In this interview, we are excited to hear from Dr. Amy Webster, Manager of Policy, Advocacy, and Research at Sexual Assault Services Victoria, about her findings, funded by us, on what specialist practitioners need to know regarding child sexual abuse. She also tells us about how to address some of the knowledge and skill gaps that she has seen in her work.
🎧 Don’t miss this important discussion.
In this conversation we explore:
- Who is the specialist workforce?
- How prepared are specialist workers when entering the workforce?
- What are the gaps in knowledge and skills when responding to child sexual abuse?
- Barriers including, system, organisational and individual that practitioners face.
- How to build a robust, sustainable workforce to better support victims and survivors.
Some amazing insights Amy shares with us include:
“The practitioners we consulted with felt their degrees did not prepare them well for responding to victims and survivors of child sexual abuse.”
“Working with adults and then being asked to work with children, young people, or families is too big of an ask when you haven’t been provided the skills and knowledge to do that.”
“There is a lot of pressure on the specialist sector to not only be doing the fairly expert one-on-one work with survivors and their families, but the specialist workforce is also needing to equip the rest of the sectors to respond to child sexual abuse.”
“Child sexual abuse underpins so many areas where social workers work. It’s not some discrete area of work. All social workers need training in it.”
The National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse is proud to celebrate the finalisation of its first commissioned research. Tune in to this crucial discussion below and gain insights into the challenges and opportunities in the specialist workforce.
Dive deeper into the research findings
