Child Abuse Registry

The Child Abuse Registry is a database maintained by individual states that contains records of child abuse and neglect. Individual state agencies such as their Department of Human Services, Social Services, Children and Family Services, etc. are required to maintain records when receiving reports of child abuse/neglect.

This prevents individuals who have abused or neglected children from being in a position where they could do it again. Some states, such as Florida, New York, and North Carolina, to name a few, will not release results to a third party agent, so we are not able to get this information from every state. Each state that does maintain an accessible registry has different requirements.

All start with a form that must be filled out by the subject. Common fields on each form include full name, any previous/alias names, current and past addresses within the state, DOB, SSN, and sometimes the names of spouses and children. Most, if not all, also ask for the purpose of this search. It typically should be for individuals who will be working with children.

Some forms need to be notarized, some can only be accepted with the original form signed with physical ink. Others require an associated fee to be sent along with the form in order to conduct the search via money order or online payment.

Once the subject fills out the form and sends it back to us, we send it out to the individual state’s agency by their preferred method, along with the sometimes associated fee. After, we wait for results stating whether our subject has ever been reported for child abuse and/or neglect. Most states have a long turnaround time in returning results.