Advanced SDM Advanced Safety Interviewing and Assessment

Level: Advanced Practice – Lineworker, Supervisor

Credits: 3

Intended Audience: ER and FM workers and their supervisors who have had basic SDM training. The focus of this class is how to use the SDM Safety Assessment to
make in-depth safety decisions in the field. Workers should bring the Safety assessment of the SDM P&P manual.

Intended Objectives:

• To review safety assessment policies, procedures, and definitions
• To gain understanding of prioritizing safety threats in terms of how extensively to pursue during investigation/assessment.
• To explore different ways to examine each safety threat, including interview and observation.
• To understand how to manage conflicting information.
• To distinguish between resolved vs. controlled safety threats.

Topics Include:

• Learning to prioritize focus of assessment on safety
  Incentives for safety
• A simple framework for pursuing safety-related information (hot, cold, cool)
• Unplanned/involuntary changes and experiences of “crisis”
• Understanding how safety changes over time, and to distinguish between safety threats that are ruled out, resolved, controlled, or discovered.

CalSWEC Competencies Addressed:

1.3 Trainee demonstrates the ability to conduct an ethnically and culturally sensitive assessment of a child and family and to develop an appropriate intervention plan.

1.5 Trainee understands the importance of a client’s primary language and supports its use in providing child welfare assessment and intervention services.

3.2 Trainee demonstrates the ability to perform a preliminary safety assessment and to monitor the safety of the child through ongoing assessment of risk

3.7 Trainee is able to gather, assess, and present pertinent information from interviews, case records, and collateral sources in evaluating an abuse or neglect allegation and making effective referrals for services or further evaluation.