How pupils learn to resist grooming

PROJECT

SafeSkills

FUNDING

Free for Merseyside schools, funded by Merseyside Police. A 12-month licence for others costs £250

BACKGROUND

SafeSkills is the latest anti-violence resource from Liverpool educational charity Ariel Trust. It arose from the charity's involvement in It's Not OK! - a Liverpool Council-led violence-prevention partnership. Two years ago, the partnership identified child sexual exploitation as a growing concern. So it commissioned Ariel Trust to develop materials to help pupils protect themselves.

ACTION

SafeSkills is designed for pupils in years 5 to 7 and has been in use since September last year. It incorporates nine 50-minute sessions spread across three modules, designed with teachers. The first module helps pupils learn how to question people's motivations and intentions. The second is about seeking help from trusted adults and the third helps children intervene if concerned about a friend.

In the first two sessions of each module, pupils watch a filmed grooming scenario, discuss characters' behaviour, then step into the role themselves, developing and practising strategies to resist grooming through role-play. They perform the role plays in session three, with feedback from teachers. The films use the real experiences of sexually-exploited young people, who helped develop the script and choose the actors.

"If we want children to behave differently, we have to help them practise the skills needed to behave differently," explains Ariel Trust director Paul Ainsworth. "They're practising saying words in a classroom that they could use in a dangerous situation. If you've said those words in a classroom, it's easier to say them in the real world."

Ariel Trust trained 250 teachers in SafeSkills last year. The programme has so far reached around one third of Merseyside primaries.

OUTCOME

Before and after scores from children asked to rate themselves on a five-point scale show the course helped boost their understanding of risk, confidence in asking questions and knowledge of where to seek help. Results for one group of 57 year 5 pupils show they were on average 10 per cent more likely to talk to an adult if concerned about a peer's friendship with someone they did not trust. Results for another group of 28 pupils found their knowledge of where to seek help increased by 16 per cent on average.