|
>View discussions about this entry Country: United Kingdom
Organization: Eighteen And Under
Focus of activity: Education
Year the initiative began: 1998
Positioning in the Mosaic of solutions
Description of Initiative: We have developed and evaluated a range of resources for use with children aged 3 to 18 plus vulnerable adults. The message that violence is preventable runs throughout the programmes. The programmes help young people, children and adults explore, in a fun and age appropriate manner, violence in all its forms including bullying, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse and include work on gender issues, racism, sexism, sectarianism, homophobia, and other issues that might lead to violence in society. As children mature they are led towards exploring the roots of violence, relationships, conflict resolution and alternatives to violence in personal, community, national and international relationships. They are encouraged to see the links between different types of violence and seek solutions for themselves and others. Violence is explored from the different perspective of the victim, the perpetrator and the witness and interventions and solutions sought by the young people.
Innovation: We use a wide range of specially developed games, stories, quizzes, DVDs, videos, songs, activity books and workbooks to engage in a fun way with the children and young people. These resources are adapted for use with differently abled children and young people and also for use with vulnerable adults and the elderly.
We provide a minimum of 6 sessions starting with children at age 3 in pre-school and innitially teaching that they are 'very important people', they have the right to be safe and happy and they should tell and talk to trusted adults if they are unhappy. As they grow year by year the messages we teach them vary in complexity and begin to involve work on equality, relationships and causes ands solutions to violence. We encouage young people to share opinions around a range of issues and work at helping them change unhealthy or violent attidudes which often lead to violence in relationships. We work with children from a very young age and also with parents to see that children receive different elements of the VIP programme throughtout their lives. The same messages are provided in varying complexity as they grow and develop. Thoughout, in addition to promoting non-violence as a viable option we also encourage a climate of talking and telling about all violence and abuse. This enables 'victims' to disclose and end abuse. Delivery Model: Our V.I.P. programme is now available in all pre-school, primary schools, high schools and educational establishments in Dundee, Scotland. It is all available in many community settings. Teachers receive training in its use and this training is cascaded to other teachers. The programmes are now being rolled out across Scotland and England as their value is being realised.
The benefits of the V.I.P. Project has been realised at a local level by the child protection committee and the education department and this has led to a high level of communication at a local and national level including presentations in the Scottish Parliament. Key Operational Partnerships: Child and Young People's Protection Committee promote the use of the programmes. The Police take part in delivery of the programmes. The Education Department in partnership with the Social Work Department submit funding bids to ensure teacher training. Teachers assist in delivery of the programmes and undertake training. Women's Aid and Rape Crisis organisations take up training and promote and help deliver the programmes in other areas of Scotland and England.
All these partnerships are essential to the innitiative. Financial Model: The programmes are provided free of charge to all children and young people in the schools using the V.I.P. programmes. Schools have to buy in the resources but they are generally subsidised by government grants. The resources are also relatively cheap to buy and the training costs are minimal to reflect the desire to encourage take up of the programmes.
Effectiveness: The V.I.P. Tweenees part of the project was evaluated by an Educational Psychologist and Dundee University recently. 2 high schools and 8 primary schools took part in the evaluation and the results showed that not only did the programme lead to a higher awareness about safety amongst those who took part showing it worked at primary prevention but this increased awareness also led to a secondary prevention in a massive increase in disclosures from the young people involved. We found that when the programme was delivered by teachers and us, this led to one third of young people in a classroom telling about abuse and violence. tThis ranged from disclosing about domestic abuse, bullying, sexual abuse, rape and abduction.
As a result of the effectiveness of the programme in encouraging disclosures of abuse and violence more training on child protection has been offered to teachers. To date, more than 20,000 children and young people have benefitted from the programmes we run.
Scaling up Strategy: Our priority over the next 3 years is to share these programmes with as many agencies and individuals as possible and encourage use and adapting of the V.I.P. programmes across this country and others. Because we know, and can prove, that this programme does work in terms of increasing safety, raising awareness about violence in all forms and encouraging disclosures, we want to roll it out to others. Tackling domestic violence, sexual violence and a culture of violence, we believe has to start at a very early ages and be continued at every age and development stage, in a consistant way with the same messages and a zero tollerance of any form of violence input to make an impact.
Origin of the Initiative: Eighteen And Under was set up in April 1994 and provides support to young people under 18 who have been abused. In 1997 we took over 10,000 phone calls from young people in crisis. it was at this point that the Co-ordinator decided that some day she wanted to retire and that surely preventing the violence and abuse from happening in the first place would be a better idea than dealing with the thousands of young victims coming through the doors.
She looked round the world for evidence-based prevention programmes that tackled all form of violence for all ages and found none. This was when the V.I.P. project began. Rapidly a team of advisors and experts were brought together including police, social work, education, parents and young people and work began on developing resources, then piloting and evaluating the various resources. 9 years on we are still developing further resources so that all ages and abilities can be reached by the programmes. Main Obstacles to Scaling Up: Financial constraints and people time.
Main Partnership Challenges: The main challenges with partnerships in getting them to realise that a small non profit organisation has some experises as well as they do. Working together with people for different agencies is great but also very challenging when some partners fail to see the value of partnerships and think that they are the only professionals in the partnership. This can be addressed effectively but does take time and energy.
Contact Information:
laurie matthew
co-ordinator Eighteen And Under (non profit) lormac1053@aol.com 1, Victoria Road, Dindee, Scotland United Kingdom Tel: 01382 206222 Website: www.violenceispreventable.org.uk Discussions about this entry |
| Attachments - please click on each image to see it full size: |
|---|
Abuse Prevention Programme Evaluation.ppt |
Hello Laurie,
Can you share some stories of the experiences and impact of kids who have been involved in your program? Also, could you explain how 18 and Under stands out from other educational programs? What makes it different? What makes your approach really unique and innovative?
Thanks!
Dana Frasz
Changemakers
I think the MEGEN project is inspiring not only to the people working in it but also to the community they work with. I have been lucy to participate in their sessions and community trainings. I think the strategy should be shared widely in the world.
I am a Police Officer who has worked with the materials with children young people and elderly residents in my area. I have seen the increase in amount of disclosures made when the programme has been run. This programme makes it easy for people of all ages to speak out about abuse the area, or have suffered. This is an inovitive way of tackling abuse issues in a fun way. I feel that this programme tackles all types of abuse and is pitched at all different age stage and development of society. The material is so easy to use that it can be adapted to suit any issues. I would suggest that this is one of the best prevention programmes in the world today and if we all want abuse to end forever... Then this is the programme to use.
Congratulations to 18 & Under, who continue to develop games and programmes to end abuse.
I have seen this in action. THIS PROGRAMME WORKS!!!!! What a great way of abuse prevention. Its fun, energetic, and children young people and even the elderly learn without knowing it. If it works in SCOTLAND, It WILL work all over the world. This IS THE WAY TO END ABUSE FOREVER.. Well done to 18 & Under.
Eighteen And Under has just produced another V.I.P. resource for use with teenagers. it is a DVD plus a 48 page users guide for teachers and youth leaders. The DVD was made by young people and includes scenes about difference types of domestic violence, rape, sexual exploitation, prejudice, internet grooming and sexual abuse. it is designed to challenge and change attitudes amongst young people that lead to violence and abuse.
We are now working with groups of elderly people and the police on the production of a DVD and resource pack for use with vulnerable elderly people. This is aimed at preventing elder abuse, encouraging elderly people to break silence if they are living with domestic abuse or any form of violence and keep them safe from harm.