New Training Helps Teachers Identify, Prevent & Report Child Abuse, Neglect, & Human Trafficking

Educators and staff are in an ideal position to identify and report any maltreatment of their students. These students are also more likely to seek help, report abuse, and connect with support if they feel they have a trusted adult to talk to. In 2020, Child Protective Services (CPS) agencies received a national estimate of 3.9 million total referrals of allegations of maltreatment. Additionally, another 67% of reports alleging child abuse and neglect are submitted by professionals including teachers, police officers, lawyers, and social services staff. While 17% of reports are made by education personnel.

In helping school districts and higher education institutions in their mission to provide safe, positive, and supportive school climates, we are pleased to announce the release of our newest professional development training program, Protecting Our Youth. This interactive simulation combines learning content with conversation strategies and practice for educators and school staff that promote trusted connections, help-seeking, reporting and/or referral when it comes to child abuse, neglect, and childhood human trafficking.

Continue reading to learn more about Protecting Our Youth and how it embraces compliance training and proactive strategies for child abuse prevention and identifying neglect and trafficking.

Introducing: Protecting Our Youth

Protecting Our Youth is an interactive role-play simulation that helps to provide positive and supportive school climates by teaching educators and school staff skills in identifying, preventing, and reporting child abuse, neglect, and trafficking. The overarching goal of this training is to gain the critical communication skills to have trauma-informed conversations with a child who reports, or whom the employee suspects may have experienced abuse, neglect or trafficking.

“Protecting Our Youth covers the critical topics of child abuse, neglect, and human trafficking. Developed with experts, learners are able to hone the critical skills in identifying, approaching, and referring students whom they believe have been impacted by abuse, neglect, or human trafficking.” – Nadia Stamp, Product Manager at Kognito

This program contains two individual lessons that covers the most important conversation strategies and practice scenarios for educators and staff:

Abuse & Neglect is an experiential learning lesson that takes an approach from an elementary and middle/high school perspective. In this lesson, learners will gain information on the different types of child abuse and child maltreatment. This includes:

• Physical abuse, neglect, sexual abuse, and emotional abuse
• Indicators to assist in identifying abuse and neglect
• Legal responsibilities related to reporting abuse and neglect
• Suggestions on how to handle student disclosures of abuse and neglect

The primary differentiator of this program is the practice-based scenarios of having a trauma-informed conversation with a virtual child who discloses abuse, or exhibits warning signs where abuse is suspected. Learners gain information on how to acknowledge student concern or disclosure, reporting those concerns, and offering referral.

Trafficking is the second lesson learners will come across in Protecting Our Youth. This lesson contains an overview of human trafficking, and the ways to help identify – and potentially prevent – occurrences of human trafficking. Learners will gain knowledge and skills in the following areas:

• The scope of human trafficking
• The ways of identifying victims of human trafficking
• Obtain key stories and case studies
• Identify the warning signs and the correct ways to respond

Compliance-based Learning Objectives

A crucial component of child abuse prevention relies on creating positive school climates built on a culture of respect, trust, and social and emotional support. Protecting Our Youth teaches the importance of building communication skills for conducting trauma-informed conversations with students who may be speaking up about or showing signs of abuse, neglect, or trafficking.

Other learning objectives include:

• Assist in identifying abuse, neglect, and trafficking and understand the legal responsibilities related to reporting
• Understand the scope of human trafficking and apply strategies for identifying warning signs of childhood human trafficking
• Apply strategies for identifying trafficking victims and occurrences of childhood human trafficking
• Know when to report concerns and potential referral points

Experience an Interactive Demo Today

Protecting Our Youth is available as one of our PK-12 professional development compliance products as well as part of our Sexual Misconduct Prevention Suite for higher education. Contact us if you are interested in learning more or request an interactive demo to experience the power of virtual simulation.