The project “Breaking the silence together” is based on the priorities on education of the Europe 2020 strategy, the recommendations of the Council of Europe Convention on the protection children against sexual exploitation and sexual abuse and the results of main academic studies tackling the consequences of child maltreatment. The child sexual abuse is a significant problem in Europe today that affects between 10% and 20% of children from all social and economical classes and in all European countries. The main researches prove the direct consequences on the academic results. The project aims to improve the academic results and overcome the school dropouts in primary schools of Europe by tackling the child sexual abuse as one of the causes. To achieve this objective the project will develop a community prevention programme to tackle the child sexual abuse in the primary schools of Europe based on the internal collaboration among students, educative actors, families and stakeholders. The primary schools students, their families and the primary school teachers, heads and other educational staff will have an active role and will contribute in the development of the main project outputs that will include their needs, inputs, fears and proposals. To involve them, six primary schools from three European countries from the rural and urban context will collaborate with the project consortium by organizing initial trainings addressed to the three main target groups, throughout focus groups aimed to collect their voices and testing all the project outputs during a pilot implementation, where the three target groups will evaluate them at the end. At the beginning of the project the consortium will collect in a report the previous successful experiences already developed in terms of improve the academic results and tackle the child sexual abuse at the same time. This will allow to continue the work done previously and to identify the successful elements. The creation of five Experts Advisory Councils will assure not only the high quality of the project outputs but also its transferability and adequacy. The project will be implemented through a participative and communicative methodology where the project beneficiaries will be involved in the design, testing and evaluation of the project results in equal terms with the experts and the project consortium. The main project results will be: the report Learning from the experience collecting the previous successful experiences; a community prevention programme to tackle the child sexual abuse in primary schools; a teacher’s manual to implement correctly the prevention programme; a pedagogical and training toolkit to tackle the child sexual abuse with primary school students and their families and an awareness raising kit addressed to all the community to make visible the child sexual abuse problem and the consequences on academic results and future occupation. The project will make a step forward by developing concrete tools and resources that can be implemented in any primary school from any European country from any context. The project will raise awareness in the society and specially the scholar community towards the child sexual abuse and its consequences in academic results. Furthermore, the project will provide skills and abilities to children and their families such as empowerment, self-protection and resilience. In addition, it will support teachers and other educational staff with tools and resources to improve the academic results of the students by tackling the child sexual abuse, preventing it, establishing a communicative environment focused on children necessities and reacting adequately towards a possible disclosure. Four national seminars and a European conference addressed to primary school staff and stakeholders will be organized to launch the main project results and assure the impact and sustainability of the project. All the project outputs will be evaluated during the testing phase by the beneficiaries, ensuring the high quality, adequacy and successful implementation after the project finishes the EU funding. The project is totally innovative because most of the projects aimed to tackle the dropout rate and to increase the academic results of children do not take in account the child sexual abuse as one of the possible causes despite the large number of victims in all European countries (10-20% of children) and the empirical evidences showing the direct causality. The project will suppose to break the silence on child sexual abuse in the European primary schools, to tackle it with the involvement of all the community and to increase the academic results of all the students.
The project “Breaking the silence together” is based on the educational priorities of the Europe 2020 strategy, the recommendations proposed by the Council of Europe Convention on child protection regarding exploitation and child sexual abuse, as well as the outcomes resulting from the main academic studies addressing the consequences of child abuse. Child sexual abuse is currently a significant problem in Europe affecting between 10% and 20% of children from any social and economic class in all European countries. The main research confirms the direct impact on academic performance. The project has successfully achieved the two main objectives: (1) To develop a Community programme on the prevention of child sexual abuse for European primary schools. 2) To provide a concrete tool for primary schools to become safe and child protection institutions, creating a climate that reduces early school leaving and increasing the rate of academic success. The loa project team has created five organizations. Three organisations from Spain, Austria and Poland with an extensive knowledge in the prevention and treatment of child sexual abuse. A research centre in Greece specialising in childhood and child abuse. The fifth organisation has been a Europe-wide organisation, based in the Netherlands, bringing together directors from all European countries. Teachers, families and pupils from six rural and urban primary schools (two in Spain, two in Austria and two in Poland) as well as local and national reference organisations have also participated very actively in the project. The project initially carried out a collection and analysis of previous experiences in the development of prevention programmes of child sexual abuse in the school context, analysing the keys to success as well as the remaining challenges. This analysis is included in the report Learning from the experience (O1), available only in English in the project website (www.preventingchildsexualabuse.eu). This report was one of the starting points of the project. The final products obtained have been the result of a participative and collaborative methodology in which the beneficiaries themselves have taken part in all phases of the project. In this way, an initial training was carried out in the six collaborating primary schools aimed to teachers, families and pupils (separately). Subsequently, discussion groups were held (a total of 18, three in each school) to collect their proposals and needs to be covered in the community prevention program. At the same time, five expert advisory councils were created in each country, which also defined at their first meeting the challenges and needs to be addressed by the prevention programme. All this, together with the experience and knowledge of the project team, led to the creation of a first version of the prevention programme and the related resources. This first version of the products was piloted and assessed in the six schools by teachers, families and students as well as by the five advisory councils. The final version of the prevention program was obtained with the contributions performed. The prevention programme consists of four articulated base products, complementary and mutually supportive and concretely: The Community prevention programme (O2) as a framework document for primary school management teams; Teachers Manual(O3) for school teachers; Material for families and students (O4) made up of a booklet and a set of cards aimed at families and their children; Awareness Kit (O5) aimed at the community and with the aim to make the program visible and made up of a brief document, a poster and brochures aimed at families and children with key messages. The prevention programme and related products are available free of charge on the project website in five languages (German, Catalan, Spanish, English and Polish). Within the project framework, four national seminars have been organised in Spain, Austria, Greece and Poland as well as a final European Conference to present the final products obtained. Overall, more than 500 people took part while the prevention programme was very favourably received and highly valued in terms of quality, usefulness and need. As a result of the impact and success of the project, we can state that once the project has been financed by the European Commission, the products obtained are being implemented at different levels in all the countries participating in the project. We can state that the project has contributed directly to make progress in tackling a problem that affects a significant part of the European child population.