Interviewing Children from
First Responder to Forensic
Interview
Presented by:
Julie Kenniston, MSW, LISW
[email protected]
First Responders
•CPS
•Law Enforcement
•Fire/EMS
•Emergency Department Medical
Providers
Is it about semantics?
•First responder interview
•Minimal facts interview
•Field interview
•Forensic interview
•Safety assessment
•Medical history
•Forensic interview
Multiple Interviews
•The key is to minimize duplicative*
interviews
•What does the research say?
• “…when interviewers follow internationally recognized bestpractice guidelines emphasizing open-questions and free
memory recall…” La Rooy, Katz, Malloy and Lamb (2010)
•Think about the implications of repetition
(Suggestive? Coercive? Child appears coached)
•So how do field interviews fit in with FIs?
La Rooy et al.
•“When open-ended questions are repeated,
children tend to report many new (but
nonetheless accurate) details about known
events (Fivush, Hamond, & Harsch, 1991;
Hamond & Fivush, 1991; Peterson et al.,
2001), and the cases examined here illustrate
how new, relevant information can be
provided when children are given a second
opportunity to describe their experiences.”
La Rooy et al.
• “Although encouraging interviewers to capitalize on
the memory-enhancing properties of repeated
interviewing, we must also offer a strong note of
caution. In the interviews excerpted here, open-ended
questions predominated. Such prompts are crucial
when facilitating reminiscence and also are, of course,
a key element of best-practice interviewing (see Lamb
et al., 2008, for a review). As such, particular
attention should be given to the quality of initial
interviews when deciding whether or not to
reinterview because suggestibility can be
exacerbated by repeated interviews (La Rooy et al.,
2009).”
La Rooy et al.
•“Repeated interviews are most likely to be useful
in jurisdictions that provide high-quality
training, regularly review interview quality, and
emphasize continued professional
development, with attention paid to
fundamental memory concepts. Mandatory
recording of each interview would, of course,
maximize the ability to understand what
happened while documenting the
appropriateness of the questions asked.”
Field Interviews and Beyond
•What is the purpose of a field interview?
•Is getting a disclosure required to establish
safety? If so, how far should the interview go?
•Do you have to do T/L in the field?
•If you go to the CAC to do FI, who does the
interview?
•What does your MOU say?
•Which cases should be seen at CAC?
•What is the sequence of medical exams and FIs?
Problems to Consider
•Using a closed-ended approach
•Not recording in the field
•Don’t want to have child come in and merely
record statement
•If full FI is used in first responder interview, how
does that impact the CAC interview?
•People in the monitor room need to understand
the process
New things come out.
We incorporate new skills.
Our ability to access information is
improved.
Research has come out that offers
us techniques that improve our
access to information.
First Responder Interviews
•Knowing interviewer skill level and job
mandate is important, however, doing
things at the risk of gathering inaccurate
information negates the use of certain
techniques.
Typical First Responder
Interview
•Well-intentioned
•Closed-ended
•Gathered information
•Interviewer did most of the talking
Starting with the Basics
•Child’s attention span
•Child development
•Memory and suggestibility
•The culture of questions (dinner table,
school)
•Building rapport
•Gathering demographic information
What do we need in first responder
interviews?
•Enough to establish the child’s safety
•Who (victim and suspect)
•What (enough to understand that there is
something criminal happening)
•Where (jurisdiction)
•When (ONLY to establish if an acute medical
exam is needed)
Does this information have to
come from the child???
•NO
•The reporting source can provide information
•The caregiver can provide information
(particularly about perp’s access to the child
and timing of that access)
•If you have to talk with the child, get only
enough information to refer to specialist and
ask questions in a NARRATIVE format
So what changes are needed?
•Move away from using list questions as
rapport-building
•Model the way questions will be asked and
answered
•Get a baseline of the child’s abilities in
order to structure the interview
•Open-ended questions must be used in the
field interview to minimize suggestibility
What’s the big deal?
•This debate really isn’t about first responder
interviews
•It is more about increasing the amount of
ACCURATE information gathered from children
•It is about learning and incorporating new skills
•It takes practice
•It is simple
•It isn’t easy
Price, H. L., et al.
•“The best way to elicit accurate and complete narrative recall from children is to use
open-ended prompts in which the child is
encouraged to report from his or her
memory with little guidance from the
interviewer (e.g., Lamb, Sternberg, Orbach,
Esplin, Stewart, & Mitchell, 2003; Orbach &
Lamb, 2000; Orbach, Hershkowitz, Lamb,
Sternberg, Esplin, & Horowitz, 2000).”
FRAME 1st/ASK 2nd
Price, H. L., et al.
•“Closed-ended prompts, conversely, rely
more heavily on recognition memory
processes, and often involve having children
provide specific information in response to
options posed by investigators, thus limiting
the completeness and accuracy of reports
(e.g., Dale, Loftus, & Rathbun, 1978; Oates &
Shrimpton, 1991).”
Closed-ended prompts
have no context
Price, H. L., et al.
•“For example, Sternberg et al. (1997) trained
interviewers in the field to conduct rapport
building with open-ended (e.g., Tell me about
your dog) or more directive prompts (e.g., What
is your dog’s name? What colour is she?).
Children who practiced responding to openended prompts provided more than twice as
many details and words in response to the first
substantive prompt as children in the directive
rapport-building condition, and continued to
provide significantly more detailed information
throughout the rest of the interview.”
Price, H. L., et al.
•“With the practice narrative establishing a
desired conversational pattern, it appears as
though children may simply become
accustomed to this pattern and continue it
throughout the substantive phase.”
History of Narrative Inviting
“Hence, many authors recommend that interviewers strive to
create an opportunity for a child to provide the most independent
and complete description of an event possible in their own words
(e.g., Bull, 1995; Jones & McQuiston, 1986; Lamb, 1994; Saywitz &
Elliott, in press; Yuille et al., 1993). This is accomplished by
beginning the interview with the most open-ended and
nonleading approaches first, even when interviewers anticipate
such efforts might be fruitless (Lamb, 1994). Many children do
respond to open-ended questions with relevant and meaningful
information and it is difficult to anticipate who will be
unresponsive.”
Saywitz, K. & Camparo, L. (1998). Interviewing child witnesses: A
developmental perspective. Child Abuse & Neglect, 22(8): 825843.
Tell me ALL about…
Narrative Event Practice
•AKA episodic memory practice (NICHD)
•“One such recommendation is to include a
practice narrative, a targeted discussion about a
non-allegation related issue, prior to introducing
substantive issues” (Price, Roberts, Collins,
2012).
Narrative Event Practice
•Finding a topic to explore…
• “I haven’t met you before. Tell me what you want me
to know about you.”
• “What are some things you like to do?”
•Focus the child on an event and ask the child to
fully narrate
• “You said you play hockey. Think about a game you
remember really well and tell me all about it.”
• “Think about your morning. Tell me everything that
happened from waking up to coming here today.”
Variations
•“Tell me about…from the beginning
to the middle to the end. Don’t
leave anything out. Even the stuff
you think isn’t important.”
•“Tell me all about…”
•“Tell me everything…”
Important Notes
•Do not interrupt the child
•Done before listing family, the interviewer will
often hear the child mention names of people
that can be followed up on later
•“I heard you say you played hockey with
Sammy. Who is Sammy?” -My brother
•NEP teaches the child how to engage with
interviewer
•All open-ended questions ≠ NEP
HINT…
•“Tell me what cereal you ate” is NOT a
narrative inviting question.
•“Tell me your mom’s name.” = “What is your
mom’s name?”
•“Tell me how many times this happened.” =
“How many times did this happen?”
•“Tell me a little bit about…” minimizes the
info.
Important Notes, continued
•Script vs. Episode/Event
•“Tell me all about school.” vs. “Think about
yesterday at school and tell me all about it.”
•It helps to focus on actions
•“Think about yesterday at school. Tell me
everything you did at school yesterday.”
Next Step
•Once the initial narrative is completed
by the child, ask narrative-inviting
follow-up questions (HINT: Frame first,
ask second)
• “I heard you say you got dressed this morning. Tell me
all about getting dressed.”
• “You said you ate breakfast. Tell me all about
breakfast.”
• “What happened after you ate breakfast?”
Practicing NEP
•Introduce yourself
•Invite something from the interviewee
•NEP about an event
•NEP open-ended follow-up questions
Let’s talk about sequencing
•When do you get demographic info?
•Are names of body parts a crucial part of the
early stages of the interview?
•Where should we put NEP and instructions?
•When will you transition to the topic?
Transitions
•How do you transition to the topic of
concern?
•Do these transitions work across all types of
maltreatment and witnessing violence? If
not, what modifications are made?
•You are there for a reason. Can you frame 1st
and ask 2nd?
Transitions (cont.)
•“Tell me the reason you are here today.”
• This is the most successful, but the child hasn’t
come to you in a field interview so how can you
change this?
•“I heard the police were here last night. Tell
me all about that.”
•Multiple hypotheses
Hourglass Approach
In order to minimize suggestibility, interviewers are advised to
begin interviews with free recall questions, move to recognition
questions as necessary, while moving back to free recall
prompts such as, “tell me all about it” whenever (and as soon
as) possible.
Don’t get stuck in the middle!
Follow up with “no” responses
•“Were you wearing clothes?”
•“No.”
•“Tell me all about that.”
•“I was wearing my Elsa pajamas
that I got for my birthday.”
Script vs. Event
• Individual events allow for detail-gathering
(particularly when data and how many times data)
• Research suggests* that allowing the child to start
with the script can enhance details when events are
explored (especially for older children)
• Brubacher, S. P., Roberts, K. P., & Powell, M. (2012). Retrieval of
episodic versus generic information: Does the order of recall
affect the amount and accuracy of details reported by children
about repeated events? Developmental Psychology 48(1): 111122.
Script language
•Always, sometimes
•Usually, most of the time
•Present tense verbs
• Impacted by many things (memory, trauma,
repetition, importance, others??)
Think about how far the first
responder interview needs to
go
•Does interviewer need details? If so, why?
•Can those details be gained from other sources?
•When, how long and how many times are
probably not necessary in first responder
interviews
•Ask on a NEED TO KNOW basis (enough to refer
to the next step)
•Should first responders do NEP?
Concerns and
Problem Solving