“Finding Words” is…
Finding Words is an intensive five day course in which students learn the necessary skills to conduct a competent, investigative interview of a child abuse victim using the CornerHouse forensic interview process.
Finding Words is an interactive course which combines lectures with demonstrations and hands-on experience. Students will be required to interview a child about a non-abuse event and be critiqued by an expert forensic interviewer. Students will also conduct a 30 minute interview with an actor/actress playing the role of an abused child and will be critiqued on their performance.
Finding Words Oklahoma is the ideal course for investigators and prosecutors seeking to enhance their ability to speak to and for abused children. Finding Words can be difficult for a child forced to tell a jury about abuse. Conflicting emotions of fear and love for the perpetrator may cause a child to be reluctant to reveal abuse. If a child tries to speak of abuse, he or she may lack the verbal skills to adaquately communicate the event to an adult.
Finding Words can be difficult for a police officer, social worker or prosecutor who must speak to a child about abuse. In order to communicate competently with a child, the interviewer must be able to speak in a manner consistent with the child’s linguistic and developmental abilities.
Finding Words can be difficult for an investigator or prosecutor forced to defend an interview from an attack by defense counsel that the child was “led” into making a false accusation.
Finding Words Oklahoma is a course offered by the Children’s Hospital Child Protection Team and OU Health Sciences Center in collaboration with CornerHouse, a nonprofit interagency child abuse evaluation and training center located in Minneapolis, Minnesota and the National District Attorneys Association’s National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse.
