Mental health, corrections, and child protective services professionals are commonly asked to assess the risk that a person who has sexual abused poses to a specific child and under what circumstances, if any, the abuser might safely be allowed to have contact with the child. The Risk of Sexual Abuse of Children (ROSAC: McGrath, Allin, & Cumming, 2015) is a structured professional judgment assessment instrument for conducting these types of risk of sexual abuse assessments. 

This workshop addresses the issue of adolescents sexually abusing others in their family. Decades of science and practice have shown that sexual abuse within families cannot be addressed effectively by any single discipline. Working with families in which sexual abuse has occurred can require expertise in many areas, including understanding the effects of abuse on those who are victimized as well as other family members. It also requires that we understand the elements of the adolescent’s life that led him or her to abuse. As well, professionals need to understand the factors that may contribute to further abuse if there is no intervention as well as the factors that can help to prevent it from happening again. 

Client self-disclosure of personal history is essential to assessment, treatment, and the development of plans for preventing further harm to others. This workshop explores methods for helping clients to explore their lives, including through the use of a structured workbook. The workshop emphasizes how client disclosure can yield information about the individual’s strengths, attachment style, and amenability to treatment.

he Risk/Need/Responsivity (RNR) framework revolutionized correctional intervention schemes when it was first introduced in the 1990s. Since that time, practitioners and programs alike have worked to ensure that clients in forensic settings really do receive an intensity of intervention that is commensurate with the level of risk they pose (risk principle), while criminogenic needs are specifically targeted (need principle). However, despite gains in the areas of risk and need, the field continues to struggle with the responsivity principle, which encourages service providers to consider the nature of their involvement with clients.

and treatment needs assessments is becoming increasingly common, there are no empirically derived instruments to assist clinicians with these tasks. These assessments are different than those conducted for males and require clinicians to have a solid understanding of women who perpetrate violent crimes.

ven the adverse coercion and stigma of being mandated into sexual offense-specific treatment (SOST), there are extra challenges to engaging males in group-based SOST without encountering resistance, denial, silence, and drop-out. The group-based format presents additional barriers in the form of (anticipated) public humiliation and social condemnation. The speakers present an array of practical methods for pre-treatment preparation that can lower initial defensiveness, while improving motivation and openness to treatment, which can shorten the time it takes for individuals to respond to SOST. In addition to reviewing relevant research about pre-treatment preparation and motivational approaches, the speakers emphasize the crucial importance of “getting a good start” in treatment. They describe a new motivational and strengths-based client workbook that embodies techniques and exercises to prepare clients for their first group and the group based treatment experience. Exercises include self-discovery of personal character strengths, masculinity/gender stereotypes, cooperation, receiving and giving help, and relationships for enhanced motivation and openness to treatment change in SOST.