What’s Covered?
The following topics are covered in our week long training:
1. Effective Interviewing – Covers the history and best practice guidelines for conducting forensic interviews
2. Dynamics In Child Abuse – Explores how children experience abuse and the impact it has on disclosures
3. Process of Disclosure – Covers the patterns and types of disclosures made by child sexual abuse victims
4. Culture and the Forensic Interview – Will help participants understand how a child’s culture, language, behavior, emotions and view of the world impact the child’s communication during the interview
5. Child Development – Covers the language, memory, developmental stages and their impact on how children participate in interviews
6. Questioning Children – Covers question types, what to expect when questions are asked, linguistics and issues that impact how a child responds or doesn’t respond to questions
7. ChildFirst Protocol – Covers interview instructions and truth/lie, the use of drawings in interviews and the ChildFirst Interviewing protocol
8. Anatomical Dolls- Covers the literature and research for using anatomically correct dolls, when to introduce dolls in the interview in a legally defendable manner
9. Preparing Kids for Court – Covers what causes stress for child victims, a child’s rights in court, preparation of the court for children and the importance of a child friendly oath
10. Blocks and Block Removal – Covers the barriers that an interviewer faces when conducting forensic interviews of children and how to work around the barriers
11. Suggestibility- Covers suggestibility and memory research, indicators a child is not suggestible and practice guidelines
12. Working as an Multi-Disciplinary Team to Obtain Corroborating Evidence in Cases of Child Abuse – Covers the importance of the team approach to working with child abuse cases, the importance of an established protocol and physical and medical evidence
13. Testifying In Court – Covers witness credibility, testifying in court, defending your interview and interviewers as expert witnesses
14. Hearsay and the Child Victim – Covers admissibility of interviews, reliability factors, hearsay exceptions and Crawford v Washington
15. There are also two interview practices included in the five day training. One practice interview involves participants interviewing children about non-abuse events to practice rapport building with children. The second interviewing exercise involves participants interviewing adult actors who are portraying child victims of abuse. These interviews offer the opportunity to practice the ChildFirst Interviewing protocol. The interviews are video recorded and peer-reviewed on site.
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