MADISON SCHOOLS SEND Child Abuse Prevention Curriculum Parent Letter Home to Parents

The new curriculum will begin in the next few weeks

We are very excited to announce our partnership with the Children’s Advocacy Center of Southeastern Indiana (CAC) to bring a vitally important, age-appropriate, state-required curriculum to all students within our district. Beginning later this year, specially trained Prevention Specialists from CAC will deliver a curriculum created by the Monique Burr Foundation for Children. This curriculum, Child Safety Matters and Teen Safety Matters, will be incorporated and delivered annually to all students enrolled at MCS.

In the past several weeks, our entire staff has received additional training from community outreach personnel at CAC on the presence, impact, identification, and process for intervention around these types of occurrences and crimes within our county…specifically. Jefferson County is one of the highest-ranking areas of child abuse in our regional area. Data shows that 1 in 10 children will be sexually abused before they turn 18 and 97% of the time the abuse is done by someone the child knows and trusts. We want to be a proactive part of the solution to help protect our youth.

We feel as though this begins with awareness and we have a responsibility to create awareness among our staff, and more importantly, our students. This curriculum will contain age/grade level appropriate information that will help them begin to understand, identify, and protect themselves against potential harm which may occur within their daily routines. We have included information from the Monique Burr Prevention Education Programs that contain an overview of the information within the curriculum.

As with all components of your child’s education, we hope this will be a partnership between families and educators. The overall goal is to create safe environments for all students while at school, when participating in extracurricular activities in our community and beyond, and to create a solid foundation as they grow into post-secondary education and/or career opportunities as young adults and beyond.

Should you have questions, feel free to contact your building principal or one of us and we will be happy to visit with you further.