APS Rapport Building and Engagement

Throughout this course, we will explore strategies to help you build, maintain, and strengthen rapport with clients, collateral contacts, and alleged perpetrators. These skills will support open communication, reduce reluctance and defensiveness, and help you explore ambivalence while fostering collaboration and person-directed service planning. This course contains scenarios and language discussing physical abuse.

Learning Objectives

After completing this course, you will be able to:

• Recall what rapport building and engagement are in the context of APS work;
• Identify skills that are essential to rapport-building and engagement throughout an APS investigation; and,
• Choose strategies to use to maintain rapport and engagement with all parties involved in an APS investigation.