Pre-Institute
Foundations of Youth Safeguarding

This 3-hour training is designed for those who are newer to the topic of youth safeguarding.

Participants will receive an overview of youth maltreatment, including sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. The session will also discuss how to integrate trauma-informed practices into youth-serving organizations and the importance of self-care practices for those working with youth who have experienced maltreatment. Participants will leave the pre-institute able to identify potential signs of maltreatment, understand how maltreatment can impact victim-survivors over their lifetime, and explore how to foster protective factors and reduce risk factors at their youth-serving organizations.

Institute
Building Your Toolkit for Youth Safeguarding

The 6-hour institute is beneficial for anyone who wants to learn more about youth safeguarding practices, specifically about responding to disclosures from young people and creating interaction guidelines to create safer environments. Research has shown that how a person responds to a disclosure can impact whether an individual chooses to disclose again and get support*. The training will cover how to identify a disclosure of maltreatment, how to respond, and how to navigate balancing confidentiality and mandated reporter responsibilities. 

Participants will also learn how to create safer interactions in their youth-serving organizations through expectation setting for interactions between adults and youth as well as among young people in peer-to-peer situations. In this interactive training, participants will practice receiving a disclosure and will leave with a plan for creating or reviewing an organizational Code of Conduct.