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Abstract
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Child sexual abuse recognition and intervention training requirements for educators are rapidly being adopted by states and school districts throughout the nation. There are a plethora of home-grown programs being used to meet these requirements, none of which have data to demonstrate an impact on child-protective behaviors or child sexual abuse reports, substantiations, or interventions.
Darkness to Light offers the Stewards of Children program, an evidence-informed child sexual abuse prevention, recognition, and intervention educator training available nationally. More than one million people, including 250,000 educators, have completed the Stewards of Children program. The training has been shown to change child-protective behaviors but, until now, Darkness to Light has not had the data necessary to demonstrate an impact on child sexual abuse reports, substantiations, or interventions in cases of abuse.
In October 2015, Darkness to Light conducted a one-year follow-up survey of 79,544 Texas educators who had taken the Stewards of Children training, alone or in tandem with Texas Mandated Reporter training, during the fall of 2014. The purpose of this survey was to determine if educators increased their reports of previously unrecognized child sexual abuse to authorities in the year after training.
In the year following training, educators increased their reports of child sexual abuse to authorities by 283% as compared with career averaged reports in the year prior to training. Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) data was obtained to corroborate the results. An analysis of 2011 - 2015 data from DFPS allow for the possibility that there was increased reporting of cases of previously unrecognized abuse by educators from 2014 to 2015. More children were also substantiated as sexually abused during this time period.
The effectiveness of a training program such as Stewards of Children can be evaluated by whether more children receive intervention services as a result of that program. Intervention services have been shown to mitigate many of the negative effects of child sexual abuse.36 The data allow for the possibility that more children received intervention services in 2014 and 2015 as a result of the Texas Educator Initiative. This implies that the Stewards of Children program, alone or in tandem with Texas Mandated Reporter training, may be effective in creating positive outcomes for children.
Language: en |