This article first appeared in Queenwood News Weekly 2 August 2019.

We often forget how lucky we are to live in such a privileged part of the world and take for granted the opportunities and resources available to us. Despite how fortunate we are, we cannot always protect children from some of the harsh realities of our world.

Unfortunately, the numbers speak for themselves:

• Thirty six per cent of women over 18 years of age have, since they were 15 years old, experienced physical or sexual violence by a known perpetrator;
• of those women who had experienced violence by a current partner, 54% had children in their care at the time of the violence and 31% of the children had seen or heard the violence;
• family violence mostly affects women and children;
• domestic and family violence affects children’s physical and mental well-being, development and schooling, and is the leading cause of children’s homelessness in Australia; and
• children are at particular risk of experiencing domestic and family violence during and after parental separation. (Australian Government, children's exposure to domestic and family violence, 2015)

We can, however, give our girls the tools to understand what safe and respectful relationships are, to identify their rights and responsibilities in relationships and to recognise and respond to unsafe situations.

The Y-PEP (YWCA Protection Education Program), that all Junior School girls undertook last term, aims to empower students to understand their rights and how to respond in unsafe situations. This comprehensive program is integrated closely with the PDHPE syllabus, ensuring that sensitive material is covered in an age-appropriate manner, and it is built around positive discussions and thought-provoking activities. It highlighted to the girls the importance of identifying their internal warning signals and creating a safety network of people they can trust.

The Y-PEP workshops included concepts of trust, personal boundaries and unwanted touch. Students learnt about safe and unsafe situations, trusted adults, safety networks, personal safety and No-Go-Tell in age appropriate contexts.

Speaking to children about their safety is a powerful way to build open communication with them. Sometimes conversations can be awkward but having open lines of communication and delving deeper than just ‘don’t talk to strangers’ or ‘stranger danger’ helps children feel confident to speak up and ask questions when they feel uncomfortable. This is an integral part of keeping them safe.

There is so much more to protecting our children than ‘stranger danger’ and we need to acknowledge the research that shows an abuser is more likely to be someone known to the child than a stranger (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2019). This means it is critical to a child’s well-being and development to have an understanding of what abuse looks, sounds and feels like.

The feedback from students about these workshops has been overwhelmingly positive.

‘It helped me understand what I need to be aware of and what’s not ok.’
‘I feel more confident to speak up and talk to someone if there is ever anything wrong.’
‘We delved deeper into the tricky subject and it was interesting to learn more.’
‘The presenters used correct language and you could tell they took it very seriously.’

Building on this experience, a great starting point for parents is to ask your daughter to explain to you what a safety network is, and you can explore together the people she describes as part of the network. It would also be good to talk through what she would do if she ever felt unsafe.