Evaluation Results

Child and Youth Engagement Online Training for Legal Professionals

Overview

The Quality Improvement Center on Engaging Youth in Finding Permanency (QIC-EY) Child and Youth Engagement Online Training for Legal Professionals is designed to build a culture of equity and inclusion to ensure that court professionals have the knowledge and attitudes necessary to engage children and youth in shared decision-making. The training consists of 5 asynchronous training modules that take approximately 2 hours to complete. The evaluation focused on changes from pre-training to post-training in court personnel attitudes, knowledge, satisfaction, and open-ended feedback.

Results are based on a sample of 230 court personnel (including advocates, attorneys, judicial officers, and court staff) from six sites (Michigan, Nebraska, Montana, Rhode Island, Hawai’i, and Yakama Nation).

Knowledge Improvement

Court personnel’s knowledge related to engaging youth in court improved after the training.

There were significant knowledge gains in 20 of 21 survey items. The topics with the greatest increase were trauma-informed care and adolescent brain development.

Attitutde Improvement

Court personnel attitudes related to engaging youth in the court improved (on a scale from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree).

Attitudes improved most significantly on topics related to the importance of child and youth engagement to ensure justice and due process and the essentiality of providing children and youth with notice of hearings.

Most Liked Aspect

When asked which aspect of the training that participants liked the most, the top responses included the content (25.2%), the lived experience perspectives (21.3%), the skill building (12.2%), and the pacing and structure (11.3%)

I liked the ease of access and that it was presented in a way that is easily understandable.

I enjoyed the interactive aspect of the training; it provided further examples of how these scenarios may play out in real life, and how to engage with the child effectively so needs are understood and communicated to the different parties involved with the case.

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