New Hampshire's Developmental Services Quality Council has asked the state health department to build a single intake line for abuse and neglect reports in the developmental services system, answered by a live person around the clock, plus one electronic system that every investigating office would use. The recommendations are in a 17-page report from the council's Systems Review Committee, approved by the full council on Sept. 16, 2026; the New Hampshire Bulletin, whose 2025 investigation prompted the review, reported on Sept. 29 that the final plan had gone to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).

What the council found

The committee held seven public sessions from January to July 2026 with people who use services, families, state officials, area agencies, provider agencies and investigators. It described fragmented responsibility, siloed information, slow investigations and weak follow-through on corrective action. A complaint can involve as many as six state offices, including Adult Protective Services, licensing, Medicaid program quality and the Office of Client and Legal Services.

Main recommendations

  • Reporting: every DSP and service coordinator should know they hold their own duty to report, and no supervisor or agency may discourage, delay, screen out or require approval of a legally required report.
  • One front door: a 24/7 hotline plus online reporting that routes each report to every responsible office, so the caller doesn't have to work out who has jurisdiction.
  • Tracking and findings: a shared case system with deadlines and corrective-action status, and a new "inconclusive" finding for cases that are neither founded nor unfounded.
  • More visits, less paperwork: more in-person and unannounced monitoring when risk factors appear, and a review of paperwork that crowds out face-to-face contact.
  • Public data: yearly aggregate data on complaints and investigations, and public quality profiles for each provider.
  • Money: funding for investigators, the new systems, and Medicaid rates that support recruiting and keeping qualified DSPs.

DHHS should respond to each item within 30 business days, and the council plans its first public progress report by Jan. 1, 2027. A DHHS spokesperson told the Bulletin the department was reviewing the recommendations and expected to meet that deadline.

Why this matters for providers and DSPs

For direct support staff, the plain message is that reporting is a personal duty: the report says staff should never be "talked out of" reporting. Agencies whose policies route reports through a supervisor first may need to rewrite them. Two items reach hiring and reputation directly: the council wants employers to see pending and inconclusive investigations when they hire, and it wants provider-level quality profiles made public. The paperwork review and the rate language are the parts most likely to help frontline staff, but both depend on state funding that has not yet been set.