May Child Protective Services Caseworkers Be Criminally Liable for Endangering a Child?
Child protective services caseworkers have questioned whether they could be held criminally liable for failure to act to protect a child. Most reviewers of criminal liability of child protective service workers state that the reasonable exercise of professional judgment cannot create criminal liability. For example, in People v. Dossinger 55 , indictments charging three social workers with various counts of official misconduct and endangering the welfare of a child were dismissed. In dismissing the indictments, a New York Supreme Court ruled that the: evidence presented before the Grand Jury served as nothing more than the substitution of the People’s witnesses’ judgment as to how they would have exercised their discretion in several isolated cases concerning alleged neglected children as opposed to the manner in which the defendants’ elected to act. This Court views the testimony of the People’s witnesses as merely a difference of opinion concerning the exercise of a discretionary fun
