Domestic Violence Prevention Project

This project co-ordinated a program in 2002 at Hurstville Boys' and Kogarah High Schools to address the issue of young people and domestic violence, with an emphasis on the needs of young males. Further workshops were run at James Cook Boys' High in 2003.

Days were planned around violence workshops targeting year 7 & 8 students at both schools. After being inspired by a motivational speaker, students spent the day in workshops titled "Let's Talk". Activities focused on self identity, healthy relationships, violence and violence prevention. It gave students the chance to meet workers as well as become familiar with who their local youth agencies and service providers were and what they offered.

Teachers co-facilitated workshops with members of the St George Youth Workers' Network. In all 375 students took part (50 girls and 325 boys). Over seven network organisations were involved in the facilitation of these days, involving the participation of 24 teachers from the schools and an equal number of community workers.

Student feedback included; "Thankyou for talking to us about this, I really enjoyed it, it was cool!" "I really liked this because it helped me understand more about life" "Great workshop, lots of fun"

With the assistance of the network, Kogarah High wants to develop the program further to cater for the needs of their refugee and new arrival students and parents, totalling over 120 at the school. The program has also involved professional development of teachers, including raising awareness of the impacts of witnessing violence in the home on young people, relating this to classroom behaviours that teachers may be seeing and what teachers can do about it.

DV Project Manager, Marie-Anne Maakrun, reported that teachers received these sessions extremely well, a number were surprised at the extent of local support organisations available in the community to help address these issues.

Our schools have Arabic and Chinese students dominating their populations. Traditionally parents from non-English speaking or low socio-economic backgrounds find it difficult to communicate with large institutions such as schools. The program has allowed community workers to deliver culturally specific sessions "Voicing View for Families & Schooling" to both Arabic and Chinese parents. It gave parents the opportunity to raise concerns over dealing with teenagers, cross-cultural conflicts and talk about strategies on improving relationships with their children. By addressing needs through a cultural medium parents felt less threatened.

Commitment to continue developing these linkages further with parents was an expressed desire of both schools. As part of the project aims, a resource kit has been produced for use by other schools in the district wishing to create a similar program through the youth network. The project has laid foundations for further successful initiatives by the Network within St George schools.

For a copy of the Let's Talk Kit, contact the Network.