Supporting children and young people affected by sexual violence in Europe by strengthening and facilitating participatory practice

Having received external funding from the European Commission, Kate D'Arcy coordinated a project to improve participatory practice with young people affected by sexual violence entitled ‘Life skills, leadership, limitless potential: Supporting children and young people affected by sexual violence in Europe by strengthening and facilitating participatory practice’.

This project was co-funded by the Rights, Equality and Citizenship (REC) Programme of the European Union.

The 24-month project ran from November 2015 – November 2017 and has been implemented in partnership with Barnardo’s SECOS (UK), Terre des hommes (Romania), PULSE Foundation (Bulgaria), Stichting Alexander (Netherlands), Terre des hommes Regional Office for South Eastern Europe and Eurochild.

The project’s main aims:

• to build the capacity of specialist support services to develop safe, ethical, participatory practice with children and young people affected by sexual violence
• to empower and enable children and young people affected by sexual violence to develop knowledge, skills and capacities through a life skills and leadership programme and through developing their own youth-led prevention activities.

The objectives of the project:

• develop an evidence-based training programme for sexual violence specialist support services to promote participatory practice with children and young people affected by sexual violence
• build capacity and sustainable professional support networks to promote participatory rights-based approaches to supporting children and young people affected by sexual violence
• develop a life skills and leadership toolkit for children and young people affected by sexual violence and train Youth Facilitators to co-deliver the toolkit with Country Partner Staff
• enable children and young people affected by sexual violence to develop their knowledge, skills and capacities
• support child and youth-led projects which will enable children and young people to share their views through creative tools such as film and art which will help protect other children and young people and challenge stigma
• build the evidence-base on how to support and involve this group in advocacy through research and evaluation
• facilitate European knowledge exchange through the dissemination of freely accessible tools and resources

The outcomes of the project:

• 99 Practitioners in Romania, Bulgaria, The Netherlands and UK who were working in specialist services received 4 - day training to promote participatory practice with children and young people
• 17 Youth Facilitators in Romania, Bulgaria, The Netherlands and UK received 3 day training to develop their knowledge, skills and capacities in understanding the issues around sexual violence and working with other young people affected by sexual violence. They supported child and youth-led projects which will enable other young people affected by sexual violence to share their views through creative tools such as film and art which will help protect other young people from sexual violence and challenge stigma
• developed the 4-day practitioner training into e-learning which can be accessed via ChildHub academy.childhub.org
• developed a Toolkit which contains a programme of activities and workshops to train youth facilitators and support them to raise awareness of participation with other young people and develop creative tools.
• ethical guidance - PDF 800.7 KB
• guide on developing a community of practice on participation - PDF 560.7 KB
• scoping review of the literature on participation - PDF 785.8 KB
• scoping review of the literature on lifeskills programmes - PDF 765.9 KB

For more information about this project please contact Kate D’Arcy at kate.d'arcy@beds.ac.uk