Sexual abuse has significant detrimental effects on young people, leading to long-term detrimental affects that cause social exclusion in terms of negative impacts on mental and emotional health, development and wellbeing, throughout key parts of their lives with severe knock-on results. The prevalence of sexual abuse towards children and young people is a significant societal challenge in Europe, identified by UN Special Protection Measures (2003) and the Council of Europe Protection Convention (2007) (EIGE.europa.eu). Lampe (2002) found overall EU prevalence rates of 6–36% in girls and 1–15% up to 15% of boys under 16 (depending on variable definitions). More recently, the Council of Europe (2014) estimates between 10% and 25% of young people experience sexual abuse stating that ‘available data suggest that 1 in 5 children in Europe are victims of some form of sexual violence’. The Keep Me Safe programme is built upon the foundations of the DG Justice funded JudEx+ project (2015-2017), which successfully developed a unique methodology and CPD training programme to create a child friendly judicial system throughout Europe developing the skillsets of judicial professionals working with children effected by sexual violence. Usually the weight of recognising signs of sexual abuse is given to adult figures: parents and guardians, as well as, primary care givers, teachers, mentors and community leaders. Initiatives aimed at tackling the situation tend to focus upon professional adults in their roles in addressing a young person’s sexual abuse experience, developing the capacity of professionals or staff working with youth, investing mainly in people with a certain position of authority. Mobilising the JudEx+ ethos, best practice and achievements, the Keep Me Safe programme will develop a new transnational methodology aimed at the development and support of youth workers to both increase their own knowledge, awareness and safeguarding strategies within their own countries, while creating a youth-led Peer Support Network. It will empower young people’s inter-support skills, providing guidance on how to manage when a friend makes a sexual abuse disclosure, what to do when this occurs, while also ensuring their own safety, preventing inter-peer abuse. The Keep Me Safe project will achieve this through the creation of three innovative intellectual outputs designed to increase the youth sector’s knowledge, awareness and civic participation in addressing sexual abuse amongst 13 to 18 year olds – both at the youth worker level through comprehensive role and competency specification, as well as amongst young people through active peer-to-peer engagement, while formalising a unique training methodology/curriculum aimed at developing Youth Peers actively tackling sexual abuse. This pedagogical approach will incorporate accessible guidelines on the Keep Me Safe training programmes to youth workers, volunteers and young people, as well as launching the Keep Me Safe outputs on a digital mobile learning App and providing those with responsibilities for the design and funding of youth work provision, as well as those responsible for the CPD of youth workers. The Keep Me Safe programme contributes to the Erasmus+ Youth priorities of Promoting quality youth work and promoting youth empowerment, by developing a unique alternative pathway for early detection of sexual abuse as well as the prevention of sexual violence amongst young people. Through the development of youth workers and young people, Keep Me Safe will develop a peer-to-peer approach in addressing and raising awareness and preventing sexual abuse amongst youth. The Keep Me Safe will increase youth worker understanding, awareness and skillsets, ensuring they have the knowledge both in safeguarding and in the development of a youth-led peer-to-peer strategy in addressing sexual violence issues experienced by young people. Peer interaction allows for credible social supportive relation, empathy, encouragement, and for an effective way of sharing knowledge through the experiential learning base. The Keep Me Safe project will use the role of peer support and influence to help youth understand and recognise signs of abuse among youth - addressing the Erasmus+ priority of Social Inclusion, empowering vulnerable young people to recognise and address abuse. Providing a horizontal support system by creating a Youth Peer methodology, validated by an empowered youth network in each partner country, besides the support framework of active and trained youth workers, Keep Me Safe will equip youth workers and young people with knowledge, skills and techniques about different types of abuse, and on how to identify abuse as an essential stage in safeguarding themselves and their peers.
Sexual abuse has significant detrimental effects on young people, leading to long-term effects that cause social exclusion in terms of negative impacts on mental and emotional health, development and wellbeing, throughout key parts of their lives with severe knock-on results. The prevalence of sexual abuse towards children and young people is a significant societal challenge in Europe, identified by UN Special Protection Measures and the Council of Europe, which estimates between 10% and 25% of young people experience sexual abuse stating that ‘available data suggest that 1 in 5 children in Europe are victims of some form of sexual violence’. The overall aim of Keep Me Safe - https://keepmesafe.eu/ - was to build the capacity of its key target group - European Youth Workers working with young people aged 13 to 18 – to better support young people to identify and tackle manifestations of sexual abuse...Its specific objectives were to: • Contribute to a transnational capacitation of Youth Workers (through the Keep Me Safe Youth Workers programme) on awareness raising, prevention, early detection and disclosure of sexual abuse among young people with a new transferable, European level pedagogical framework of professional development. •Directly empower young people to tackle sexual abuse and support their peers by equipping youth workers to facilitate and support young people to counteract sexual abuse through a peer-to-peer support strategy • Contribute to the EU level transfer of knowledge and practices on youth work related to the prevention and protection from sexual abuse of through user-friendly digital learning resource (Keep Me Safe Digital App) • Promote transnational debate, dialogue, KMS built upon the DG Justice funded JudEx+ project (2015-2017), which successfully developed a unique methodology and CPD training programme to promote a child friendly judicial system throughout Europe developing the skillsets of professionals working with children surviving sexual violence. Usually the weight of recognising signs of sexual abuse is given to adult figures: parents and guardians, as well as primary care givers, teachers, mentors and community leaders. Initiatives aimed at tackling the situation tend to focus upon professional adults in their roles in addressing a young person’s sexual abuse experience, developing the capacity of professionals or staff working with youth, investing mainly in people with a certain position of authority. Mobilising the JudEx+ ethos, best practice and achievements, KMS offers a new transnational methodology to support youth workers to both increase their own knowledge, awareness and safeguarding strategies, while creating a youth-led Peer Support Network. KMS empowered young people’s inter-support skills, providing guidance on support mechanisms when a friend makes a sexual abuse disclosure, what to do when this occurs, while also ensuring their own safety, preventing inter-peer abuse. KMS directly engaged over 300 individuals in its activities, with 164 youth workers and youth peers as direct participants in the piloting and validation programme and 160 external stakeholders in attendance at the project’s programme of Multiplier Events. Moreover, the activities and results of the project were proactively disseminated to over 5,000 stakeholder connections through, social media bulletins and specifically-produced e-zine newsletters and local stakeholder dialogue. KMS was implemented by a strong youth-focused partnership and network comprising 7 organisations across 6 European countries (UK, CY, SI, BG, FR, DK) with experience of KA2 Strategic partnership projects and the motivation to mobilise the enhanced skillsets of a European network of practitioners in the KMS concept. KMS designed three innovative intellectual outputs ( IO1 Keep Me Safe Youth Workers Development Curriculum; IO2 Keep Me Safe Youth Peers Training Programme; IO3 Keep Me Safe Mobile Digital Learning App) that increase the youth sector’s knowledge, awareness and civic participation in addressing sexual abuse amongst 13 to 18 year olds – both at the youth worker level through comprehensive role and competency specification, as well as amongst young people through active peer-to-peer engagement, while formalising a unique training methodology/curriculum aimed at developing Youth Peers actively raising awareness against sexual abuse. The KMS programme contributes to the Erasmus+ Youth priorities of Promoting quality youth work and Promoting youth empowerment, by developing a unique alternative pathway for early detection of sexual abuse as well as the prevention of sexual violence amongst young people. The role of the KMS peer raises awareness on support to help youth understand abuse and its signs - addressing the Erasmus+ priority of Social Inclusion, empowering vulnerable young people to recognise and address abuse.