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WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF I TELL? has been prepared specifically for the parent or caregiver of an abused child to let them know what they will be facing as the various processes that follow disclosure take place. The programme will also be useful to social workers, counsellors, doctors, teachers and other professionals as an aid or reference, and also to other people who may be faced with the decision of whether or not to report suspected child sexual abuse. Please keep in mind that the message has been prepared and worded specifically for parents and caregivers.
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A NOTE FROM THE PRODUCER The inspiration for ‘WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF I TELL?’ came from my experience with families who were either afraid to contact CYFS for fear of the unknown, or who, once having made notification, were feeling severe anxiety and disempowerment. This as a result of a lack of trustworthy information available to them about what would happen next and about the process that they had committed to. I became aware that this represented a form of secondary trauma that often compounded the primary trauma of the sexual abuse. I am aware that not all children have a protective, non colluding parent or caregiver. In my preparation of the information for the programme and in the assumption of the presentation that there is a non colluding care giver available, it was my concern not to raise a contemplative parent’s defences thus diminishing the likelihood of effect protective action. Kathryn Barriball Dip. Psych.
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HOW DOES THE WWHIIT? MISSION FIT WITH THE OBJECTIVES OF CHILD YOUTH & FAMILY? WWHIIT? supports the goal of ‘early help’, particularly that of ‘delivering more value to CY&F clients with existing resources by investing more in up-front services such as prevention and early help’. And it supports the goal of making “efficient use of resources” by being a valuable tool and work reducer for social workers by informing and directing clients. The WWHIIT? programme is a “prevention service’ in that it encourages the disclosure of child sexual abuse. Another of goals is to assist in “breaking the cycle”. WWHIIT? provides a public campaign, an education service and it provides the parents and caregivers of sexually abused children with access to an advisory service. It is a goal of CY&F to seek to ‘inform and educate the public and improve the capacity of families to meet their care, control and support responsibilities’. The WWHIIT? programme fulfills all of these objectives. The WWHIIT? programme is ‘Early Help’. The goal of CY&F is to ‘prevent problems from becoming entrenched’. Often parents / caregivers of victims are called upon to provide rational and adult protective responses at the very time that their world has been turned upside down by the disclosure. WWHIIT? is designed to provide these people with the information they need to know what will happen next and the information they need to ask informed questions of the right person about anything that is concerning them. This information empowers and reduces trauma. The disclosure of sexual abuse and sexual offending creates immediate concerns for the ongoing safety of children. The WWHIIT? programme encourages the reporting of abuse and thus contributes to the CY&F aim of ‘assisting the greatest number of children or young people in high risk or at risk situations to exit the cycle of disadvantage as soon as possible’.
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WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF I TELL? ("WWHIIT?") The worst thing that can happen when child sexual abuse is reported is that child’s caregivers / family are left awash in a sea of processes they do not understand and feel that they have no control over. The disclosure of sexual abuse and sexual offending creates immediate concerns for the ongoing safety of children. Often parents / caregivers of victims are called upon to provide rational and adult protective responses at the very time that their world has been turned upside down by the disclosure.
The mission of the "What Will Happen if I Tell?" programme is to enhance child safety: 1. By alleviating the compounding effect of the trauma of disempowerment experienced by families that have little or inadequate information about the process they have become engaged in. 2. By encouraging people to make notification of child sexual abuse.
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