elicit and identify
Live Date Title Instructor Time
Watch Now Elicit and Identify Protective Factors in Domestic Violence Cases Within the Forensic Interview Laura Gapske 90 minutes

Brief Overview: This session’s goal is to bridge work of the Duluth Model Coordinated Community Response (CCR) in conjunction with the Child Advocacy Center model. Domestic violence and child abuse maltreatment co-occurrence is exceptionally high in child abuse investigations. These cases are further challenging due to intentional or unintentional contamination of memories ensuring secrecy by a batterer. Multi-disciplinary team members and systems partners may not recognize protective factors utilized by survivors and/or the non-offending caregiver. This session will incorporate research on protective measures and the experiences of domestic violence survivors from focus groups conducted in Duluth, MN. The session will cover additional sample questions for forensic interviews to elicit protective factors of the non-offending caregiver. Foundational domestic violence knowledge preferred.

Expert Presenter: Laura Gapske, In her 15 + years of experience, Laura has dedicated her life professionally and personally to ending the violence against women and children. She serves as the co-chair of the St. Louis County Mortality Review Committee for child protection services. At First Witness Child Advocacy Center, she provides oversight all programs staff by providing leadership, mentoring, facilitation of innovation, goal attainment, and forensic interviewing skills.

Laura previously worked at Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs (DAIP) as the Coordinated Community Response Coordinator and co-facilitator in Creating a Process of Change Men’s Non-Violence Groups. Her role maximized the safety of victims who experience domestic violence by working to enhance and maintain an effective coordinate community response to domestic violence. She effectively works with all women, the men who batter them, and their families through systems change methodology. She participates in the development, expansion, and executes trainings for Zero Abuse Project Child First® Forensic Interview Training and DAIP’s National Training Project.

She conducts forensic interviews and court testimony when allegations of maltreatment or abuse arise to support investigations by social services and/or law enforcement, while working with the multi-disciplinary team. Laura provides additional national training on Co-Occurrence: Domestic Violence and Child Sex Abuse Training for Advocates, Advocacy Training for Advocates within a CAC, forensic interviewing, policies and procedures, narrative practice, multidisciplinary team development and dynamics of maltreatment and abuse.

In her personal life, she serves as an elected official on her local school board and is the proud mother of two boys that are avid soccer players.

Connecting you with experts in the field of child abuse

Continuing Education Credits

This activity has also been designed to meet the Minnesota Board of Social Work for 1.5 hours CEU.

Accessing the Archived Webinar

All EduNet Webinars are recorded and available within 24 hours following the live event. To access the archive simply click on "View the Archived Webinar" and complete the registration form. Following registration you will be directed to the recording and be able to access the webinar immediately. In the case you want to watch it later, you will also receive a email that contains a link to the recording as well as the webinar evaluation. Please check your spam folder if you do not receive a confirmation email. In either scenario you can share the webinar with your team, complete the evaluation, and print a certificate of attendance.

For any programming questions, please contact Sara Lee at sara.lee1@childrensmn.org.
For any technical questions, please contact Kia Kehrer at kia.kehrer@childrensmn.org.