Join First Witness Child Advocacy Center and grow your understanding and knowledge of advanced topics within child advocacy.
For the first time, participants are invited to register and learn from the First Witness CAC National Training Center in one-time webinars. Our advanced trainings have previously been limited to organizational contracts, our 2024 Advanced Webinar Series intends to make our trainings accessible and open to child advocacy center, multidisciplinary team, and child maltreatment professionals across the United States.
Each webinar is held virtually and presented live by our team of nationally-recognized trainers. Certificates of completion are available after successfully attending each webinar, and Minnesota CEUs are expected to be available for certain MN professionals.
Questions? Contact Operations Director Madeline Kvale at mkvale@firstwitness.org.
Advocacy
April 17, 2024
The Power of Positive Childhood Experiences
FREE
As Health and Human Service Professionals, we are aware of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and the lasting effects that they can have on a developing child. However, what is not discussed as much is the power of Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) and the resilience that can emerge through traumatic events experienced. This presentation explains the Child Advocacy Center approach and how we can promote PCEs through connection, acknowledgment, and support. By encouraging PCEs we can create a more connected community, and strengthen our response to child abuse and neglect.
June 7, 2024
Building Advocacy Relationships with Resistant & Reluctant Caregivers
$25
This advanced session will guide advocates to dive deeper into the relationships that they have with social services and law enforcement alongside the families they serve in the advocacy role. We will discuss the implications and the intersectionality of the notorious systems labeled ‘non-compliant’ caregivers throughout a case and/or child maltreatment investigation. The training will share the advocacy perspective rooted in the work of Ellen Pence and the Advocacy Learning Center, bridging grassroots work of domestic violence to the child advocacy center field. Participants will learn about how to better advocate for caregivers labeled as non-compliant, resistive, or reluctant. Trainers will facilitate discussion among participants designed to help shed light on the lived experiences of families of families and how they may present to multi-disciplinary professionals from a systems perspective.
Forensic Interviewing
May 17, 2024
Media and Pop Culture: How Our Culture Impacts Perceptions of Child Abuse and Maltreatment
FREE
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.
July 24-26, 2024
ChildFirst Expanded Interview Protocol
$500
Based on the nationally-recognized ChildFirst® Forensic Interview Protocol, this 2.5-day training provides a purposeful and legally defensible process for conducting expanded forensic interviews with children who may not succeed in a standard, single interview due to trauma, developmental, special needs or other complicating issues, including polyvictimization. This training is designed for investigative teams of law enforcement officers, social workers, prosecutors, child protection attorney, and forensic interviewers who have completed a nationally recognized basic child forensic interview training. This training will teach the expanded interview process as well as research supporting multiple, non-duplicative interviews with child victims and witnesses.
August 21, 2024
Recantation: Why Does it Happen and What Do We Do?
$25
This presentation will discuss the dynamics behind recantations of child abuse disclosures, both in forensic interviews and outside of forensic interviews. This session will review frequently asked questions about recantation, such as “why does recantation happen?”, “can we avoid recantation?” “how do we minimize the likelihood of recantation”, and “what do we do now?”. Participants will leave with an understanding of recantation and child abuse dynamics, follow-up recantation forensic interviews, and next steps for investigative team members in child abuse cases that involve full and partial recantations/retractions of children’s statments.
