Welcome to Child Protection Week 3-9 September. This year’s theme is ‘Protecting children is everybody’s business’. The Mount Isa Police have been conducting many school visits over the past few weeks to spread child protection messages to some of our youngest and most vulnerable community members. This week I would like to provide readers with some of the key messages around child protection, as many have changed since today’s parents went to school.
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The old message most of us will remember was one relating to ‘Stranger Danger’. Key safety messaging has moved away from this concept, as unfortunately statistics recognised many perpetrators of child abuse were known to their victims.
The Daniel Morcombe Child Safety Curriculum has been developed to support Queensland schools to deliver key safety messages to students in Prep – Year 9. Within the Curriculum, students learn how to recognise, react and report when they are unsafe or find themselves in situations that can have a significant detrimental effect on their physical, psychological or emotional wellbeing.
“Recognise” teaches children to listen to their own body cues when they don’t feel safe. Signals such as feeling nauseous with ‘butterflies in your tummy’, ‘goose bumps’, wanting to cry, wobbly knees or a pounding heart, are all cues that can help a child to recognise they are feeling unsafe.
As a parent, a good way to reinforce this message is to put it into context for your child, for example, next time they are scared by something – maybe a loud dog running up to the fence and barking as you go for a walk, or a loud clap of thunder – you can ask your child if their body had a reaction to the fright. This opens a dialogue with your child, to then teach them about how their body is very clever and can help them recognise when they may be unsafe.
“React” teaches children to get away from the danger and find a place of safety.
“Report” is the most important safety message and reminds children to tell an adult about their problem. This is where we talk about our safety network, which is signified by a hand of five fingers. This is a visual prompt for children to nominate five trusted adults (parents, grandparents, teachers, school Adopt-a-Cop, aunties & uncles, etc) who they can talk to and who can keep them safe from harm. This is a great reason why we ask parents not to tell your children “Lookout – there is the police, they will lock you up!”
These messages can be some of the most important conversations we have with our children. If you require any further information please visit www.danielmorcombe.com.au/ or childprotectionweek.org.au/ or pop in to speak with us at the police station.
