Teaching Children How to Help Keep Themselves Safe
If we can't ensure that children are always supervised when they are outside our projects, or eliminate factors that leave children in vulnerable positions then we do the next best thing: we educate them on safety and how to help keep themselves safe. For this purpose we created our Child Safety Modules.
We have aimed to make our new child safety module and abuse prevention teachings as well-informed as possible. This has been achieved through two main avenues:
- Engagement with the children and their parents
- Review of the current literature and research available on the topic of child safety and abuse prevention
Child Engagement
We listen to children’s experiences, consider ways we could make that experience better and THEN we designed the training module. Children’s voices need to be the start of the system reform process, not the last. The world is not happening to them, it is happening with them, and their opinions on their own safety are important. They know their own lives and experiences better than we do, and so we allow the children to shape the contents of the module.
Meaningful participation requires viewing children and young people as unique individuals, because the experiences of one child or young person cannot be assumed to be representative of all children and young people. By talking with the children, we get to understand what makes them scared and when the feel most safe. By also talking with parents, we can discover their biggest concerns for their children. From this process, we can design the child safety modules suited to the children, their culture and location.
We need to change how we understand and utilise the inclusion of children’s voices in system reform. The following graphic explains the difference between traditional child engagement and best practice engagement:
Research
Extensive research was vital to inform the programme. Additionally, a review of current literature on abuse prevention techniques and other content for a well-rounded module was part of the research process.
We used resources from partner organisations such as Keeping Children Safe in the UK. Many articles were researched to help us design a programme fit for purpose.
Special mention needs to go to Ireland’s Stay Safe programme, which is comprehensive, publicly available for free download, and breaks down the content into 4 age groups. The safety programmes of Canada, New Zealand and several states in America were also referenced. This was a good starting point to look into how different countries consider the issues of child safety and how they individually structure their curriculum.
