Schools Project

The Schools Project provides a fun and informative package to raise awareness of domestic violence for children aged from five to 13 in schools and youth centres in Birmingham.

The Project aims to:

• Provide free domestic violence awareness training for children, young people and professionals who work directly with children and young people

• Challenge negative myths and stereotypes held around domestic violence, gender and culture

• Provide information, skills and knowledge to allow children and young people to access support networks

What the project involves:

The training programme will cover a range of topics such as: healthy relationships; what is domestic violence?; power and control; gender inequalities; conflict resolution; where to go for support.

The programme will run one-hour weekly sessions over a period of four or six weeks, depending on the ages of the participants. The programme is interactive and uses a range of training tools to engage the children and young people. Drop-in surgeries will also be held by specialist DV-trained workers to allow the children and young people to access information and support.

Research shows that where children are living with domestic violence, 90% of those children are in the same or next room when incidents take place. Two women every week die as a result of domestic violence. Statistically, in a class of 30 children, three will have experienced domestic violence at home. 75% of children try to intervene in incidents of domestic violence to protect their mother.

Through this project, we have been able to raise the awareness of children and young people in a variety of settings, expanding on the previous work of BSWA and keeping the issue of domestic violence at the top of our agenda.

In addition to the schools work, we offer three two-hour workshops to youth centres, which cover issues such as domestic violence, rape, sexual violence and exploitation.

For more information, telephone 0121 685 8687 or email schools@bswaid.org