Ideally, all children/youth should receive training and education on issues of personal safety and abuse prevention. Personal safety and child sexual abuse prevention training should be age-appropriate to promote child/youth understanding of—and confidence in—your organization’s strategies to keep them safe. Both the Child Welfare Information Gateway and the National Sexual Violence Resource Center have resources available to help you select and evaluate available training programs.

If it’s within the scope of your responsibilities to provide training for children and youth, here are some best practices to incorporate as you build your curriculum:

Involve Parents

• Most successful prevention programs actively engage parents.
• Your curricula should include training materials for parents through information/education evenings, take-home papers, and take-home family exercise sheets.

Choose a Developmentally Sequenced Curriculum

• Programs for younger students tend to be more rules-based: “If someone tries to touch you in an inappropriate way, say ‘No,’ get away, tell a grown-up.
• Programs for older students contextualize the personal safety training within experiences appropriate to their developmental stage (being out of the house, being with groups, dating, babysitting, etc).

Let Research Guide Your Child Personal Safety Instruction

Programs are successful when they are based on the most current research in prevention education, which tells us that effective programs should:

• Include rigorous evaluation
• Begin as early as pre-Kindergarten
• Use developmentally sequenced materials
• Utilize active, systematic, and specific skills training
• Have multiple program components such as classroom training combined with parental involvement
• Use interactive instructional techniques that provide children multiple opportunities to observe the desired behavior
• Model the behavior and get feedback
• Be instituted as a comprehensive part of the child’s education, and repeated many times during the school year
• Be instituted over several years of instruction

Ensure Your Child Personal Safety Curricula Include Critical Elements

An effective curriculum:

• Includes skills building along with instruction
• Strengthens children’s/youth’s self-confidence and self-esteem
• Develops knowledge of basic safety skills
• Distinguishes between appropriate and inappropriate touch
• Instructs children/youth to be able to say “no” to unwanted overtures
• Teaches children/youth self-protective skills
• Encourages disclosure by instructing children and youth to always tell an adult about inappropriate or unwanted behaviors
• Instructs children/youth how to identify the private parts of their bodies using correct anatomical terms, if appropriate for the community
• Instructs children/youth how to identify an adult they can trust, as well as the importance of talking to an adult if something bothers them—and that some secrets need to be told
• Instructs children/youth that adults sometimes act inappropriately
• Emphasizes the fact that inappropriate adult behavior is never the fault of the child or youth
• Teaches children/youth that victims can be people of any age, size, color, or sex
• Teaches children/youth that touching problems can occur in adults of any age, size, color, or sex, and in either strangers or people they know 
• Teaches children/youth that other children/youth can sometimes be confused about what safe and unsafe touching are and can also have touching problems

Pay Attention to Presentation

An effectively presented child safety instruction program:

• Is grounded in theory and research
• Localizes the  curriculum to fit specific community needs
• Includes proper training for presenters, teachers, parents, and community officials
• Respects the developmental abilities and limitations of children at various ages
• Includes training for developmentally and physically challenged children
•  Incorporates demonstrations and rehearsal of desired behavior by each child
• Occurs on multiple occasions over several years and includes periodic reviews
• Includes supplemental sessions to reinforce skills
• Is interactive
•  Includes homework
•  Includes comprehensive evaluation
• Includes parental involvement
• Provides complete and accurate information about sex to older children, if appropriate for the community

Emphasize Awareness

• Ultimately, an effective training curriculum supports awareness of child sexual abuse as a prevention strategy, by:
• Fostering improved communication between a parent and a child/youth about personal safety
• Fostering in children/youth understanding about the importance of adult supervision in their safety
• Requiring the proper reporting of all child sexual or physical abuse
• Encouraging parental or community involvement
• Promoting notification by responsible adults to the proper authorities of any perceived changes in a child’s behavior after instruction
• Fostering the idea that children have the right to control what happens to their bodies and to protect themselves

More Resources 

For more information on abuse prevention curricula for your organization, you can review these resources and reports that have been evaluated for effectiveness.

•  CDC list of sexual violence prevention strategies 
•  National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) document Child Sexual Abuse Prevention: Programs for Children 
• NSVRC document Preventing Child Sexual Abuse – A National Resource Directory and Handbook 
• NSVRC document Child Sexual Abuse Prevention: Programs for Adults 
• CDC Sexual Violence Prevention Technical Package

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