The Stepwise Interview Guidelines: Special Needs Witnesses

This is an advanced 2-day course for interviewers with training and experience in The StepWise Interview Guidelines (i.e., StepWise). This course begins with a brief review of the StepWise guidelines, and a discussion of participants' experience in applying the StepWise guidelines. Students are then taught how to assess and recognize special needs characteristics that may influence an interview. These characteristics include the emotional, cognitive and behavioural features of children and other witnesses with developmental delays, mental illnesses (e.g., anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress), and challenging personality traits (e.g., hyperactivity, shyness). The course also includes characteristics involved in working with deaf and/or blind children and children from different cultures. The focus is on how to prepare and plan for interviews of children with special needs by identifying particular characteristics that may require the interviewer to adapt one or more of the steps and/or techniques of the StepWise guidelines. Learning is enhanced with video and other practical exercises, including an end-of-course practical exercise in which participants will conduct, and receive feedback on, an interview with a special need witness.