Program Profile: Enough! Preventing Child Sexual Abuse in My School

This is an interactive, one-hour, online training course that educates school personnel on identifying, reporting, and preventing child sexual abuse (CSA). This program is rated Promising. There was a statistically significant increase in knowledge about CSA for teachers who participated in the training, compared with teachers who did not participate.

A Promising rating implies that implementing the program may result in the intended outcome(s).

Program Goals

Enough! Preventing Child Sexual Abuse in My School is an interactive online training course. Teachers, administrators, counselors, coaches, office personnel, and support staff learn about child sex abuse (CSA) and the steps they can take to prevent it. The course is specifically designed to address the fears and biases that hinder school personnel from identifying, reporting, and preventing CSA. Participants learn about the behaviors associated with grooming and the increased importance of reporting responsibilities. The course can be completed in 1 hour or in three, 20-minute segments.

Target Population/Eligibility

The program is designed for school employees, including teachers, administrators, counselors, coaches, office personnel, and support staff who work with children in grades K–12.

Program Components

The course uses an interactive format to inform and engage participants. Teacher avatars guide participants through two scenarios of educator sexual misconduct. In one scenario, a teacher overlooks and minimizes the signs of sexual misconduct by a colleague and does not report because of fear of retaliation and other negative consequences associated with reporting. In the other scenario, a teacher is concerned about a student whose grades have dropped and has demonstrated a noticeable change in emotional state. The scenario reveals that the teacher has overlooked signs that clearly point to sexual abuse/educator misconduct.

The course includes a short pre-and posttest and concludes with a brief survey to evaluate the program. The pre- and posttest includes 13 multiple choice questions that cover topics such as prevalence rates; types of CSA behaviors; impact of CSA on children; signs and symptoms of CSA; the veracity of children’s reports; backgrounds/behaviors of person who perpetrate the crime; and factors associated with CSA in schools, including examples of boundary-violating behaviors, specific behaviors in support of prevention, reporting responsibilities, and responses to suspected abuse. Upon completion, participants can download a certificate of completion. Participants may also download over a dozen prevention resources for future reference and discussion.

Study

The randomized control study by Gushwa and colleagues (2018) evaluated the effectiveness of the Enough! Preventing Child Sexual Abuse in My School program. Full-time K–12 teachers were sampled from three public school districts in one Northeastern and two Midwestern states. Initially, teachers were randomly assigned to one of two groups, Group A or Group B. Group A received the Enough! training program, took a knowledge test at pretest and posttest, and completed a brief evaluation of the training experience. Group B received no intervention and only completed a posttest. The researchers later added a pretest to Group B to assess testing bias and control for the potential influence of the pretest on the posttest. Participants who completed both a pretest and posttest in the control group were distinguished as Group C. Of the 1,700 teachers contacted for participation, 147 responded and 134 completed the study. Group A (intervention) consisted of 61 teachers, Group B (control, no pretest) included 55 teachers, and 18 teachers were assigned to Group C (control, pre- and posttest).

The final study sample ( n =134) predominantly comprised white females in their thirties with more than 10 years of teaching experience. Group A, the intervention group, was 97 percent female, 97 percent white, and 7 percent Hispanic. Of this group, the median age range was 30 to 39, modal years employed was 11 to 15, and 87 percent had a master’s degree. Group B, the control group that did not complete a pretest, was 97 percent female, 98 percent white, and 2 percent Hispanic. Of this group, the median age range was 40 to 49, modal years employed was 16 or more, and 91 percent had a master’s degree. Group C, the control group that did complete a pretest, was 89 percent female and 100 percent white. The median age range was 30 to 39, modal years employed was 11 to 15, and 83 percent had a master’s degree. There were no significant differences between the intervention and control groups.

Analyses measured the extent to which teachers who completed the Enough! training had higher knowledge of the frequency of child sexual abuse in schools, recognized boundary-violating behaviors, and understood reporting requirements for suspected or disclosed CSA, compared with teachers who did not complete the training. To identify statistically significant differences, paired t tests were calculated between the pre- and posttests of Group A (intervention) and Group C (pre- and posttest control), and a one-way ANOVA was used to compare posttest results between Group A (intervention), Group B (posttest-only control), and Group C (pre- and posttest control). Post hoc analyses were conducted for the significance of differences between each group. The study authors did not conduct subgroup analyses.

The course is made available to public and private schools under a Licensing Agreement based on a reasonable per learner cost. Discounts are available for multi-year Agreements. School districts with large employee pools, State Departments of Education, and insurers of schools are encouraged to contact the non-profit producer of the course to negotiate an “enterprise rate” that would support its dissemination to the broadest possible audience. The Licensing Agreement includes regular reports to the purchasing entity about the number and demographics of learners registered who completed the course, and their pre- and posttest scores and evaluation survey results.

School administrators and leaders may preview Enough! for free with no obligation of purchase. For more information, contact [email protected] .

These sources were used in the development of the program profile: