Building trauma-responsive sexual health and relationship education

Investigators

Associate Professor Tim Moore (Institute of Child Protection Studies, Australian Catholic University) is working in partnership with Associate Professor Jodi Death (Queensland University of Technology, QUT), and Leesa Waters, Rani Kuma and Oliver White (National Association for Prevention of Child abuse and Neglect, NAPCAN)

Funding source

National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse

Aims

This project aims to build a survivor-driven approach to sexual health and relationship education. It also plans to create a series of tools which can be utilised by schools, sexual health and family planning and mainstream youth services. These tools will help services to be more trauma-responsive in their approach to providing programs within universal and targeted services.

A collaborative partnership Utilising an innovative model within which young survivors and their peers work alongside other experts within the child protection and sexual health sectors, the project also aims to demonstrate a truly collaborative partnership between adults and young people.

Details

The project is made up of five phases, including:

• Phase 1 will focus on project establishment. We will work with the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse (NCACSA) to confirm the project scope, engage with key stakeholders (including young people) and clarify the workplan. We will seek ethics and organisational approvals, and establish a Project Advisory Group. This group will meet twice a year for the 30 months of the project. We will also consult with the NAPCAN Youth Speak Out (NYSO) group. During this time, the team will work with NCACSA to develop a knowledge exchange plan.
• Phase 2 will include a literature and evidence scoping review to identify features of sexual health and relationship education that are trauma-informed and elements and principles suggested by young people, particularly those who have experienced maltreatment and child sexual abuse.
• Phase 3 will include a series of interviews with young people aged 17-25 who have experienced maltreatment. These interviews will help identify ways that they would like to receive sexual health and relationship education, suggested content and insights about what universal and targeted sexual health and relationship programs might be best delivered.
• Phase 4 will include a series of two workshops:

1. young people who have experienced maltreatment and members of the NYSO group to ‘member-check’, confirm findings from Phases 2 and 3 and consider implications for practice.
2. young people (drawn from those who were interviewed in phase 3 and the NYSO Group) as well as a group of stakeholders (n=3-6) from relevant sectors (i.e. sexual health, relationship and family planning educators and providers) to co-design a framework for assessing existing targeted and universal programs against identified characteristics.

For this phase we have budgeted for adult survivors to participate in the co-design workshop but intend to work with a larger group of relevant stakeholders to encourage them to engage with financial support from their agencies.

• Phase 5 will include a brief survey, seeking feedback on the proposed framework and its components. From this feedback, the framework will be modified and be made available for implementation.

Contact

For more information contact Associate Professor Tim Moore