What is gender based violence?

Gender based violence is a term that covers discrimination or harmful behaviour towards someone because of their gender or sexuality. Gender based violence is used by some people to exert control over other people.

It can be:

Physical – for example, hitting, pushing, kicking

Emotional – sayings things to frighten the other person or make them feel bad

Sexual – making someone do sexual things that they don’t want to

Financial – such as taking away the other person’s money, or not letting them get a job

Often it’s about the way girls and women are treated compared to boys and men. That doesn’t mean that boys aren’t affected too though.

Domestic abuse is a repeated pattern of such behaviour between two intimate partners.

Gender based violence can happen to people in their own family or home; the very people who should be caring for someone can be hurting them instead. When children or young people are experiencing this kind of hurt, either because someone in their home or family is hurting them or another family member then it is important that they can talk to someone about it and get the right kind of help.

Everyone has the right to be and feel safe.

What is participation?

Participation is a human right regardless of age, taking due account of age and understanding, United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Participation is effective, children are the best authorities on their own lives and experience the Participation Charter, the Children’s Charter

Participation enables and empowers children to achieve the Curriculum for Excellence outcomes that they should be successful learners, responsible citizens, confident individuals and effective contributors

Participation is about a dialogue that leads to change

Children and young people experiencing gender based violence may feel they have little choice or say in their lives. Enabling and empowering such children to move forward will require careful attention to their participation in the process.

Some vocabulary for participation

Participate Contribute ideas and actions to change things

Consult Talk something over or seek information from people

Include Allow to be a part of a group or activity

Involve Encourage someone in to a group or activity

Collaborate Work alongside others to achieve something

Cooperate Actively give and take with others to achieve an end

Coordinate Plan & organise people or things to make something happen

Mentor Use your experience to befriend, guide and support someone

Enable To give strength, to make strong, to make able

Empower Give the confidence, permission or power to do something

Engage Be involved or participate in an activity

Befriend Actively try to be a friend to someone

Participate Contribute ideas and actions to change things

Consult Talk something over or seek information from people

Include Allow to be a part of a group or activity

Involve Encourage someone in to a group or activity

Collaborate Work alongside others to achieve something

Cooperate Actively give and take with others to achieve an end

Coordinate Plan & organise people or things to make something happen

Mentor Use your experience to befriend, guide and support someone

Enable To give strength, to make strong, to make able

Empower Give the confidence, permission or power to do something

Engage Be involved or participate in an activity

Befriend Actively try to be a friend to someone

http://www.participationworks.org.uk/files/webfm/files/resources/k-items/participationworks/pwcharter/participationcharter31082008.pdffile://localhost/private/var/folders/35/_glydx397wg8ss9q_wzt2fp40000gn/T/WebKitPDFs-YZFvZm/ttp:/www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/1181/0009923.pdf%00

What is a participation framework?

To understand what a framework for participation might be, children and young people were asked to think about putting up a tent and asked what they would do first. Someone suggested reading the instructions and it was explained that the written framework was the instructions for someone building up support for a child or young person who was experiencing gender based violence. The next step suggested would be to put together the tent poles. This was then used as a visual aid to consider the framework for participation, and children and young people were asked to consider what the ‘tent poles’ might be to provide a structure of support for the child/young person.

Children were also shown various other participation frameworks to compare their work to.

Children and young people identified ways that different

people support their participation

Family Friends Special friends

Profes-sional

Support workers

Trusted adults

help y y y y y Y

support y y y y y Y

empower y y y y y Y? might

enable y y

involve y y y y y

include y y y y

listen y y y y y y

befriend y coordi-nate

y y y y

cooper-ate

y y y

collabo-rate

y

consult y

guide y y y y y y

How children were involved in the development of this project

To enable children in this project to contribute ideas based on their experience of gender based violence, without causing them to retell their own painful stories, the stories were developed in small groups around a shared imaginary person.

The young people had complete control over the imaginary person’s life with the proviso that the person had some experience of gender based harm either personally or in their home.

The imaginary person was drawn in a consequence game style, with each participant drawing different sections of the person, hiding it and passing on for the next section. This way the imaginary person revealed did not belong to any individual, it was a person of shared origin whose story was to be told.

Participants then made a large circle out of art materials and the imaginary person was placed in the centre. Inside the circle represented the person’s family, outside the circle, the community. Young people agreed a name and age for their imaginary person.

Young people were offered different shapes or colours of stickers for each question to make sure in data analysis which question comments were in response to.

For personal growth and development young people were asked to consider the imaginary person’s personality ‘I am…’, their abilities ‘I can…’ and their feelings ‘I feel…’.

For the ‘people who love and care for me’ and ‘my wider world’, participants were asked to describe what is helpful, is not helpful and what might be helpful.

Participants then were asked to consider if the right help were offered, what change would there be for the person, their family and their communities. This provides an idea of what children perceive would be improved outcomes and what the indicators would be that these outcomes were being achieved.

Through this approach children and young people were able to bring their expertise, gained through personal experience, to answer the questions about what is, is not or could be helpful to children/young people experiencing gender based violence, but without the need to speak about their own confidential and potentially painful stories.

Use of the participation framework

The Violence Against Women Strategy Group wish to develop their policies and activities using the voices of children and young people affected by gender based violence, to embed consultation within the day to day practices of service providers and to make the consideration of intelligence from service users a standing item in all governance structures.

A proper evaluation of the benefit of the service to the children and young people can only come about through ongoing review of service users experiences. The objective of the service is to improve the outcomes for children and young people and therefore they must be seen first and foremost as individual young people.

The consultation with young people requires to access their experience across four key areas, children who experienced domestic abuse, children who have themselves suffered gender based violence, children of parents who are sex workers, and because of the invisibility of certain groups, there is a need to include a general population of children who may have first or second had experience of gender based violence.

Where All areas of service must be used for review.

Why Service user voice is fundamental to the effective development of services.

Who All children and young people receiving a service who wish to contribute a view. This will include all children who access any service for any form of gender based violence and also include a general population of young people who may or may not be affected by gender based violence.

Accessing the views and experiences of children under five years will require particular care to be effective and beneficial to those children.

Children’s support workers in the VAW services, who the young people know and trust, will be key to gathering this information.

When 1. Young people should be encouraged to note “things that are working well/ not working so well for me” in a simple and confidential way. Equally this information may be heard by the workers in their day to day engagement with young people. These should form part of the routine information gathering system of the VAW working groups and should be considered at regular policy and practice review meetings.

2. Exit interviews from any part of the service should be undertaken.

3. Routine consultation with children and young people, using the SG wellbeing indicators, on a frequency and demographic distribution agreed by the VAW Strategy Groups as part of the SLA process with service providers.

4. All review of policy and practice should involve consultation with service users including children and young people.

5. Reviews with previous service users; the reflection of young people who have used the service can be a valuable tool in measuring service change and impact

In each case the timescale for the consultation requires to be realistically set so that it can be properly considered in the review structure.

What The resources required to sustain the participation of children and young people will depend on the model adopted.

How The consultation tools available to be used to engage with children and young people are detailed in the Forum’s report and are accessible via [www.highlandchildrensforum.org ]

1. Understanding the problem

The first tent pole, or place to begin, was to under-stand that there was a difficulty for this child or young person. Children or young people might show these signs:

Suicidal or self-harming

Being afraid of males

Have difficulty controlling anger or managing behaviour

Have social difficulties in school – not fit in, be bullied

Appear stressed, worried or anxious

May have had to move home and/or school and may struggle to settle in and make friends

Fall behind in school work

Tired, showing signs of not sleeping well

Be sad

Be lonely

** Information about confidentiality for children

experiencing gender based violence

Listen to the child/young person

Only the child or young person will know what their experience is and how that experience is affecting them.

The well being indicators, (that children should be safe, healthy, achieving, nurtured, active, respected, responsible and included) could help the child/young person to consider the different areas of their life affected by their experience as well as enable the child or young person to expose those ar-eas of greatest current concern to them and therefore most important to change first. Tools for well being indicators

http://www.highlandchildrensforum.org/userfiles/file/shanari.pdfhttp://www.highlandchildrensforum.org/userfiles/file/SHANARI%20wellbeing.pdf

2. Getting the whole picture

The next tent pole was that of developing a picture of what was going on. The children and young people will have good as well as bad things going on in their own personal lives, in their families, and in their communities. These are the factors which will interact to either bring about improved outcomes or escalate the current concerns. Building on strengths is as important as reducing pressures.

The My World Triangle is an assessment tool to prompt a discussion around strengths and pressures.

To access an interactive tool designed by the children and young people with relevant experience click here: www.myworldtriangle.co.uk

Children and young people involved in the consultation process described through story telling how experience of gender based violence might contribute to the strengths and pressures in life.

The table below is a summary of their comments. Strength Pressures

Personal growth and

development

Own abilities – sport/music Self-help Doing your best Staying out of trouble

Feeling sad Struggles with personal life affect school etc Difficulties with anger Worried, stressed, nervous, lonely

People who look after me Positive relationships Siblings Extended family Being together – playing, dinner, day out Reassure, protect, help

Difficulty finding space or peace Not enough choice Lack of contact with some family members Fighting Shouting Hurtful words Alcohol Lack of money

My wider world Friends- close by Women’s aid Activity clubs Good neighbours Nice house Close school

Falling out with friends Difficulty making friends Noisy neighbours Not good housing

2. Getting the whole picture

Case study: For one child the untidiness of her home was a key concern to her. She needed to have a feeling of order there. A solution focussed meeting to tackle this issue was held, led by her support worker from Women’s Aid and involving all of the family. It had been successful in moving things for-ward.

3. Planning how to make it better

The fourth ‘tent pole’ is to involve children and young people in working out what ‘better’ would look like and planning what would help them move towards it.

Achieving ‘better’ may require plans to bring about step changes in the individual, their family and the child’s wider world of school and community.

The plans made might include suggestions about how the young person could manage their anger and behav-iour, at home and at school. Techniques for managing behaviour when the family was fighting were suggested such as going somewhere else, reading a book, listening to music or watching a film.

Another suggestion was that teachers sort out bullying by speaking to the whole class.

Otherwise children and young people did not offer solutions, the plan would need to fit the individual.

Meetings:

Prepare child or young person for the meeting so they know what will happen

Offer choices about where the meeting will be held

Offer choice about who can attend the meeting or who should not

The child needs to know they are being listened to in the meeting

Ask everyone about what they think might help

Lead person try to get agreement about actions that will become part of the plan

People need to agree what part they are going to play in the plan

Make sure the child can understand everything that is said and what will happen

Make sure the child understands how people will check up if the plan is going well and things are getting better

4. Things improve

Managing expectations is a key issue when seeking views on better outcomes. There are two levels of ‘better’ which children or young people might think to describe: the magic wand ‘in a perfect world’ best outcomes (world peace) and the gradual progress of lasting change in real lives (help with my anger).

Children have great imaginations but they also live in the real world and children who have experienced gender based violence have already had to accept a real world experience that is far from ideal. The ’perfect world’ is worth hearing as it might provide direction and hope, but it is important for the child/young person to understand it is not something that can be promised or delivered in the short term.

The children and young people in the consultation project identified better outcomes for themselves, their families and their communities.

Ask the child what they think would change for them if they got all the help needed.

Better outcomes (in order of priority)

Personal growth and development

be happier improved personality and self-image be friendlier more confident

be helped

feel more relaxed

better able to achieve

life would be fairer/better

they would be talked and listened to

have better relationships

more money People who care for me improved relationships

solution to family problems fairer/better life

help being available

a quieter life

more money My wider world bullies dealt with

improved relationships

improved confidence

help given when needed

5. How can we tell things are better?

A fifth tent pole concerned how people could tell if any planned support was working and if things were getting better.

Some of the indicators suggested by the children are not easily measured such as being happier, more confident or having improved relationships in the family.

However, there are different ways these softer outcomes can be evaluated.

These things could be assessed as follows:

Listen to the child or young person - they could tell you how things were progressing in their view.

Observation - some improvements such as improved attitude, mood and behaviour might be evident.

Measure improvements- such as improved performance at school or increased opportunities to take part in activities.

Build up a picture - an increase in confidence might be evident if the young person had more friends and engaged with or got involved with more things.

Look for signs of improved health - such as putting on weight, being less tired, looking better.

The individual child

If you are a child or young person who is experiencing gender based violence, is there an adult who you trust, that you can tell? Speak to them.

There will be someone at your school who is called your ‘Named Person’. This is someone whose job it is to follow up your progress and check up if you are OK.

In primary school it is usually the head teacher. In Secondary school it is usually the guidance teacher.

You or the adult you trust should speak to this person about your concerns. It will be their job to listen to you to find out how they can help you.

They will be concerned if they think you are at risk of harm. They will need to do something to help protect you. If you are at risk of harm just by telling, you must say that so the Named Person takes great care not to put you at greater risk of harm.

Until you are able to tell someone and get help, these links might be helpful to you:

Childline etc

If you are a child or young person who is already accessing services in connection with gender based violence then you have a right to make comments and suggestions to help services improve.

You can tell services about:

Things which have been helpful to you

Things which were not helpful to you

Things which could be helpful

Most services will have a suggestions and complaints opportunity, a comments box or board or an identified person for you to talk to.

If you want to make your comment to services across the area you can use the guestbook on this website to make a comment.

Services need to listen to service users to improve their services, so it is really important way you can contribute.

Beyond the individual, participation for service evaluation

Service evaluation has often been about measuring outputs—how many children, how many sessions, how many activities and so on.

This does not indicate what difference the service has made to users. For that the evaluation needs to consider if the service has contributed to better outcomes for the children and young people who use it.

The Curriculum for Excellence Scottish outcomes for children and young people are that they become confident individuals, responsible citizens, effective contributors and successful learners. Indicators of wellbeing are that children are safe, healthy, achieving, nurtured, active, respected, responsible and included.

The outcomes identified by the children and young people in this project cannot be counted objectively, there needs to be a dialogue with the child to know if they are happier, more relaxed, more confident, better able to achieve and so on.

Evaluating services effectively will require the involvement and participation of children and young people to ascertain if these outcomes are being achieved.

The framework for service evaluation can be the same as for personal planning.

Involve children and young people to: Understand the problem (identify priority issues)

Get the whole picture (gather views, evidence, etc)

Plan to make things better (action plan)

Identify what better outcomes would be (how the plan will meet the priorities identified)

Work out how to measure that things are better (how the plan can be reviewed to ensure that things are moving forward)

There are lots of ways this can be done which follow the basic principles of participation:

R. Real participation is respectful and honest; recognising the expertise children and young people have to offer

I. Inclusive participation is freely chosen but attractive and accessible to all children and young people, considering their needs, interests and understanding

S. Systematic participation is built-in, routine and regular in the design, delivery, evaluation and development of all levels of all services.

E. Effective participation is a ‘dialogue to influence change’, working in partnership to build on strengths, recognise difficulties and plan improvements

Evaluation Support Scotland and the Highland Children’s Forum have lots of tools available to help with service evaluation.

http://www.evaluationsupportscotland.org.uk/http://www.highlandchildrensforum.org/listen-to-us.asphttp://www.highlandchildrensforum.org/listen-to-us.asphttp://www.highlandchildrensforum.org/listen-to-us.asphttp://www.highlandchildrensforum.org/listen-to-us.asp

Building participation for policy design

“Practical Guidance on Consulting, Conducting Research and Working in Participative Ways With Children and Young People Experiencing Domestic Abuse” (S.G. 2009)

Children’s safety and wellbeing is paramount

The engagement should be purposeful, and not token

Children’s participation and contributions should be valued

Participants must have the opportunity to provide freely given and informed consent

Researchers/facilitators should be mindful that children’s responses may be influenced by ‘care givers’ and support staff. They may feel grateful for the support received and want to provide information those engaging them want to hear

Researchers/facilitators should be open to the possibility that par-ticipation may not be in the children’s interests and consider not going ahead with ‘engagement’ where safety and wellbeing is in doubt

The Highland Children’s Forum plan consultations for policy design to meet the following criteria:

Representational: including participants from all three areas of Highland with rural and urban experience; including children and young people across the equalities, age, gender, race, culture, ability, sexuality.

Ethical: Informed consent gained, emphasis that participation at each stage is voluntary, confidentiality in the context of child protection explained

Custom Built Format: Careful consideration with colleagues and children and young people themselves is given to decide what format is most appropriate.

Holistic: children and young people seen as individuals, family members and citizens. In order to allow children to contribute without becoming distressed by their own circumstances, they could be asked to think in the third person rather than describe their own personal experience.

Engaging and Expressive: The event and planned activities will be age appropriate, be accessible, offer variety and most importantly be fun.

Rewarding: A rewarding activity/perk could be offered both to thank participants and to allow them to get to know other participants and build trust.

Enhancing: It would be expected that participation would also raise children and young peoples’ self-confidence and self-expression skills. Activities might include an opportunity for children/young people to gain other relevant skills.

Supportive: Support should be arranged in advance to offer to any child/young person who requires it or whose participation on the day causes them to remember or disclose something distressing to them .

Editing: Participating children and young people will be given the opportunity of assisting editing of a report before its publication.

Feedback: All children and young people involved in the consultation will be provided with feedback about what will happen as a result of their participation.

Children and young people in a participation group facilitated by Enable, called Speak for Yourself, contributed to this framework by suggesting the key factors in involving children and young people in policy making was:

Involve young people in local and national participation

Bring young people together first for socialising and getting to know one another before consultation

Hold consultations in nice venues with good food

Hear their issues as well as enquire about pre-set issues

Use various media, audio, video, talk shop, art, drama

Feeding in and Feeding Back Service level

Participation forms the fundamental component of the plan-do-review cycle. This cycle is the key process for ensuring quality performance at all levels of the support structure.

Information gleaned about the quality of service and its impact on an individual child or young person should be fed from individual review process in to service review. Any changes made should be fed back to the individual child.

At times of self-evaluation, particular consultation may take place.

All of this information should influence policy and practice within any individual service and will also provide important intelligence which can be fed upwards in to the local strategic planning processes.

There should always be feed back to the service users. Newsletters, notices or individual letters are some feedback options.

The Highland Children’s Forum toolbox has a range of tools for listening to children and young people but here are a few ideas for gathering information for service evaluation:

For regular confidential feedback a graffiti board or suggestions box could be offered. Responses to suggestions can be posted up to show that issues raised are heard and acted on.

Service users should have at least two people in the service listed as willing to listen and able to take action about any aspect of the service.

Materials from service activity such as drawings, quotations, photos can be displayed and comments invited.

Develop a simple system of gathering anecdotal information as it occurs such as post-it notes in a folder, daily log book for staff, regular team meetings. These can be brief so long as dated and with enough information to prompt someone about the full story.

Regular review, with planned fun activities where service users are able to enjoy the activities as well as contribute to a discussion to evaluate the service.

Feeding in and Feeding Back at Policy Level

Participation forms the fundamental component of the plan-do-review cycle. This cycle is the key process for ensuring quality performance at all levels of the support structure.

The accumulated intelligence from the review and self-evaluation of a range of services within the locality will be taken in to the strategic plan-do-review process and in turn may inform either changes in policy or practice which will be fed back to service providers and in turn have effect on individual service users.

Where national policy fora are seeking information from locality strategic groups the evidence used to create such submissions must be derived from the experience of the service users as gathered within the area plan-do-review process.

It will be important that the information feeding in to policy review comes from:

Relevant services—from their evaluations or reviews

Individual service users who comment on the guestbook

Formal planned consultation

Changes in policy could be fed back to service users through the website and information provided to services.

Local strategy groups will also be feeding the service users voice in to National Strategy and feeding back National Policy to services and service users.

Evaluating participation - a range of tools

In every field of children’s services there are performance indicators given which seek good quality involvement of service users.

Getting participation right will go a long way to improving individual staff performance and service delivery across the national standards.

Self-evaluation requires capturing the voice of service users in a robust but simple way. There is no advantage to children and young people if capturing their experience detracts from it by not being interesting, being time consuming or by taking quality time with practitioners away from their direct work with children.

Performance indicators from other bodies around the need for participation:

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate Education

Care Commission

Quality Improvement Service

Social Work Inspection Agency

Skills for adults as described by Highland Youth Voice

The Continuous Learning Framework

There are various self-assessment tools for participation of children and young people available, links to which are pro-vided below.

Self-evaluation on participation forms designed to accompany this framework:

A quick assessment tool

Level of participation

Methodology of participation

Impact of participation

These evaluation forms once completed can form part of self-evaluation submissions and can provide useful informa-tion to strategic planning groups, such as the Violence Against Women Strategy Delivery Group.

Other useful participation assessment tools:

Participation Works Self-Assessment

Lansdown Matrix (Chapter 7)

In every field of children’s services there are performance indicators given which seek good quality involvement of service users.

Getting participation right will go a long way to improving individual staff performance and service delivery across the national standards.

Self-evaluation requires capturing the voice of service users in a robust but simple way. There is no advantage to children and young people if capturing their experience detracts from it by not being interesting, being time consuming or by taking quality time with practitioners away from their direct work with children.

Performance indicators from other bodies around the need for participation:

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate Education

Care Commission

Quality Improvement Service

Social Work Inspection Agency

Skills for adults as described by Highland Youth Voice

The Continuous Learning Framework

Evaluation with this framework—a quality assessment tool A simple and quick assessment of participation for children and young people:

Evaluation with this framework—level of participation

Participation Framework Self-Assessment Tool – for participation in service evaluation or policy making

Provide brief description of how well each level of participation was achieved

Level of

participation

Identifying concerns

Building the full picture

Planning for change

Clarifying better outcomes

Evaluating impact

Adult initiated

Child/young person initiated

Children and young people consulted

Children and young people involved in the process

Children and young people full participants

Level of

participation

Identifying concerns

Building the full picture

Planning for change

Clarifying better outcomes

Evaluating impact

Adult initiated

Child/young person initiated

Children and young people consulted

Children and young people involved in the process

Children and young people full participants

Evaluation with this framework– methodology Participation Framework Self-Assessment Tool – for participation in service evaluation or policy making

Methodology of Participation Checklist

What level was achieved What fell short Lessons learned Representational

Ethical

Customised

Holistic

Engaging

Rewarding

Enhancing

Supportive

Editing

Feedback

Evaluating this framework– impact of participation

Impact on children/young people

Impact on families

Impact on staff/professionals

Impact on Service

Impact on Policy

Self-efficacy Self-confidence Skills

Understanding Relationships Outcomes

Attitude Understanding Practice

Attitude Understanding Practice

Design Delivery Outcomes

Participation Framework Self-Assessment Tool – for participation in service evaluation or policy making

Impact of participation

Highland Children’s Forum

Unit 6 15 Lotland Street

Inverness

IV1 1ST

2010

www.highlandchildrensforum.org

What is gender based violence?Everyone has the right to be and feel safe.What is participation?What is a participation framework?How children were involved in the development of this projectUse of the participation framework 1. Understanding the problem2. Getting the whole pictureTo access an interactive tool designed by the children and young people with relevant experience click here: www.myworldtriangle.co.uk 2. Getting the whole picture3. Planning how to make it better4. Things improve 5. How can we tell things are better? The individual childBeyond the individual, participation for service evaluationBuilding participation for policy designFeeding in and Feeding Back Service levelFeeding in and Feeding Back at Policy LevelEvaluating participation - a range of toolsEvaluation with this framework—a quality assessment toolEvaluation with this framework—level of participationEvaluation with this framework– methodologyEvaluating this framework– impact of participation