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St. Mary's Parish - General Information -
Protecting God's Children
Workshop
Workshop participation is required for all paid staff and every
volunteer who works with children on a one time or regular basis. In the
coming months, parishes and schools will allow only those who have
attended the PGC workshop to work with children and youth.
To register for a
Protecting God’s Children’s Workshop, please click on the Online
Registration Instructions on the right.
Each participant
must register online at
www.virtus.org in order to receive credit.
Protecting Children
Child sexual abuse
is a worldwide public health issue. Child abuse, particularly child
sexual abuse, is reprehensible—especially when the wrongdoer is
affiliated with the Church. The VIRTUS® programs assist the Church in
being a safe haven for children and a messenger for preventing child
sexual abuse within the Church and society in general. We seek to
achieve this lofty goal through our child sexual abuse prevention
program: PROTECTING GOD'S CHILDREN™.
The PROTECTING GOD'S CHILDREN™ Program
Most organizations
that work with children have some sort of child safety program. Through
the PROTECTING GOD'S CHILDREN program, we maximize those efforts by
helping churches and religious organizations refine their roles as child
safe environments and empowering them with new tools to help them, and
adults and parents, protect children.
Why Does It Work?
Child abusers seek
to operate and abuse their power within nurturing, child-friendly
environments where it is assumed that nobody would want to harm a child.
Religious organizations of all faiths are an easy target. The PROTECTING
GOD'S CHILDREN program implements safety mechanisms that send a message
to all abusers and potential abusers:
• Child abuse is not tolerated,
• Children are vigilantly protected,
• Victims are listened to, heard, and shielded from further abuse, and
• Offenders are identified and punished.
By utilizing best
practices for training and loss prevention, the PROTECTING GOD'S
CHILDREN program helps make churches safe for all people—especially
children.
How Does It Work?
Maximizing a
church's role as a child-safe environment begins with making adults more
aware of the ways children and adults interact with each other. The
PROTECTING GOD'S CHILDREN program educates and trains adults (clergy,
religious, teachers, staff, volunteers, and parents) about the dangers
of abuse, the warning signs of abuse, the ways to prevent abuse, the
methods of properly reporting suspicions of abuse, and responding to
allegations of abuse.
All VIRTUS training
programs, including the PROTECTING GOD'S CHILDREN programs, are
comprehensive and multi-dimensional—incorporating proven best practice
standards for the prevention of child sexual abuse by clergy, staff,
volunteers, and others who interact with children within the church
environment. Our training programs incorporate instructor-led training,
train-the-facilitator education, awareness videos, and regularly
scheduled continuing education and training via state-of-the-art
web-based training and education courses.
Using The Church To Protect Children
For any
organization, the best practice to prevent wrongdoing, including child
sexual abuse, is to have an organization use its own people to
facilitate awareness of the issue. The PROTECTING GOD'S CHILDREN program
begins with the training of internal facilitators—individuals selected
by the archidiocese, diocese, or religious organization to train other
adults and parents on how to best protect children. We use
facilitator-led awareness sessions and web-based training so that
participants learn the best methods for delivering their message,
including the training for the PROTECTING GOD'S CHILDREN program.
Training Adults To Protect Children
We begin by making
adults of the Church that interact with children aware of how to protect
children. Our PROTECTING GOD'S CHILDREN program for adults is a three to
four hour awareness session that instructs adults of the Church that
interact with children that to protect children you must have continuous
awareness and vigilance. This awareness session makes trainees
understand the signs of child sexual abuse, the methods and means by
which offenders commit abuse and five empowerment steps one can use to
prevent child sexual abuse.
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