Why Trauma-Informed Design Matters in Mandated Reporter Training

Mandated reporter training often touches on painful and personal realities. As someone who has been designing training for more than two decades, I have learned that trauma-informed design is not optional when teaching topics like child abuse prevention—it is essential.

A trauma-informed approach to training design assumes that learners are more likely than not to have experienced some form of trauma. Trauma can be the result of abuse, neglect, disadvantages, and other adverse family circumstances which can have lasting effect on a person’s mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing.  

This means curricula is grounded in a core set of guiding principles that protect learners from further trauma. These guiding principles: 

• Enhance the instructors’ awareness and understanding of trauma's effects on learners. 
• Improve instructors’ response to learners experiencing trauma. 
• Avoid re-traumatization of learners by creating a safe and supportive environment.  
• Limit vicarious traumatization among instructors themselves, by increasing support and professional training they receive on topics pertaining to child and adolescent trauma. 

For mandated reporter training to be effective, it must engage learners emotionally enough to care, reflect, and remember. Statistics, laws, and checklists alone will not motivate someone to take action when there is a concern that a child has been harmed. The inclusion of real-life scenarios and survivor’s personal stories can significantly enhance engagement, memory retention, and skill building by providing authentic insights, real world context, challenges to harmful stereotypes, and by fostering an emotional connection.  

At the same time, we must implement a “do not harm” principal by creating a safe space for learning by acknowledge the sensitive nature of topics and the potential for a traumatic response from learners. 

This is a balance I work hard to achieve in every project—and it is a cornerstone of the iLookOut for Child Abuse training developed by the Penn State Center for the Protection of Children and offered through Mandated Reporter Academy. The course strikes the delicate balance between clear instruction and human centered design.