Hi, CACI lawyer Tate Lounsbery here and I want to give you a quick tip about how to fill out the form when you’re asking for a child abuse central index grievance hearing.
Now what I want you to do first is look at the form that you got in the mail telling you that you were placed on the Index and this is a form that right at the top it says “Notice of Child Abuse Central Index Listing”.
Down sort of near middle of the page it’ll tell you what it is exactly they think that you did. What kind of abuse or neglect was substantiated. Some counties they’ll tell you only the type of abuse whether physical injury or severe neglect or something like that. Other counties will give a very brief one sentence or one phrase description of what happened, like a bruise on an arm or something like that.
Now take a look at what they give you, and now take a look at the form called the Request for Grievance Hearing form. Again, right at the top you’ll see that title there and they should have given you a blank copy of this. This is what you fill in and what you send to the county agency to ask for your grievance hearing.
Note right in the middle of the page there, it says Reason for Grievance and there’s four check boxes. They want you to tell them why you are disputing the placement of your name on the Child Abuse Central Index.
They give of three different reasons…well, there’s four different check boxes. One is you saying that you didn’t do it, that you didn’t do anything, it’s not you, they got the wrong person.
Another check box allows you to say well these alleged acts of the abuse never occurred.
The third one is you saying, “Even if these acts did occur they don’t qualify as abuse or neglect, under the law.”
The fourth one they give you, the fourth option is “Other” and it basically says, “Tell us why you’re disputing the placement of your name on the list,” and it gives you the lines where you can write in.
So they want you to give them as much information as you can, or as you’re willing to give them, and they give you in the Notice very little information. I don’t think that’s very fair.
What I would encourage you to do is instead of writing a check in those three boxes, I would write a check in the “Other” box and what I would write is, “I can’t say until I’ve seen the evidence against me.” That’s what I’d write and that’s what I would encourage you to write.
You haven’t seen the evidence and you don’t know what they’re accusing you of exactly, so it’s not really fair and it’s not a good idea for you to pin yourself down and write something that might not exactly be accurate.
That is your quick CACI tip for the day.