| The National Child Protection Training Center: A New Resource for Frontline Workers, a New Hope for Children
By Victor Vieth1
The American Prosecutors Research Institute (APRI) has entered into an historic relationship with Winona State University (WSU) in southeastern Minnesota2 to create the National Child Protection Training Center (NCPTC). This new Center, located on the WSU campus, is now fully staffed and open for business.3
The National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse (NCPCA), a program of the American Prosecutors Research Institute (APRI), in Alexandria, Virginia, has long been recognized as the nation’s premier trainer of child abuse prosecutors and other child protection professionals. To date, APRI has focused primarily on addressing the criminal prosecution of child abusers. Since many prosecuting attorney offices also handle child in need of protection petitions, termination of parental rights and other civil child protection proceedings, there has long been a growing need to develop civil protections for abused children. This need has led to the creation of the National Child Protection Training Center at Winona State University. The work of the National Child Protection Training Center can be divided into the following categories.
Training
Over the next 12 months, NCPTC staff will develop two national courses focusing primarily on the needs of professionals handling the civil side of child protection. When Child Abuse Hits Home is a five-day course that will focus on the nuts and bolts of handling child protection cases from the initial report to the trial. The course will also teach frontline professionals to tailor prevention programs to the unique needs of their communities and to consider alternative responses to those cases that may not require a full-blown investigation or legal proceeding.
NCPTC will also develop a trial advocacy course entitled Childprotect. This five-day, “hands on” course will be modeled after APRI’s criminal child abuse trial advocacy course, Childproof, but designed for child protection attorneys handling civil child protection and termination of parental rights cases.
The staff of the National Child Protection Training Center will be available to provide training and technical assistance at state and local levels.
Technical assistance
The National Child Protection Training Center will provide technical assistance to child protection attorneys and other professionals working with civil aspects of child protection cases. NCPTC can assist with legal research, trial strategies, or simply providing information on the diverse forms of child abuse reported into the child protection system. In responding to technical assistance requests, NCPTC will have access to the expertise and resources of APRI’s National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse.
Publications
In addition to this newsletter, Reasonable Efforts, NCPTC staff will draft book chapters, law review articles, and other scholarly works.
Additional Resources for Forensic Interview Training
Since 1998, APRI’s National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse has worked with CornerHouse, a child sexual abuse evaluation and training center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in presenting an intense, five-day forensic interview training course entitled Finding Words. The demand for the course was so great that APRI launched a bold initiative entitled Half a Nation by 2010.4 Under this program, APRI works with individual states interested in establishing their own locally run and taught forensic interview training programs. The goal is to establish 25 state run programs by the end of the decade. The program has been successfully launched in the states of South Carolina, Indiana, New Jersey, Mississippi, Georgia and Missouri. The states of West Virginia, Illinois, Maryland and Kansas are in the process of establishing their own Finding Words courses.
APRI will coordinate with NCPTC in producing a semi-annual newsletter about the Half a Nation program. APRI will also develop a listserv to connect Finding Words faculty and administrators as well as the professionals who have graduated from the courses.
NCPTC is in the process of forming an advisory group to develop a peer-reviewed journal to publish and promote scholarly works on best practices for interviewing victimized children.
Model undergraduate and graduate curricula
Undergraduate, graduate and law schools seldom prepare students for the reality of child protection. One reporter has described a social worker’s obstacles as follows:
“Their training is inadequate, and the number of workers is too small for the number of families in trouble. Some of the cases would require a battalion of cops, doctors, and social workers to handle; instead there are two kids fresh out of college with good intentions and a handful of forms.”5
Commenting on his lack of training, a social worker stated that he received “two weeks of solemn discussion on child protective issues, but little on getting a drug dealer to let you into an abandoned building or talking a restless police officer into sticking around until you get through with a case and back into your car.”6
The problem extends to graduate schools as well. A recently published study of American Psychological Association (APA) accredited graduate programs found that many of the programs “fall far short” of guidelines proposed by the APA for minimal levels of competence in handling child maltreatment cases.7 The study finds the lack of graduate training for psychology students “contradicts the rapidly expanding literature on responding to maltreatment and the demands of this interdisciplinary, professional endeavor.”8
To address this concern, Winona State University faculty will develop a model undergraduate curriculum for the mandated reporters and child protection professionals of tomorrow. As WSU implements this curriculum, APRI and other leading child protection agencies and professionals will assist this historic effort. Once the curriculum is developed and implemented, NCPTC will assist other interested colleges in establishing similar models.
Ending Child Abuse: Unto the Third Generation
APRI has developed a practical, common sense plan, described in an article pending publication entitled, “Unto the Third Generation,” to achieve the goal of ending child abuse in the United States over the course of 120 years.
The plan comprises three 40-year cycles. In the first cycle, or generation, we intend to end the culture that permits child abuse by overcoming five obstacles: 1) most mandated reporters fail to report abuse even when the evidence is clear; 2) many incidents or circumstances reported into the system, including many of the most egregious cases, are never investigated; 3) even when an investigation is conducted, many of the responders are inadequately trained; 4) by the time abuse is substantiated, children are typically older and often enter the system as delinquents rather than victims; and 5) child victims receive an inadequate share of our country’s resources.
To overcome these obstacles, the WSU-developed curriculum will prepare tomorrow’s mandated reporters to recognize and respond to abuse. The curriculum will also adequately prepare tomorrow’s child protection professionals to competently investigate allegations of abuse from day one. This curriculum will be disseminated to all interested universities. By 2040, on-the-job training should no longer be the primary source of
education for frontline workers. In the years ahead, we hope to secure partners for developing model curricula for law schools, medical schools, seminaries, and any other graduate program that produces professionals who will encounter child victims in their work.
To supplement APRI’s work to support professionals handling criminal aspects of child abuse, the NCPTC will provide ongoing training, publications and technical assistance for those professionals working on the civil side. In particular, training all frontline professionals in the art and science of interviewing young children through Finding Words and Half a Nation should encourage earlier intervention for abused children.
“Unto the Third Generation” recognizes the importance of prevention but argues the dynamics contributing to abuse will be different in each community in the nation. At APRI, we believe that all prevention is local, and those in the best position to develop and implement effective prevention programs are those closest to the situation. Accordingly, the WSU undergraduate curriculum will teach tomorrow’s child protection professionals to identify the factors contributing to abuse in a given community and to develop programs specifically tailored to address these unique factors.
As initiatives like “Unto the Third Generation” take hold across the country, it is incumbent on those of us currently in the field to recruit a second generation of child protection professionals who build on our success by developing their own 40-year plan to overcome any remaining obstacles in the fight to end child abuse. This process will continue until child abuse is no longer an epidemic.
In the words of child psychologist Erik Erikson, “Some day, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well-considered, yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit; ...”
Through the work of America’s frontline child protection professionals, and with the assistance of the National Child Protection Training Center, the day we have dreamed of is fast approaching.
Director, APRI’s National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse, Alexandria, VA; National Child Protection Training Center, Winona State University, Winona, MN.
For a history of WSU, see generally, R.A. DuFresne, Winona State University: A History of One Hundred Twenty Five Years (1985).
The NCPTC can be reached by calling 507-457-2890.
For further information, readers can download the APRI monograph Finding Words: Half a Nation by 2010 at the APRI Web site: www.ndaa-apri.org. See also, Lori S. Holmes and Victor I. Vieth, Finding Words/Half a Nation by 2010, The Forensic Interviewing Program of CornerHouse and APRI’s National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse, APSAC Advisor 15 (1) Winter 2003.
Anna Quindlen, Forward to Marc Parent, Turning Stones: My Days and Nights with Children at Risk (1996).
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Kelly M. Champion, Kimberly Shipman, Barbara L. Bonner, Lisa Hensley, and Allison C. Howe, Child Maltreatment Training in Doctoral Programs in Clinical, Counseling, and School Psychology: Where Do We Go From Here?, 8 Child Maltreatment 211, 215 (August 2003).
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