Reports to the social services from dental care services on suspicions of child maltreatment concern parental deficiencies (failure to attend appointments) and neglect (dental neglect). Mandated reports from dental care services often co-occur with other mandated reports.

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Instruments for evaluating the progress and outcome of systemic therapeutic treatments in clinical practice need to be easily administered and have sound psychometric properties. The Systemic Clinical Outcome and Routine Evaluation, 15‐item version (SCORE‐15), is a self‐report instrument that measures aspects of family functioning. This study investigates the psychometric qualities of a Swedish version of SCORE‐15. Seventy Swedish families with healthy children and 159 families with children with psychiatric or behavioural problems were included in the study, resulting in a total of 397 individuals. Results showed that SCORE‐15 differentiated clinical from non‐clinical families with acceptable psychometric properties for test‐retest, internal consistency, convergent and construct validity, as well as sensitivity to change for the clinical sample. The three‐factor solution of strengths, difficulties and communication was tested. Results imply preliminary psychometric support for the use of the Swedish version of SCORE‐15 to evaluate progress and outcome in clinical practice.Practitioner points SCORE‐15 is an easily administered questionnaire suitable for use in clinical practice to evaluate systemic therapeutic progress and outcome The Swedish version of SCORE‐15 has acceptable psychometric properties

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The findings are rather discouraging, as they challenge the belief that a report is a means of ensuring that maltreatment does not continue. The study shows that, depending upon the way in which the initial assessments are made, maltreated children may run a risk of not being identified, even though the maltreatment has been reported. This suggests that there may be a need for national guidelines concerning the reporting of maltreatment.