Reporting the Findings from the Pilot Implementation of the Restructured Child Abuse Prevention Curriculum and Facilitator Online Training

Introduction. When a child’s world is chaotic, threatening, and devoid of kind words and supportive relationships, that world can have long-lasting negative effects on the child’s learning, behavior, physical and mental health. There is very limited rigorous research evaluation of child abuse prevention program efficacy, especially establishing a relationship between acquisition of knowledge about child abuse/neglect and subsequent behavior change in children that illustrates empowerment in demonstrating personal safety in high risk situations. Longitudinal studies must be developed to measure the impact of prevention efforts across social-ecological domains, including families and the education systems. Progress has been made in the idea of prevention as a concept, yet prevention efforts in the field of child maltreatment are still limited in scope and results.

Design. The two goals of the Speak Up Be Safe curriculum are: 1: To provide children with the skills they need to prevent or interrupt child abuse, neglect, and bullying and 2. To increase children’s knowledge about safety as related to abuse. Pre and post survey items were developed to evaluate the revised and newly expanded curriculum. Survey items were written to be age and grade level appropriate. The readability levels for each item were written to match the appropriate grade level and the expanded Childhelp Speak Up Be Safe curriculum. Nine different surveys were developed across the grade levels. The questions were developed based on examining the “Big Ideas” and “Key Terms” within the lessons for each grade. Additionally, scenario type questions were included. Items were written to ensure measurement of the goals and objectives of the program.

Results. The program was implemented in six schools enrolling Kindergarten through 8^thgrade youth. Students completed the Pre-survey (N=911) and the Post Surveys (N=832). In the pre-/post comparison, over 50% of students showed knowledge and awareness of child abuse, neglect, bullying, internet safety and safety concepts. For 11 of the 15 knowledge items included in the surveys, at least 75% of students selected the correct response related to knowledge and awareness of child abuse, neglect, bullying, internet safety and safety concepts. On average, 80% of students were able to identify the correct Safety Rule that would apply when given a scenario.

Conclusions. Several factors, including recruitment of a high school to implement Speak Up Be Safe in a 9-12 environment, impacted the success of the pilot implementation. After completing the expanded pilot, the next step is to implement a multi-site randomized controlled trial across grades PreK through 12 to determine curriculum efficacy.