§20990 National Registry of Substantiated Cases of Child Abuse

Summary

The Secretary of Health and Human Services must create a national electronic registry of substantiated cases of child abuse or neglect, after talking with the Attorney General. States and Indian tribes must send the information to the Secretary, and a State may choose to have its counties or other local units send it. The registry will hold central electronic records on people found to have committed substantiated child abuse or neglect. The data must be about substantiated reports only. If a State or tribe already has an equivalent electronic register, the information sent must match that register. The Secretary will require a standard electronic format and the entries will be limited to the perpetrator’s name and the nature of the substantiated case, and must follow clauses (viii) and (ix) of section 5106a(b)(2)(A) of title 42. States, tribes, and local governments do not have to change their own existing child abuse records. Only federal, state, tribal, or local government entities, or their agents, that need the information to protect children may access the national registry. The Secretary must write rules for how the registry shares information, following the same clauses of title 42. The Secretary must also study how to set data standards and recommend costs, current practices, model standards, and a due process procedure. The Secretary of Homeland Security must send the study’s findings and recommendations to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce no later than 1 year after July 27, 2006. Up to $500,000 is authorized for fiscal years 2006 and 2007 to carry out that study.