January 19, 2012
On January 5th, SCAN hosted its first Darkness to Light Stewards of Children training, empowering twenty professional members of the Loudoun County community to take action in the prevention of child sexual abuse.
The group of staff and volunteers from the Loudoun Abused Women’s Shelter (LAWS) included social workers, shelter and Child Advocacy Center directors, court community advocates, Nurturing Parenting program staff, attorneys, sexual assault services staff and children’s program staff/volunteers.
The overall response to the training was very favorable. Evaluation comments included:
- “Great training that I could use both personally and professionally”;
- “Very good information with good suggestions”; and
- “I look forward to sharing the workbook with family members – it leaves no doubt as to how to react to a disclosure of sexual assault (of a child). Just as important, we now have diagnostic tools to interpret ‘signs’ of child abuse.”
But perhaps the most telling sign of how the training went came as we concluded the training with a question to all participants: Which members of their community would they like to see trained as Stewards of Children? The consensus was that everyone should know this information, especially those that are mandated reporters. We couldn’t agree more.
SCAN is committed to working towards a goal in Loudoun County of having all mandated reporters trained as Stewards of Children. Stay tuned as we continue to raise awareness and host trainings in the coming year across our targeted regions of Loudoun & Prince William counties.