Schools as safe places
Schools, need to be positive and safe places where students sense they belong and can succeed. Children’s safety will be enhanced by appropriate policies that address site and facilities and appropriate interactions with students.
Levels of Prevention
As commentators over the past two decades have reported, a variety of strategies that initially were positioned within the framework of child sexual abuse prevention, more recently have broadened to build protective factors and reduce risk factors as indicated in the Pathways to PreventionReport (National Crime Prevention Authority (NCPA), 1999) within a wider child abuse prevention framework.
When applied to child protection, primary prevention programs target the whole community with the aim of stopping abuse before it occurs. Secondary prevention activities or programs seek to identify and intervene in situations in which there is a high risk of children being abused. Tertiary prevention activities target those families, groups and individuals where abuse has occurred and attempt to stop it recurring (Calvert, 1993).
Levels of Prevention in the School Context
Primary prevention
A range of approaches are developed and implemented in schools to enhance the protective factors and reduce the risk factors. The following section provides a brief overview of a number of these strategies. They include:
Whole School Curriculum
Lanning et al., (1999) reason “…because children spend a considerable amount of time in the educational system, schools are a logical setting to provide prevention programs. Effective and consistent child sexual abuse prevention programs are needed in all schools.” (p. 4). Sechrist (2000), supporting the advantages for presenting such material, insists that “…health educators in schools must be strongly encouraged to include a unit on child abuse and neglect as a component of the health education curriculum.” (p. 45). Plummer (1993) also supports the implementation of sexual abuse prevention programs within the regular part of the curriculum.
The prevention of child abuse is a complex matter. Aiming education programs at potential victims is by no means an all-encompassing answer to this major societal problem. However, “While multiple strategies are required to successfully break the abuse cycle, several considerations are potentially addressed by programs focussing on children.” (Dwyer, 1990, p. 19). The range of factors indicated in the Pathways to PreventionReport, NCPA (1999) shown in (Table 2.1) highlights areas in which the school-based interventions may be able to develop protective factors and facilitate the prevention of abuse.
During the decade after 1988 considerable societal pressure influenced the inclusion of primary prevention strategies into the Key Learning Area of PD/H/PE, within the curriculum in New South Wales schools. Recent curriculum changes acknowledge the successful advocacy of government and community groups for the importance of personal safety programs as one component of the new curriculum. The recent development of the NSW PD/H/PE syllabus indicates key aspects of programming for personal safety in the core strands of Interpersonal Relationships and Safe Living (Board of Studies, 1999, p. 37) The themes and strategies of the Protective Behaviours ©program can be identified in the curriculum statements and the supporting material of this syllabus.
Protective Behaviours/Personal Safety
Tomison and Poole (2000), reporting the findings of the National Audit of Prevention Programs, comment that:
“Personal safety and Protective Behaviours programs remain strongly utilized, school-based programs although their nature and usage has changed as a function of changing trends in prevention and recognition of the benefits of applying the program’s principles across a range of violence prevention initiative….The National Safe Schools Framework reports that protective behaviour programs are the most widely used personal safety programs throughout Australia. The range and usage of personal safety programs and concepts have extended through a general trend towards adapting personal safety and Protective Behaviours programs for specific target groups…. These changes have occurred in conjunction with a general expansion of the ‘risk’ situations incorporated into many programs and reflect, for example, greater acknowledgement of issues around domestic and other forms of societal violence (for example, harassment and bullying) and in particular, children witnessing domestic violence .” (p. 64).
The Police Service of New South Wales, in recommendations to the Wood Royal Commission, continued to support the Protective Behaviours Program “…as an appropriate means of educating the community about child abuse issues.” (New South Wales Police Service Future Directions in the Delivery of Child Protection Services, 1996 in Wood, 1997, p. 1169). They submitted that there should be compulsory protective behaviours training for all school children and that the child’s regular teacher is the best person to deliver this training.
Protective Behaviours (PB) has been included in the PD/H/PE syllabus and the NSWDET syllabus support material. Because of the PB themes, strategies and concepts associated with this program there is the potential to contribute to safety, peer relationships as well as school norms against violence.
See www.protective-behaviours.org.au
Mental Health Promotion Strategies
Successful primary interventions address the mental health issues to enhance the protective factors. Once again these are currently placed within the PD/H/PE syllabus. (Link) Additionally specific programs such as Mindmatters are designed to support this level of prevention.
See -
www.mentalhealth.gov.au
www.curriculum.edu.au/mindmatters
Whole School Policy & Procedures
Briggs and Hawkins (1996) suggest that young children make better progress in the acquisition of personal safety knowledge when:
- “The program is adopted by the whole school and has a place in the timetable.
- There is a strong network of support for teachers of the program.
- Teachers used prescribed materials that are designed with children’s developmental levels in mind.
- Parent participation is built into the program and parents reinforce the concepts at home.
- Teachers use the program conscientiously and enthusiastically, employing safety concepts in their teaching strategies across the curriculum.
- Programs use children’s own language and reflect their thinking.
- There is a continuity of teaching and scope for the reinforcement of concepts.
- Program designers acknowledge children’s difficulties grasping complex concepts and therefore use concrete examples.
- The content includes references to the more serious sexual misbehaviours experienced by children.
- Curriculum designers acknowledge children’s sexuality.”
(Briggs & Hawkins, 1994, p. 282) - Classroom Management
- Bullying
See -
www.aic.gov.au/
www.education.unisa.edu.au/bullying/ - Pastoral Care
- Employment practices
- Professional development
- Supervision and induction
Involvement of Parents and Carers
A number of strategies are currently used both nationally and internationally to involve parents in primary, secondary and tertiary prevention programs in the context of schools.
Vimpani, Frederico, Barclay and Davis’ (1996) audit of home visits, for example, highlighted the importance of preventative education being developed with parents as a primary focus. Similarly Daro and McCurdy (1994) suggested that most prevention efforts have offered services to individual parents, families or children with the goal of altering behaviours and attitudes that contributed to elevated risks for poor parenting and poor child outcomes (p. 406). These ranged from information evenings through to parent involvement as group facilitators in the classroom. Tutty (2000) suggested “…that although the difficulty of enticing parents to attend meetings about the preventative program has been noted by a number of authors, parents remain an important resource, especially if they become comfortable and learn the strategies to reinforce the program’s teaching” (p. 291). While Lloyd, Joyce, Hurry and Ashton (2000) acknowledged the difficulty in involving parents in drug prevention programs they highlight that they encourage program developers to continue to develop strategies to involve parents.
Forging a partnership with parents is suggested as a major goal by Stipek, de la Sota and Weishaupt (1999). To achieve this “…parents are informed in advance of discussions of sensitive topics in the classrooms and are invited to ask questions and discuss their concerns with their children’s class teacher.” (p. 442 )
www.parenting.nsw.gov.au
System Requirements and Support
Successful System strategies would be reflected in the following policy areas which enhance the safety of schools. - School review processes
- System policies
Secondary Level of Prevention
These programs seek to identify those students who are at higher risk, and to develop strategies to enhance and support protective factors.
Programs for students at risk including:
Tertiary Level of Prevention
Tertiary prevention activities target those families, groups and individuals where abuse has occurred, and attempt to stop it recurring. This has been approached though:
- Legislation
- Community Service Support
Legislation
Finkelhor (1999) proposes three reasons why children are vulnerable to victimization within society. Firstly, children are small and dependent on adults for their survival. Secondly, society does not do as much to protect children as adults. “Society has a powerful institutional system that’s organized to protect people from victimization. ….Much of what children experience is outside the domain of this system” (pg. 1) “Finally, children have little say in who they associate with.” (pg. 1)
Johnson (1995) suggests that Finkelhor's (1984) pre-conditions for sexual abuse provide us with a theoretical framework for most primary prevention interventions. Finkelhor describes four pre-conditions for sexual abuse to occur. These could be seen as the framework for all three levels of abuse prevention. The first pre-condition is that the individual adult is motivated to sexually abuse the child. The second pre-condition is overcoming the internal inhibitors that are hypothesised to inhibit a number of abusers from carrying out the abuse they are motivated to commit: they perceive it to be not acceptable socially. The third pre-condition is the overcoming of the external inhibitors that are factors in place that restrict access of the abuser to the child. It is within this pre-condition that recent legislation can be placed. These forms of legislation have included:
- Ombudsman Act 1974;
- Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection)Act 1998;
- Commission for Children and Young People Act 1998; and
- Child Protection (Prohibited Employment)Act 1998 (Lindsay, 1999).
See -
www.kids.nsw.gov.au
www.ccer.catholic.org.au
The final pre-condition is overcoming the child’s resistance. As discussed, it is in relation to this pre-condition that the recent changes to child abuse prevention programs, with their inclusion in the New South Wales K-12 syllabus material and the expectations that personal safety programs are a systemic requirement, are best placed.
Community Services
In NSW The Department of Community Services provides a range of services to support children and families. These are further supported by other government and non-government agencies.
See -
www.community.nsw.gov.au/
www.kidshelp.com.au/
www.ombo.nsw.gov.au/
Author: Dr Marea Nicholson
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