Continuing Ed Receives Grant from Governor’s Child Sex Trafficking Team to Create Training Curriculum
Baylor Continuing Education is working on an extensive project to create and implement a customized Motivational Interviewing training curriculum designed for those who provide services to children and youth who have been sexually exploited.
The first portion of their task was to customize the Motivational Interviewing curriculum. Motivational Interviewing (MI) is a longstanding collaborative counseling approach that helps people explore and resolve ambivalent feelings and insecurities to find the internal motivation they need to change their behavior. It is a practical, empathetic and short-term process that takes into consideration the difficulty of making major life changes.
This curriculum was designed particularly for professionals who work directly with the affected youth, such as law enforcement officers, emergency medical staff, parole officers, social workers, counselors and legal professionals, as well as volunteer advocates with non-profit organizations.
The Continuing Education staff in partnership with W. C. “Dub” Wright, who has been Continuing Education’s MI instructor for years, and Dr. Amy Eichler, associate professor of psychology at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, developed the curriculum, which includes a customized toolkit for the students.
Starting in January, Wright and Eichler will travel to seven cities across the state of Texas and facilitate this curriculum during a two-day course. Students will receive their toolkit, a MI textbook, and a workbook to take back to their organizations so that other members can benefit from this training. Wright will perform follow-up group video chats twice after each course to guide students as they implement this new training in their respective fields.
As an additional component of this project, Dr. Beth Lanning, associate professor in health and human sciences, will perform a process evaluation to measure the effectiveness of these training courses. By collecting surveys from the students before and after the course and evaluating the follow-up chats, Lanning will provide valuable insight into how this information is benefitting service providers across fields.
This project aligns with Illuminate, the University's strategic plan, by creating opportunities for high-quality, globally-significant research that are rooted in the pursuit of health and human flourishing. Additionally, this curriculum engages with the academic initiative of Baylor in Latin America as a large percentage of these victims are trafficked into Texas from Latin American countries. These courses are one more way Baylor fulfills its mission to educate men and women for worldwide leadership and service by integrating academic excellence and Christian commitment within a caring community.
This important work is made possible by a grant from the Child Sex Trafficking Team (CSTT) in the Office of the Texas Governor. The CSTT is fighting to end sex trafficking and to help its young victims. For more information, visit gov.texas.gov.