FAQs

We have made lots of effort to ensure the content is not upsetting or triggering for young people. We have done this by thinking about the language we use, ensuring we don’t give detailed or graphic descriptions of abuse, and ensuring the stories and resources contain and highlight elements of hope and positivity. However, if a child or young person has direct experience of abuse, especially if it is recent or ongoing, the content may be triggering for them. 

The stories offer a way into talking about challenging themes without having to share personal experiences. We have found this to be useful for young people with direct experience of abuse.

While it can be hard to know about a child or young person’s past experiences, we recommend checking for this against any information or records you have for a young person. We also recommend using one of the benchmarking activities as a way to introduce the themes to the young people you are working with and paying close attention to how they respond to look out for any potential triggered reactions. 

We also recommend creating time and space for young people to come to you or a suitable member of staff if they need additional support or feel triggered by the content. This can be the opportunity to leave the room or sit in another part of it during the session for example. Or having a named person, to go to discuss the themes in the session.

The content is suitable for key stages 2 and up, as part of this project we developed a wider set of illustrations for the stories to appeal to younger children. With young people being able to bring their own experience and understanding to the activities and topics. While some very young people may find some themes more challenging due to their level of emotional development, all the activities are suitable for a range of ages. With sensitive and non-graphic language used throughout ensuring there’s no inappropriate content for younger children.

We do not use explicit or graphic language on the website, resources or in any of our work. We use words like hurting rather than violence for example. Although sexual abuse is experienced by some young people, it is not one of the types of abuse referred to in this set of stories. We do not describe instances or acts of abuse in the stories or resources in detail either, however, there are references to arguing, shouting, feelings of anger and hitting.

The content of the resources and stories may illicit disclosures. If this happens, you should follow your normal safeguarding policy and process. We recommend refamiliarising yourself with this policy and process if you are using these resources with young people. Safeguarding policies vary by setting but would normally involve contacting your organisations designated safeguarding lead who with make a safeguarding report.

We would also recommend ensuring there is no immediate danger to the young person, and if you feel there may be, taking steps to contact the police and specialist support services.

The resources, activities and stories can be used with groups of young people. We do understand that it is not always possible to work one-to-one with young people in a busy role. This can be a good way to explore the themes in the stories and connect to other work on healthy relationships. However, you should bear in mind the dynamics within the group and that this a sensitive topic. If you know a young person within the group has direct experience of abuse, talking about the themes in a group setting may be triggering for them.

The themes of the resources and stories can be challenging for both staff and the young people they work with. Staff can be supported in a number of ways:

• Ensuring you have an up-to-date safeguarding policy and process, so they know when and how to make a safeguarding alert. This supports staff to feel confident going into doing this work and know they are doing the right thing when dealing with tricky situations.
• Supporting individuals through line management and supervision processes to share experiences of this work and offer an opportunity to debrief on sessions.
• If you have the staff or budget, you may want to offer staff the opportunity to have supervision with a specialist.
• Team debrief sessions can be useful to talk about the successes and challenges of delivering this type of work, sharing approaches.
• Creating a sharing and open atmosphere in the workplace so staff are able to share any concerns or express when they may feel uncomfortable delivering work on certain themes. 
• If staff have direct experience of abuse, or are themselves triggered by the work they are doing, you could support them to access specialist support. Details of this can be found on the specialist support page of this website.
• We can provide Training & CPD to give your staff / colleagues confidence to use our resources.