When minors are victimized and don’t receive interventions, there’s greater likelihood that their future children and grandchildren will also be abused. The inter-generational impact of child sexual abuse is well recorded.¹

In a very real and terrible sense, child sexual abuse is self-multiplying: some child survivors have sexually reactive behaviors toward other children,² and many survivors who become parents are either hypervigilant or have poor threat recognition when it comes to predators who are grooming their children.²

The cycle goes on unless we engage in our own multiplication of prevention advocates. How do we do this? By training, prevention consultation, and trauma-focused supervision.

TRAINING

I collaborate with various organizations to customize trainings specific to their needs, and many of them request the following workshop topics:  

• Preventing Child Sexual Abuse: includes signs, symptoms, risks, red flags, handling disclosures, traumatic dynamics of child sexual abuse
• Trauma and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: includes trauma impact on the body, brain, and emotions, and treatment options
• Direct training to various populations: Children from Pre-K to Middle School on Keeping Safe & Good Touch, Bad Touch, High School students on sexual harassment and partner abuse, and to Parents & Caregivers regarding child sexual abuse prevention and responding to disclosures
• Training the Trainers on providing Keeping Kids Safe and Sexual Harassment workshops
• The connection between child sexual abuse and intimate partner violence
• Trauma-informed practices: awareness of how trauma impacts your clients and staff
• De-escalating behaviors of traumatized clients

WHOM HAVE I TRAINED?

Organizations, schools,counseling centers, religious staff, community members. Included in these trainings were psychotherapists, social workers, preventive case managers, foster workers, educators, childcare providers, graduate students.

CONSULTATION

Consultation includes providing education and information but goes beyond these steps.

When working with organizations that provide services to children, the consultation process includes collaboration and providing guidance to address issues such as assessing for safety in their physical environments, reviewing and revising policies to provide best practices in child abuse prevention, treatment and support resources, addressing staff support with regards to vicarious trauma, and acquiring a trauma-focused lens toward organizational dynamics and relationships.

It is also important to help organizations realize what spurs them to be involved in preventing child abuse and intimate partner violence. The following questions are worked on: How is this aligned to our organization’s mission and/or vision? What processes and resources do we have at hand or must put in place in order to pursue our prevention goals? How can we present this in such a way that motivates stakeholders to be passionate about and engaged in these prevention endeavors?

In my work with churches and safe communities, I also help them develop their Scriptural or sacred-text inspired foundational statement for becoming a faith community that actively seeks to provide a safe space for children and youth.

TRAUMA-FOCUSED SUPERVISION

Many direct service organizations have leadership that are burdened with juggling many responsibilities, not least of which are time-consuming tasks to comply with regulations. Many leaders want capacity to provide in-depth trauma-focused supervision to staff but are unable to because of multiple administrative tasks. This is where an external supervisor is helpful.

Since 2008 I have supervised dozens of professionals and upcoming professionals including clinical social workers, marriage and family therapists, mental health counselors, intake coordinators, and graduate interns. I have also provided supportive consultation to those in the case management and childcare fields. 

It’s important to me that multiple disciplines are educated and well-armed to handle the trauma of abuse. Frontline staff especially are at high risk for secondary or vicarious trauma.

Supervision includes case consultation that incorporates various trauma-focused treatment and insight-oriented approaches, increasing supervisees’ capacity for self-reflection, and increasing awareness of and strategizing for self-care to address secondary trauma.

References: (1)Intergenerational patterns of child maltreatment: What the evidence shows, https://www. childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/integenerational (2)https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article =1106&context=psychfacpub