Child and youth professionals must provide a safe, healthy, and nurturing environment for children. You play a critical role in keeping children safe from harm by recognizing and preventing child abuse and neglect in your program. This training highlights the intentional strategies you can use to 1) communicate program policies and procedures, and 2) create an emotionally supportive climate where staff are prepared to report suspected abuse and empowered to speak up when they observe potentially inappropriate behaviors. We review ways you can facilitate a program environment that reduces caregiver stress, where staff feel supported and ready to provide quality education and care. Additionally, we explore ways to provide active opportunities for staff to reflect and practice responding to situations that involve questionable staff behavior, as well as more obvious signs of child abuse and neglect. Throughout this training, we identify ³Ô¹ÏÍø tools and resources that program leaders can use to create programs that attend to staff members’ well-being, safeguard children and youth from harm, and support staff in communicating and reporting any questionable behavior they observe in the program.
- MGT, Child Abuse Prevention
- TCS, Child Abuse Prevention
- PS, Child Abuse: Identification & Reporting, Lesson 4, Explore: Reflecting on Abuse and Neglect
- FCC, Child Abuse: Prevention, Lesson 4, Explore: Guidance Continuum Activity
- TCS, Child Abuse: Identification and Reporting, Lesson 3, Apply: Institutional Child Abuse: Role Play Scenarios
- TCS, Child Abuse: Identification & Reporting, Lesson 6, Explore: Guidance Policy: Guiding Questions
- TCS, Child Abuse: Prevention, Lesson 4, Explore: ³Ô¹ÏÍøing Appropriate Expectations
- MGT, Positive Guidance, Lesson 2
- MGT, Safe Environments, Lesson 6
- TCS, Safe Environments, Lesson 7
- FT, Child Abuse: Identification and Reporting for ³Ô¹ÏÍø Staff, Lesson 3, Explore: Responding to Child Abuse and Neglect
- Center for the Study of Social Policy. (2004). Protecting children by strengthening families: A guidebook for early childhood programs.
- Center for the Study of Social Policy. (2018). Strengthening families: A protective factors framework.
- Child Welfare Information Gateway. (2008). The role of professional child care professionals in preventing and responding to child abuse and neglect. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children’s Bureau.
- Kwon, KA., Ford, T.G., Salvatore, A.L. et al. (2022). Neglected elements of a high-quality early childhood workforce: Whole teacher well-being and working conditions. Early Childhood Education Journal 50, 157–168.
- Mathews, B., Yang C., Lehman, E.B., Mincemoyer, C., Verdiglione, N., & Levi B.H. (2017). Educating early childhood care and education providers to improve knowledge and attitudes about reporting child maltreatment: A randomized controlled trial.
- National Association for the Education of Young Children. (2009). Where we stand on child abuse prevention. NAEYC.
- National Children's Alliance. (2023). National Statistics on Child Abuse.
- U.S. Administration for Children & Families, Child Maltreatment. (2022). National annual child abuse statistics.
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families. (2006). Safe children and healthy families are a shared responsibility: 2006 community resource packet.
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2013). Child maltreatment.