Examining the effectiveness of Trauma Smart® training: Staff satisfaction, knowledge, and attitudes.

Objective: Adverse childhood experiences are linked with poorer physical, social, and psychological well-being, especially for individuals who live in poverty. As adverse childhood experiences accumulate, risk for poor outcomes increases. Therefore, it is imperative that preschools and elementary schools are equipped to prevent and intervene upon traumatic stress. Trauma Smart is an organizational change intervention designed to build trauma-informed knowledge, attitudes, skills, and resources within schools serving young children. Method: The current study evaluates the effectiveness of Trauma Smart staff training in 42 preschools and elementary schools with 2,418 staff using a 1-year, longitudinal, prepost design. Trauma Smart implementation occurred during scale-up, under real world conditions. Satisfaction, posttraining knowledge about trauma-informed approaches, and pre-to-posttraining changes in attitudes favorable to trauma-informed care were evaluated. Results: As hypothesized, staff were highly satisfied with the training (mean ratings indicate 92% satisfied), demonstrated knowledge of core concepts related to trauma-informed care (mean quiz scores were scored 90% correct), and developed more favorable attitudes toward trauma-informed care following training, with medium-large effect sizes. Conclusions: Trauma Smart staff training is feasible, acceptable, and has the potential to improve the knowledge and attitudes relevant to trauma-informed approaches within preschool and elementary school staff, including those who serve children who live in poverty. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

K-12 School Employee Sexual Abuse and Misconduct: An Examination of Policy Effectiveness.

Despite federal and state laws and policies aimed at preventing sexual misconduct by school employees, one in ten American students will experience sexual abuse or misconduct at the hands of a K-12 school employee. To explore why such sexual misconduct continues to occur, this study examined the effectiveness of education policies by investigating whether and how school employees understand these policies, how they are implemented, and how loopholes may undermine their intent. This qualitative case study was conducted in three Virginia school districts and included 46 semi-structured interviews with school district employees and county, state, and federal government employees associated with cases of school employee sexual misconduct, and extensive document analysis of school policies and procedures, laws, and court records. Analyses revealed an absence of policy implementation, demonstrated most seriously by a lack of awareness and understanding of policies among school employees, underreporting, and ineffective data collection. The study also identified a number of loopholes in the implementation of policies, resulting from a mismanaged intergovernmental system. The analysis suggests that understanding and implementation of policies meant to prevent sexual misconduct by school employees are fragmented; this fragmentation may be contributing to the continued prevalence of sexual misconduct by school employees.

Prevention of preK-12 School Employee Sexual Misconduct and Abuse.

The abuse of preK-12 students by school personnel is a pervasive, understudied topic that has behavioral, psychological and monetary consequences for victims, their families, and their communities. This special issue is the second of a two-part series and focuses on studies of school employee sexual misconduct prevention training programs and prevention issues and frameworks. This compilation of articles presents evidence that effective training can lead to improved awareness and behavior changes, concerns about policy implementation that may contribute to continued prevalence, and presents strategies and guidelines for prevention. These articles provide considerations for prevention including training, loopholes, and frameworks.

Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of PreK-12 Students by School Personnel.

The abuse of students by PreK-12 school personnel continues to be a multifaceted issue that affects students, staff, parents, and communities at an alarming rate. This two-part special issue builds on the dated and limited literature in this topic area and includes qualitative and quantitative research on prevalence, victim and offender characteristics, barriers to prevention, and frameworks and standards for prevention. Together these articles highlight the need for systematic data collection, policy implementation, accountability, and training and awareness. The findings from these articles provide specific practices that schools can adopt and follow to prevent school employee sexual misconduct.

Preventing School Employee Sexual Misconduct: An Outcome Survey Analysis of Making Right Choices.

This treatment-only study examines the impact of Making Right Choices, an online course prevention program designed to promote the knowledge, awareness, and prevention of school employee sexual misconduct. The sample included 13,007 school employee participants who took the Making Right Choices course between May 6, 2011, and March 12, 2017, in California and New York. The 20-item measure, Preventing Misconduct Assessment, was administered to participants at the end of the online course; completion of the measure was voluntary. Descriptive statistics revealed that a large majority of participants reported increasing their knowledge and awareness of school employee sexual misconduct because of their participation in the Making Right Choices online course. This study yields important findings regarding the impact of a sexual misconduct prevention program and, specifically, the difference it may make for non-licensed school employees. These findings indicate that school employees are accepting of sexual misconduct training programs and rate them as having value.

Exposing School Employee Sexual Abuse and Misconduct: Shedding Light on a Sensitive Issue.

While the media continue to report incidents of school employee sexual misconduct, few empirical studies focus on this issue. To address this gap in the literature, expand knowledge and awareness around the problem, and inform future research and programs, this research intends to document and analyze the characteristics of school employee sexual misconduct cases reported in the media. The authors conducted a landscape analysis of 361 published school employee sexual misconduct cases in the United States from 2014, documenting factors such as offender and victim characteristics, type of incident, technology use, location of offense, and resulting disciplinary actions by schools and law enforcement. These analyses showed that offenders were most often male and general education teachers, with approximately a quarter identified as athletic coaches. Offenders' average age was 36 years, while the average age of victims was 15. More than half of incidents took place at school or school-related events. Results also showed that school employee sexual misconduct incidents most often involved physical contact; however, technology (i.e., cell phones, computers, cameras/video recorders, and storage devices) played an important role in three out of four cases. Finally, analyses of the criminal and school-related consequences showed that over half of offenders were placed on administrative leave or resigned immediately following their arrest and almost all were convicted of their crimes. Additional findings concerning this topic are also reported in this article.

Passing the Trash: Absence of State Laws Allows for Continued Sexual Abuse of K-12 Students by School Employees.

"Passing the trash," enabling teachers who sexually abuse students to pursue another job with no record of their sexual misconduct, is common practice for K-12 school district administrators who fear legal liability and tarnished reputations. The "Prohibition on Aiding and Abetting Sexual Abuse" provision in the United States Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015 aims to eliminate passing the trash. This study explores states' progress toward developing and implementing relevant law and policy to comply with the provision. Researchers collected data from representatives of state departments of education, asking whether representatives were aware of the provision and what progress their state had made toward complying with it. Overall, researchers found that just four states had fully complied; several others were in the process of creating relevant policy and legislation and a few began the process in response to researchers' queries. However, the overwhelming majority of states-39-had no plans to create relevant legislation or policy, either because they were unaware of the provision or because they believed, erroneously, that existing laws fulfilled the ESSA mandate. Passing the trash is clearly an unacceptable practice, yet research suggests it still occurs, and state-level laws and policies to prevent it are slow to emerge. The lack of knowledge or awareness exhibited by many state representatives suggests a need to educate policymakers and education leaders about what aiding and abetting sexual offenders consists of, what consequences it can have for vulnerable students, and what provisions states can enact to prohibit it.

The implementation and effect of trauma-informed care within residential youth services in rural Canada: A mixed methods case study.

OBJECTIVE: The prevalence and associated risks of trauma have led youth-serving institutions to adopt trauma-informed care (TIC). A limited research base has linked TIC with improved outcomes. Associations between TIC and vicarious traumatization (VT) are even less commonly studied. The purpose of this case study is to evaluate the implementation and effect of TIC within 1 residential youth services division in rural Canada using the curriculum-based Risking Connection (RC; Saakvitne et al., 2001) and Restorative Approach (RA; Wilcox, 2012) trauma training programs, with a focus on VT. METHOD: We used an explanatory sequential mixed methods design and a participatory action research approach to evaluate the implementation and effect of RC and RA. Study 1, the quantitative program evaluation, used a prepost design to evaluate the effect of RC and RA on staff. Study 2, the qualitative study, used participant observations and interviews to develop a deeper understanding the quantitative findings. RESULTS: This study replicated previous findings that RC improves attitudes favorable to TIC but found that staff experience of VT increased after TIC training. Qualitative findings suggested that the division was successfully implementing TIC and that increased awareness and discussion of VT were potentially responsible for increases in VT scores. CONCLUSIONS: This case study documents improvements in staff attitudes favorable to TIC post-RC and RA and presents an in-depth analysis of TIC implementation. The study also highlights the complicated relationship between TIC implementation and staff experience of VT. Finally, this study provides a blueprint for conducting program evaluations of TIC. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).