Join First Witness Child Advocacy Center and grow your understanding and knowledge of advanced topics within child advocacy.
First Witness’ Advanced Webinar Series brings out nationally recognized trainings in forensic interviewing, advocacy, child abuse prevention, and MDT development to child advocacy center, multidisciplinary team, and child maltreatment professionals across the United States.
Each 90-minute webinar is held virtually and presented live by our team of nationally-recognized trainers. Certificates of completion are available after successfully attending each webinar.
Questions? Contact our training team at training@firstwitness.org.
Advocacy
Adult Survivors of Sexual Abuse: Working with Non-Offending Caregivers Who Have Been Victims
February 19, 2026
$50
Sexual abuse can be generational. Caregivers who have experienced abuse now walk through our doors after a report from their own child. Their child’s report may trigger a new crisis stage for parents on their own healing journey. Understanding common experiences and needs of adult survivors can help advocates support them in their efforts to help support their children.
Building Advocacy Relationships with Resistive and Reluctant Caregivers
June 16, 2026
$50
This 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 intersectionality of “non-compliant” caregivers throughout a criminal 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 how to better advocate for caregivers labeled as non-compliant, resistive, or reluctant.
Courtroom Advocacy for Non-Legal Advocates
Oct 6, 2026
$50
For many families that experience child abuse, pursuing legal action through the court system can be a step in their healing process. As community-based advocates, ongoing advocacy may include guiding a family through the court system, whether that involves criminal or civil court proceedings. This training helps participants gain skills and practical tools in how they can support families in the court process. We will also build knowledge on how the court system works and defines court terms that most laypersons may not understand without legal training.
Forensic Interviewing
Interviewing & Working with Queer Youth: Understanding the Cultural Context
October 30, 2025
$50
This session will cover the dynamics of interviewing and working with queer youth who are potential victims of violence or abuse. Topics discussed will include dynamics of abuse and violence in the queer community, barriers to service, historical context and power dynamics, risk factors, and suggestions for building inclusion into your practice, both on the individual level when interviewing queer youth, as well as the organizational level when working with queer youth in general.
What Children Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Asking Questions
March 26, 2026
$50
This training examines how children remember and recall experiences, with a focus on applying research to investigative interviews with children. Participants will learn how factors like age, development, trauma, and cognitive ability influence memory, and how memory can be both reliable and vulnerable to suggestion. We’ll explore common misconceptions, the effects of stress, and the critical role that questioning plays. Research shows that poorly worded or leading questions can distort a child’s memory, while open-ended, trauma-informed approaches help elicit accurate and detailed accounts. This training is ideal for professionals in child protection, forensic interviewing, law enforcement, and mental health who want to better understand and support how children recall and share their experiences.
Interviewing Children with Disabilities
July 23, 2026
$50
This session will explore how interviewing children with disabilities differs from interviewing children without disabilities, and will review best practices. Attendees will learn how to adjust the physical space for children with physical, mental, and/or developmental disabilities, as well as how to adjust their interview question structure and phrasing. This session will begin with an overview of best practices surrounding working with children with disabilities in general, and how to adjust your organization and/or workspace to be as child friendly as possible. It will then dive into forensic interviewing best practices and applicable research on interviewing children with disabilities.
Reading the Room: The Importance of Understanding Body Language in Forensic Interviews
November 9, 2026
$50
In this webinar, participants will learn about the importance of being able to recognize body language cues in forensic interviews and to what extent they happen subconsciously. We will discuss how body language cues may be dependent on a child’s age, culture, and experiences. Paticipants will learn neutral interview statements that can be made when seeing certain body language cues with different age groups. Lastly, we disscuss subconscious interviewer body language and the possible implications this body language could have on the child being interviewed. Throughout the training, we will discuss case examples looking at prominent body language cues.
MDT Development
Faith and Healing: Practical Approaches for Working with Christian Families
December 18, 2025
$50
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.
How to Facilitate an Effective Case Review Process
April 30, 2026
$50
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
August 6, 2026
$50
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.
Effective Case Tracking Processes for CACs and MDTs
December 10, 2026
$50
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.
Prevention
Is This Normal? Problematic Sexual Behaviors in Youth
January 8, 2026
$50
Historically, the presence of sexual behaviors in children was societally met with judgment, fear, and misunderstanding. Realistically, sexual play is common for children, with 66%-88% of children exhibiting some form of sexual play in the course of their childhood. As professionals working with children, it is important to understand how to distinguish between developmentally normal sexual behaviors and developmentally problematic sexual behaviors in children. This presentation differentiates between sexual behaviors that are more typical than sexual behaviors that are more harmful and uses this foundation for considerations on responding to problematic sexual behaviors.
Demystifying Victim Manipulation and Grooming
May 14, 2026
$50
Throughout this presentation, we will explore the relationship between the victim and the offender, the stages of the victim manipulation process, as well as the intentionality behind the subtlety and secrecy of victim manipulation. Participants will learn how an offender chooses a victim and how to intervene during this abusive relationship.
Normalizing the Conversation: Talking with Families about Body Safety
November 13, 2025
September 17, 2026
$50
In this session, we will not only discuss healthy childhood development, but also go over working with parents and non-offending caregivers as they start to grow their communication skills and normalize talking about body safety with their children. Participants will be informed on what to look for in terms of victim manipulation, signs of possible child sexual abuse, and how to support caregivers in learning and understanding this information.
Meet Your Training Team
