Hello Brooklineborn,
It is interesting to hear that New York is widening the scope of their child abuse/neglect reporting laws as well. That has certainly been the case here in Pennsylvania as well. Indeed, within the past several years, our CPS statute added the second-hand information requirement like New York. We have had numerous high profile deaths in Philadelphia of children known to Children & Youth Services. As you mention, there is also the Penn State situation in the forefront or background on any given day, and then we have the guilty sentence that just recently came down on the supervising Catholic priest in the Philadelphia Archdiocese who was found by a jury to have failed to take sufficient action to protect children from pedophile priests.
In the ten years that I have been practicing, I do not think that child welfare law has ever been so much in the daily news in the Commonwealth or perhaps the nation as it has been in the past year or so.