MDT Development

About MDT Development Training

Ongoing training prepares multi-disciplinary teams (MDTs) to be on the front line of child advocacy with the most current knowledge and best practices.

MDT Development Trainings are offered on a contracted basis and can range from 2-hour advanced topics to a day(s) long private MDT Development Training to a session designed specifically with your teams’ needs in mind.

First Witness’ Advanced Webinar Series offers trainings that many MDT members may be interested in and benefit from those trainings. More information on the Advanced Webinar Series can be found here.

Contact Associate Director Tyra Jaramillo at tjaramillo@firstwitness.org with any questions or to schedule an MDT Development training.

Dates fill up quickly; please allow for a minimum of 3-months before the training occurs.

Available MDT Development trainings include:

Community Collaboration: How to Support Youth and Families Experiencing Child Abuse

Learn how agencies in Duluth support children, teenagers, and families following a disclosure of child sexual abuse. This session will offer insight on engaging families through the forensic interview, investigation, and prosecution processes and how advocates support victim-survivors and their families through systems in a collaborative multi-disciplinary approach. We will also discuss how advocates support families through these systems using the self-identified needs of the individuals they serve. Attendees will leave this session with a better understanding of the importance of a strong community response to child sexual abuse and how to connect to local resources available to families and providers.

Global Warming as a Global Warning: The Effects of Climate Change on Child Abuse

Climate change and, in turn, the growing number and intensity of natural disasters has many implications – one of them being the prevalence of child abuse. This presentation examines the relationship between climate change, natural disasters, and child abuse. Participants will leave with a better understanding of this relationship and how this issue affects children in our community and around the world.

Media and Pop Culture: How Our Culture Impacts Perceptions of Child Abuse

This session will examine examples in our media, pop culture, and entertainment industry related to child abuse and maltreatment. These examples will highlight how public perception of child abuse is impacted and often normalized in ways we may not always realize.

Proactive Cultural Response Initiatives in the Human Services Field

Organizational cultural competence is a dynamic process that does not have a start or end date. It begins with awareness of the issue and evolves into proactive culturally responsive policies and procedures. Proactive cultural responsiveness is important to provide clients with the opportunity to access services that reflect their cultures and values. This presentation will discuss working within the communities you serve and adapting your practices instead of expecting clients to adapt to you. For organizations that have begun this work, a structure for next steps will be discussed to continue serving the self-identified needs of our communities.

Trauma- Informed Leadership Methods in Victim-Serving Organizations

This session will review the research behind the characteristics and workplace environments of the victim-serving organizations to increase general understanding of the effects these characteristics have on secondary trauma, mental health, job satisfaction, and burnout. Leaders and supervisors will leave with recommendations for trauma-informed leadership methods to effectively respond to the needs of their supervisees.

Effective Case Tracking Processes for CACs and Multidisciplinary Teams

The National Children’s Alliance requires that all accredited CACs collect and document specific case information and investigative outcomes to inform ongoing continuous quality improvement, and for the betterment of cross-MDT communication. This training describes how CACs and MDTs can develop and maintain effective case tracking processes, tracking essential information from the day of the interview through final potential criminal convictions. This training will review what case-tracking best practices are for Child Advocacy Centers and their MDTs, and different options to achieve those best practices as a cohesive team.

How to Facilitate an Effective Case Review Process

Case Review is an essential tool for well-functioning MDTs, and helps to facilitate discussion about case status and services that help the specific families in the case being reviewed, as well as helps improve services for families in the future. This training will discuss the importance of conducting regular case review meetings, and different options that CACs and MDTs have when conducting those meetings. Practical considerations will also be discussed, such as who should be facilitating case review, what to do about follow-up steps, and how to make the meetings the most productive through efficient faciliation skills.

Self-Care to Sustainable Wellness: Avoiding Burnout in MDTs

As a part of facilitating Child Abuse Response MDTs, it is a major role of CAC staff to promote resiliency amongs their MDT members. This can include a variety of strategies and will be dependent on the individualized needs of your team. This training will discuss how CAC staff and MDT members can work together to respond to vicarious trauma and build resiliency. Recognizing that the health of the MDT and its members directly impacts the quality of service to children and families, sustainable wellness should be a topic on every MDT meeting agenda.

Failure to Protect or Protective Factors? Identifying and Responding to Protective Factors in the Co-Occurance of Domestic Violence and Child Abuse

For professionals working with children disclosing abuse, it is important to understand dynamics of domestic violence to be able to be a part of an effective investigation. Understanding that domestic abuse co-occurs at a substantially high rate alongside child abuse enhancies child abuse professionals’ ability to do their jobs in a holistic way. In this session, participants will learn the barriers that victims of domestic violence face in leaving an abusive relationship, specifically when children are involved, and how system intervention may inadvertantly cause additional barriers. Additionally, the training will discuss barriers that children face to disclosing their own victimization in forensic interviews when family violence is present in the home. Trainees will examine protective factors that supportive caregivers have put in place to keep their children and themselves safe, as well as how systems professionals can best support families experiencing these types of victimization utilizing a multidisciplinary team approach.

The Impact of Exposure to Child Sexual Abuse Materials on Professionals

In this session, we will discuss which professionals are exposed to child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) and how this exposure effects one’s mental health. Participants will learn about how these negative mental health impacts can spill over into both intimate relationships and parenting. Understanding these risks can in turn better equip professionals with strategies to avoid the impacts of Secondary Traumatic Stress, as well as provide them with the resources to maintain a fulfilling, rewarding career.

Faith and Healing: Practical Approaches for Working with Christian Families

This session equips professionals with the tools to engage and support clients who identify as Christian effectively. Participants will explore how faith and religious practices shape worldviews, influence responses to child abuse, and impact help-seeking behaviors. The training includes statistics on the prevalence of Christianity across the United States and data on child abuse within faith communities to provide important context. Attendees will gain research-based insights and practical strategies that are culturally responsive, trauma-informed, and ethically sound. Emphasis is placed on fostering trust, navigating value differences with sensitivity, and supporting clients in ways that honor their beliefs while maintaining professional boundaries.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: How to Build and Maintain a Well-Functioning Multidisciplinary Team

This workshop will discuss how to build and maintain a well-functioning multidisciplinary team (MDT). Attendees will learn how to best work as a team, handle conflict in a healthy and productive way, and get buy-in from other agencies. The presenters will also discuss indicators of a well-functioning and healthy MDT and what to do when signs point to an unhealthy MDT.

Pornography and Youth: Understanding and Responding to Current and Changing Trends

With a national increase in access to the internet and AI, teens and adults now have more exposure to violent and harmful pornography. This increase in access not only creates harm to youth but is, at times, used in child sexual abuse as a method of manipulation and further abuse. As professionals, it is important to communicate effectively with youth and caregivers about the internet and its relationship to personal safety. This session will discuss the impact of porn/AI on youth, the role of porn/AI usage in the process of victim manipulation and grooming, and harm reduction for youth access to porn/AI.

Teen Dating Violence: The Importance of a CAC Approach

This presentation will discuss the prevalence of teen dating violence in your community. There will be a focus on the importance fo forensically interviewing teenagers who are survivors of teen dating violence, as well as providing individualized advocacy services to the teenagers and their caregivers. Using a child advocacy center model and a multidisciplinary team model, this presentation will highlight the dynamics of teen dating violence nationally.

Don’t Panic: Lessons Learned from Child Abuse Investigations and the Satanic Panic

The Satanic Panic included many high-profile and complicated child abuse investigations. Professionals, parents, and others questioned children in leading and suggestive ways, which caused many issues throughout these investigations. Since then, researchers and child abuse professionals have improved the way that we now question children. This presentation will include a brief history of the Satanic Panic, lessons learned, and recommendations on how to better question children.

Hidden in Plain Sight: Investigating Female Sex Offenders

While female sex offenders are less prevalent than male sex offenders, they very much still exist; therefore, it is vital for multidisciplinary teams to understand what to look for when investigating these cases. In this webinar, participants will learn the truths behind common misconceptions and stereotypes regarding female sex offenders. Participants will also learn about common themes of female sex offenders including offense types, motivations, and generational effects. We will look at nuanced dynamics including nurturing bias and societal beliefs which further perpetuate underreporting. Lastly, we will discuss considerations for multidisciplinary teams to investigate these cases while pushing past biases.