Protecting Innocence: Uncovering Hidden Harms; Strengthening Our Response Symposium 2025

Registration Deadline: October 1, 2025 

Target Audience: 
Physicians, medical professionals, mental health clinicians, law enforcement, educators, advocates, forensic interviewer, child welfare staff and court personnel, along with University of Illinois College of Medicine of Rockford students, residents, staff and faculty. 

Learning Objectives: 
Enhance understanding of less common but high-risk environments associated with child dabuse and neglect. 

Establish effective strategies for investigating and responding to complex or unfamiliar forms of child maltreatment. 

Integrate current best practices with new insights to strengthen professional capacity to protect children, families and communities. 

Jimmy Widdifield: 

Summarize common characteristics of children and teens with problematic behavior 

Dispel persistent and adverse myths about children and teens with problematic sexual behavior 

Describe strategies to enhance professional response to cases of children with problematic sexual behavior 

Phil Akrow: 

Learn how the welfare of animals in a household can be utilized as a risk assessment tool and a potential indicator and predictor to prevent violence and abuse across the lifespan. 

Understand how animal abuse if a form of coercive control to intimidate and retaliate against domestic violence, child abuse and elder abuse survivors and keep them trapped in abusive relationships 

Mike Weber: 

Identify Munchausen Proxy as a form of child maltreatment 

Recognize that Munchhausen by Proxy is an under-reported, under-investigated form of child maltreatment with a relatively high mortality rate 

Be able to apply proper investigative strategies when assigned a case medical child abuse 

This course has been certified by the ILETSB and approved to meet the following mandates:
Crisis Intervention – 1 hour 
Psychology of Domestic Violence – 2 hours 
Reporting of Child Abuse and Neglect – 3 hours