ABC Counseling believes that child sexual abuse is preventable, and strives to provide evidence-based best practice interventions in order to stop sexual abuse from happening before it starts. The research shows that the most potential for preventing child sexual abuse is to focus on youth and their parents. Beginning in 2021, we are expanding our programming to offer prevention and community education programming to schools and organizations. We offer a collaborative, community-based model of prevention based on the recommendations from the CDC (Preventing Child Sexual Abuse), the Darkness to Light program, and the latest research in the field of CSA prevention (i.e., Assini-Meytin, Fix & Letourneau, 2020).
Our prevention programs are intended to be offered in a school setting, meet Illinois' requirements for educational standards for health education, and minimize the burden on your organization's staff and systems by providing experts to provide the prevention programming materials, instructional time, evaluation and follow-up. Engaging parents in these programs is key, and concurrent materials and supports for caregivers will also be provided. For more information, and to discuss how this program could be implemented in your local elementary, middle or high school, please contact Melissa Box at melissa@abccounseling.org.
We also know that our community as a whole needs to be learning and engaged in child sexual abuse prevention. To find out about our community education programming available to youth, parents, and organizations, please click here.