat.

Until our systems can answer the simplest questions — How can we keep you and your kids safe tonight? What support would actually help? — we aren’t practicing care. We’re managing liability and calling it protection.

Real safety doesn’t come from reports, holds, or investigations. It comes from solidarity, from trusting communities, from practices that restore dignity.

Liberation psychology calls us to reimagine care not as control, but as connection. If we want systems that truly keep people safe, we need to move from mandatory reporting to mandated supporting — from carceral care to collective care.

Because surveillance will never heal a nervous system. But solidarity just might.