Training Overview
A First-of-Its-Kind, Multi-Module Training Series
For professionals who may talk with children about abuse — outside official CAC forensic interview roles. Whether in mental health, healthcare, education, child welfare, law enforcement, or frontline work, gain the skills to respond safely without causing harm.
Professionals in many settings have contact with children who may have witnessed or been a victim of violence. Children sometimes make statements that are as alarming as they are unclear, resulting in a professional feeling anxious about child safety and confusion about how to manage a mandated report. In some situations, professionals need clarity regarding a child’s statement and in other situations professionals need to get some information from a child before or after an investigation and child forensic interview.
This training will teach child serving professionals across disciplines how to talk with the child in a non-invasive manner that allows the child to provide basic information about the concerns and feel supported in the process. Specific emphasis will be on how to enhance rapport building throughout an interview, address the importance of including narrative event practice prior to talking about the issue of concern, and will teach specific interview techniques focusing on the use of open-ended questions from narrative event practice through basic questioning about the concerns.
Presenters will cover memory and cognitive development research and the values of these skills. Presenters will also provide an overview of the components of child maltreatment investigations and child forensic interviewing. Attendees will learn and practice new skills that may help them respond effectively to children who make statements that raise child maltreatment or family violence concerns. The goal of using these skills is to support the child, get helpful basic information, and enhance, not hinder an investigation.
Learn the Why, When & How
Safe, developmentally appropriate, evidence-informed interviewing skills — stay in your role and reduce risk.
Why does this training matter?
- Fills a national gap for non-CAC interviewers
- Promotes trauma-informed, child-centered, legally sound practice
- Led by national experts in forensic interviewing & child protection
Module 1: The Why and the When?
- Describe the historical context of child maltreatment and common myths, biases, statistics, scope of problem factors that increase risk of child maltreatment.
- Distinguish the roles of CPS, LE, FI, and other involved.
- Learn the indicators, effects, and dynamics of abuse.
- Demonstrate how to respond and when to refer and when to gather additional information.
- Review Disclosure and Recantation research
- Summarize disclosure types, methods and reasons for delay.
- Describe the research on memory and suggestibility.
- Translate the research that clearly reveals that a supportive non-offending caregiver is critical to the resiliency of the child and learn how your role can help the non-offending caregiver to believe and support the child.
- Learn how to effectively engage families and non-offending caregivers.
- Summarize the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and the opportunities to incorporate resilience in investigative response.
- Demonstrate the ability to react and respond to a child or adolescent disclosing abuse.
- Identify individualized triggers, strengths, resources, resilience, and preventative strategies.
- Distinguish essential facts.
- Prepare for testimony.
Register Through APSAC
This is a virtual event and participants are required to attend all four days.