April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month! At the request of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Office of Military Family Readiness Policy’s Children, Youth and Families (OMFRP’s CYP) Division the VLS will publish a new series of supplemental trainings on child abuse prevention, identification, and reporting. These trainings will address child abuse prevention strategies and will be required for all Child and Youth Program personnel and family child care providers. In addition to these trainings, a toolkit of additional resources is also in development to support program leaders in engaging staff in ongoing reflection, dialogue, and practice of these strategies.
The first training in the series, Appropriate Expectations & Responses to Behavior, is now available. The training examines adults' expectations for children’s behavior from a child abuse prevention lens. The training encourages staff to identify and reflect on typical development and behaviors of children and youth, highlights supportive and developmentally appropriate ways to respond to undesirable behaviors, and offers strategies to maintain a nurturing and caring program community. CYP Personnel can access this required training here: Appropriate Expectations & Responses to Behavior.
To enhance the content reviewed in this training, two new toolkit activities have been developed and added to the Training & Curriculum Specialist Foundational Track. In TCS, Child Abuse & Prevention, Lesson 4, a new activity, Supporting Appropriate Expectations, can be found in the Explore section. This activity provides scenarios of inappropriate responses to behavior which can be used to facilitate a discussion on appropriate expectations and responses during a staff meeting or training. Additionally, Guidance Policy: Guiding Questions, was added to the Explore section in Lesson 6 of the TCS, Child Abuse Identification & Reporting course. Training & Curriculum Specialists can use this tool during staff meetings or trainings to help staff review and reflect on your program’s guidance & touch policies.
Two additional trainings in this series as well as a Live Leadership Webinar will be made available later this year. For more information, please review the memorandum provided by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Military Community and Family Policy.
Please note that these trainings will not be listed in VLS website PD catalogs or dashboards and will currently be accessed via these news releases only. VLS will not be issuing assessments, certificates, or tracking progress. Please consult your leadership at your program or Service if you have additional tracking or administrative questions.
