For the past year, our Safeguarding Officer, Ross, ran workshops on a variety of safeguarding topics with students in our further education programmes.
Ross planned versatile and interactive sessions for students, providing plenty of opportunity for discussion and debate around certain topics. He utilised a mixture of formats to the sessions, some weeks he would simply put two or three questions to the group and go from there. Other weeks were a bit more structured with a powerpoint presentation and breaks to discuss the information shared.
There were also debate-style workshops where Ross split the class with for and against arguments. They'd also gameify some topics, for example, with noughts and crosses on the board and the students would take it in turns to throw a bouncy ball at the board and answer a question based on the last week's content.
Video's from YouTube, Safeguarding Network resources, and BBC panorama content around exploitation and drugs were also utilised to engage the young people on the topics in an impactful way.
Topics covered included:
British values.
What to expect in the learning centre (t
reating people with respect).
Drugs and substance misuse.
How to look out for themselves and friends and family.
Signposting support.
Local risks (myth-busting, areas to avoid and how to keep themselves safe especially at night or in areas they don't feel safe in, using apps like Find My Friends).
General safety.
Prevent and extremism.
Grooming and county lines.
Criminal exploitation.
Sexual exploitation.
Prison and crime (covering weird laws about what you can be in prison for, and a debate about prison sentences for certain crimes and were they long enough, how the prison service works).
Education around stop and search, what info you should give and don't have to give, what they should expect and who they can contact, what their rights are.
Domestic violence and challenges you can find in a family environment, who you can speak to, ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) and how they can shape your life.
Missing episodes, what happens in terms of police response, why people go missing and is there a better way to deal with the emotions that lead to it.
Ross's experience in public services enabled him to explain more about what conviction processes were and why rates of convictions were so low for certain crimes. Equality and diversity was a running theme through all topics and young people were given trigger warning for difficult topics and permitted to disengage when they needed to.
A lot of the topics were relatiable and young people could draw on their own experiences. Though some of the content was hard-hitting, sessions were fun and informal and feedback was overwhelming positive, with one young person saying it was the best session on their timetable!
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