This course is primarily aimed at local authority (social worker) staff who are required to work with children and young people in investigative situations and who intend to lead an ABE interview. It is also relevant to other staff/agencies (e.g., police officers) who require training to lead an ABE interview. This course is restricted to individuals that have previously completed the 3-day ABE Awareness Course.
The interviewing of children (and other vulnerable and intimidated victims) is underpinned by the Ministry of Justice’s guidance “Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings” (2022), or ABE. Interviews that elicit information in a manner that is compliant with ABE principles is crucial to ensure that interviews are deemed to be admissible by the criminal justice system. Interviewers tasked with interviewing vulnerable and intimidated witnesses must be aware of their interviewing responsibilities under ABE guidance. Failing to follow ABE guidance could potentially compromise any criminal investigation or prosecution.
This practical themed course focuses upon the actual interviewing techniques and styles that will satisfy the requirements of Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings (2022). Delegates will be required to show an application of interviewing principles that include the application of rapport and ground rules, eliciting a free recall/narrative, application of an appropriate interview structure with forensically appropriate questioning techniques to elicit further information. The overarching aim of the course is for participants to display all aspects of appropriate child victim/witness interviewing in accordance with Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings (2022).
Aims
To display all aspects of appropriate child victim/witness interviewing in accordance with Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings (2022).
Objectives
By the end of the training the participants will be able to;
- Display how to deliver a ground rules and rapport phase with a child interviewee in accordance with Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings 2022. Summarise the multi-agency response to child protection investigations
- Request a free narrative from a child interviewee in accordance with Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings 2022.
- Appropriately summarise a free narrative and explain to a child interviewee how an interview will be conducted a child interviewee in accordance with Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings 2022.
- Apply a time parameter interview model to a child interviewee in accordance with Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings 2022.
- Apply appropriate aspects of cognitive interviewing instructions to a child interviewee in accordance with Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings 2022.
- Deliver appropriate forensically phrased questions with a focus on points to prove within a child interview in accordance with Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings 2022.
- Display an appropriate liaison with a co-interviewer in a child interview in accordance with Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings 2022.
- Apply an appropriate closure phase with a child interviewee in accordance with Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings 2022.
- Display an understanding of the difference between case specific and heart of the matter topics within an ABE interview with a child interviewee in accordance with Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings 2022.
Course Outline
Day 1
- Refresher of topics covered with the ABE Awareness 3-day course including Planning and Preparation for an ABE interview, Rapport and Ground Rules, securing a free recall/narrative, Appropriate questioning techniques, The Cognitive Interview, Points to prove, Liaison with a Co-Interviewer, Closure of an Interview
- Rapport practice sessions with Trainer led group feedback
Day 2
- Creating and allocation of role plays.
- Rapport to free narrative practice sessions with Trainer led feedback.
Day 3
- Free Narrative to offence practice sessions with Trainer led feedback
Day 4
- Full interview practice sessions with Trainer led feedback
Day 5
- Assessed final interviews with Trainer led feedback.
Underpinning Legislation
The Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999
The Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 (YJCEA) aims to help vulnerable and intimidated witnesses give the best evidence they can in criminal proceedings. This is to be achieved by allowing certain witnesses access to a range of special measures where it is felt that their evidence will thereby be improved. Reducing the stress associated with a court case will, it is hoped, mean that vulnerable witnesses are more confident and give better testimony. In addition, individuals who in the past would have been unable to participate in proceedings and were therefore considered incompetent to give evidence will now have a voice. The reasoning behind the YJCEA is clear. In cases of abuse in particular, the prosecution case is often based almost entirely on the evidence of one witness, often a child. It is important that what evidence there is in such situations is presented as well as possible.
Achieving Best in Criminal Proceedings 2022 (Guidance on the interviewing of Vulnerable & Intimidated Victims and Witnesses)
Achieving Best Evidence in Criminal Proceedings (ABE) provides guidance and underpins the special measure of a video recording to adduce the evidence in chief of vulnerable victims and witnesses (S27 Youth Justice & Criminal Evidence Act 1999).
Video interviews must follow the guidelines and principles of interviewing found within the guidance