Winona State University and the National Child Protection Training Center (NCPTC) are teaming up to protect children.

WSU faculty and members of the NCPTC spent a year together creating a unique undergraduate curriculum on child maltreatment and child advocacy that will be used as a model at undergraduate institutions across the nation.

This curriculum will better prepare future child protection workers, law enforcement officers, nurses, teachers and other child-serving professionals. Carole Madland, WSU professor of social work, said these courses will apply to several different fields of study and will be taught using an interdisciplinary style of education by the nursing, criminal justice and social work faculty.

"As professionals, these students will be working in teams," said Madland. "So, it makes sense to educate them in teams. We want the students to understand the roles each of the disciplines play in the process."

Beginning in spring 2005, students enrolled in the first course of a three-course series in child advocacy studies. The course is an introductory class which covers a wide range of topics from the legal framework of child maltreatment cases to the skills necessary to handle this type of work.

Victor Vieth, director of the NCPTC, said these types of skills are important to teach at the undergraduate level.

"Although some universities provide practical training in the art and science of handling a case of child abuse, this is largely done at the graduate level, if it's done at all," said Vieth. "This is problematic because many of the law enforcement officers, probation officers, social workers and other professionals who handle these cases have only an undergraduate degree. These professionals must then acquire on-the-job training in order to handle these cases competently. WSU is taking a leadership role in changing this dynamic."

The two additional courses in this curriculum are being offered for the first time during the fall 2005 and spring 2006 semesters. The courses include a lab component where students: develop and practice their skills in forensic interviewing, investigate a report of maltreatment, and participate in mock trials. Madland said she hopes these courses will provide the education child advocacy professionals need to protect children and families.

"I don't like to see kids slip through the cracks because people do a poor job in the field," said Madland. "Hopefully, courses like these will eliminate mistakes by professionals because they haven't had the appropriate education."

WSU and the American Prosecutors Research Institute (APRI), the organization which helped create the NCPTC, will conduct research documenting the outcome of this new curriculum. They plan to show that child protection professionals completing this model curriculum do a better job of handling child abuse cases and need less on-the-job training than those professionals who have not completed the curriculum.

The NCPTC was created at Winona State University in 2003, under a federal earmark, to aid in the protection of children. Developing a curriculum to train child-serving professionals was one of the NCPTC's main initiatives. Vieth says the goal of the NCPTC is to virtually eliminate child abuse within three generations.

Victor Vieth, executive director of the National Child Protection Training Center at Winona State University (left) and Thomas Charron, executive director of the National District Attorneys Association, accept a $250,000 check to support the work of the NCPTC from Scott G. Johnson and Marty Lueck, both WSU alumni and partners in the law firm

of Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P. Foundation for Education, Public Health and Social Justice, a supporting organization of The Minneapolis Foundation.  The gift is for Education, Public Health and Social Justice, and supports the NCPTC's continuing operation and its long-term goal of ending child abuse within three generations.

Last Modified: Friday, November 04, 2005 15:35 by Rhone Richard