Mental health professionals have evidenced deficiencies in reporting child maltreatment, including knowledge about mandatory reporting laws, ability to accurately identify child maltreatment, child maltreatment reporting intentions, and clinical expertise in reporting child maltreatment (e.g., utilization of best practices in the management of clients throughout the reporting process). Therefore, the purposes of the given study were to develop and initially validate three inventories (i.e., Knowledge of Child Maltreatment Laws Screening Tool, Recognition of Child Maltreatment Screening Tool, and Clinical Expertise in Reporting Child Maltreatment Screening Tool) to assess reporting competence in mental health professionals and graduate students. Multistage validation supports the initial reliability and validity of the developed screening tools. Future directions regarding the utilization of these instruments are discussed
