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Hello Friends and colleagues.

My name is Michael Johnson or Detective Mike.

I'm a 28 year veteran of law enforcement in the United States.

24 of those years, I exclusively investigated crimes against children

primarily exploitation and child sexual abuse.

I'm currently retired and consult and conduct trainings internationally

on the areas involved in the investigation of child abuse and exploitation.

I'm a founder of one of the first children's advocacy centers or bonuses in the USA

and it co-housed all of the multidisciplinary team members

as importantly,I helped create our multidisciplinary team.

Many of the investigative protocols and best practices

all with a primary focus of being victim centered, being victim sensitive

as well as meeting the needs from the various disciplines law enforcement, social services

and advocacy, all within this victim centered intervention and investigation

for the overall protection of children and not often the caregivers.

I'm a founding partner of the Southern Shores Consulting Group

and the creator of the website Detective Mike Training and Consulting Services.

I look forward to speaking with you on this topic today.

Today we're going to talk about multidisciplinary teams.

I'll be honest with you, I love this topic.

Some of the things we're going to address is what is and how does a victim centered approach work and why is it important

who makes up a multidisciplinary team and what are their functions and what are their duties?

And especially in child sexual exploitation cases?

And what does it mean to put the victim's need first?

And why is that significant and why is victim sensitivity significant?

In our intervention, our coordination of our efforts all the way through the court process.

And lastly, we're going to talk about how to get started.

But I wanted to make a statement to get started.

And I will tell you, I come from a place where I investigated child exploitation cases by myself

and then we evolved to doing what are called joint investigations

where I would work directly with my social services.

And then we learned about this multidisciplinary

teams and the Children's Advocacy Center concept, or the Barnardo's concept.

And I want to tell you, it works.

And if it if there were a better process, I would tell you about it

for not only meeting the needs of law enforcement, my area, my discipline

but also meeting the overall needs or holistic needs for children.

What good is it in law enforcement if we arrest

but the victim has no home to go to or other positive outcomes?

What good is it to have a great forensic interview

where you get a lot of detailed information that can really help

in the prosecution process if there's no follow up investigation that takes place?

What good is a forensic medical examination where we do a great job of assessing the needs of the child's body?

If the victim is going to be back in your offices or in the emergency room within the year

what good is great therapy?

where you're meeting with the child and victim on a weekly basis to talk about her issues and problems?

If the threat and the harm is still in her home or in her community

or she's still dealing with it, what good is it?

It is a fantastic prosecution where you hold the perpetrator accountable for his or her acts against a child victim.

But the child victim walks away without a sense of justice and effectively her or his life is ruined.

What good is advocacy without holding the offender accountable and bringing them to justice?

And my colleagues in social work, what good is a risk assessment

where you've identified all of the issues of risk for this child in her family or situation?

If there's no follow up by a multidisciplinary team to address those colleagues,

the most important decision

your community, your jurisdiction, wherever you are that you could make in this area

is to bring together all of the disciplines to work in a coordinated manner to investigate these cases.

You cannot protect children.You cannot be victim sensitive.

You cannot meet all of these children's needs.

You cannot anticipate the whole wraparound that is needed to protect children without working together.

But let's talk about this a little bit more.

Our definition of a multidisciplinary team is a cross-section of professionals

working together in a coordinated and collaborative manner

to ensure an effective response intervention, as well as the outcomes from exploitation,maltreatment and abuse.

Why is this important?

Well, usually the first thing we talk about when it comes to why is a Multidisciplinary team important

is the multiple interviews that take place before the child victim even comes into our

our caseload or our investigations,as well as all of the interviews that take place.

Once we as the professionals find out that some abuse has occurred

some of the interviews that or I say interviews, discussions that the child may have or with her parents

her friends, her teacher, the counselor at the school or church members

family members or brothers and sisters of the mothers and father.

All of these people when they find out that something is happening

are going to want to talk to the child victim about what has taken place.

And I make the point that all of these interviews are taking place

and none of these people can do anything about protecting the child

bringing justice, or even providing support and therapy for the child victim.

But even when the case is brought to our attention

whether it's through a NGO or whether it's through a shelter or whether it's through a hotline

or directly to law enforcement, as many of these cases occur through social services.

If we aren't coordinated in our interview of the child victim, again

this child is going to have to be interviewed by each of us

with our own different perspectives in mind or our needs in mind

And we could very well coordinate that interview via a forensic interview

and we'll talk about that in a minute to get all of those needs met and more.

This is what we talk about when you hear how the process creates more trauma for the child.

It's legitimate.It's real.

Feeding the novice or the person who isn't very informed might believe.

And again, I actually heard this in the early days of creating This Multidisciplinary team

that a child victim of child sexual abuse should be able to repeat

her story over and over again in a consistent manner.

And the child's inability to do that actually is proof that what she said isn't the truth.

Now, you and I both know

especially when the child victim has experienced prolonged abuse over a period of time

and especially for younger children, they may not even know when the abuse actually started

let alone being multiple incidences of abuse that is just not possible

especially when you have different people asking the child different questions from different perspectives.

So that's what we mean by minimizing trauma.

We do need to find out exactly what happened.

As a matter of fact, we need to find out in detail exactly what happened

both for clinical and therapeutic reasons, but also from investigative and risk protection reasons

Another pro for a multidisciplinary team is we have an agreed upon interagency agreement

Let me share something with you in reference to the interagency agreement

in the early months and years

It is going to change numerous times because the more you work together

the more you can identify strengths and weaknesses

and the more you're going to find areas that aren't working real well and you're going to address those.

And then we're going to be changing our agreement

as we get better at coordinating and collaborating and intervening together.

The part that I like the most is you're going to train together.

You're going to learn more about each other's disciplines, what law enforcement can and cannot do

what social services can and cannot do, what advocacy can and cannot do

as well as what your forensic medical professionals can and cannot do.

And all of that is going to help us

do a better job in our coordination, in our investigations.

So who makes up our multidisciplinary teams?

Well, typically the organization that probably sees the most children in your communities as your social services.

Then we have law enforcement, obviously prosecution, both the criminal and family courts.

You have your forensic interview, which is a key component

which may be a law enforcement person or maybe a dedicated forensic interviewer.

You have your forensic medical professionals for both your sexual abuse and any physical abuse injuries for these victims.

Just as importantly, you have your advocacy and your support persons

to bring those much needed skills and information to us about what may be happening with the child victim on one side

but also on the other side, ensuring that all the children and non offending caregiver needs are being met.

And then lastly, but just as importantly

you got to have your Multidisciplinary team coordinator,

there's got to be somebody to bring all of these disciplines together

somebody who is trusted, somebody who gets everyone's schedule

somebody who I literally refer to This person is grease and glue

when things are getting a little difficult between the disciplines that kind of smooth that out.

But when things are starting to kind of come apart, they can be glue to bring everybody back together.

This in the early stages of your Multidisciplinary team is probably one of your most important Multidisciplinary team members.

Trust me when I share that with you

and they've got to be trusted by all the members.

But some of the central other multidisciplinary team members

That you should take keep into consideration are your non-governmental organizations

Law in the area of law enforcement

your vice teams, your narcotics teams, your federal and international task forces

like the Internet crimes against children.

These individuals have knowledge about what is happening

in the area of exploitation and trafficking in your communities

and you'd be missing a lot of valuable information not to engage them to find out what is happening.

Your civil society organizations, many of you are doing a fantastic jobs Internet internationally

and actually meeting a much needed area of support and shelter

and as well as policy The administration

shelters,hotlines, juvenile probation or juvenile supervision services

Lastly, your schools and counselors and any work that they're doing

And you may even depending on your communities, your clergy

because who is hearing about what is happening in a community more often than clergy?

And I don't mean that these individuals need to be a part of the regularly meeting the Multidisciplinary team

but they should be a part of the overall discussion so that

we can do a better job of meeting or addressing exploitation and trafficking that's happening in their communities.