Evaluation of the effectiveness of the Stay safe primaryprevention programme for child abuse

Objective. This child abuse prevention study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the Stay Safe Programme in training unscreened 7 and 10 year old children in personal safety skills. Subsidiary aims were to evaluate the programme's impact on children's self-esteem and parents' and teachers' knowledge and attitudes of relevance to child abuse and protection. Method. Changes in safety knowledge and skills and self-esteem of 339 children who participated in the Stay Safe Programme were compared with those of 388 waiting list controls. Children in the training group were also followed up at 3 months. In addition, the knowledge and attitudes of parents and teachers of children who completed the programme were evaluated before and after the programme and 5 month followup data were collected from teachers only. Results. Compared with waiting-list controls, trained children showed significant improvements in safety knowledge and skills and these gains were maintained at follow-up. The greatest gains were made by 7 year olds. Children who participated in the programme also showed significant improvements in self-esteem which were maintained at 3 months follow-up but only the 7 year olds in the training group made significantly larger gains in self-esteem than their control group counterparts. Children with a higher socio-economic status benefited more from the programme than less privileged children. Both parents and teachers showed significant improvements in knowledge and attitudes concerning protection over the course of the programme and for teachers, these gains were maintained at follow-up. Conclusion. The findings suggest that the Stay Safe Programme was effective in training children in safety skills and so may usefully be used as a primary prevention intervention for child abuse. Stay Safe Programme 4 INTRODUCTION Child abuse in Ireland is a significant problem (McKeown & Gilligan, 1991; O'Reilly & Carr, 1998). The present study arose from the need to develop and evaluate primary prevention programmes to deal with the problem of child sexual abuse in Ireland. The study is of particular significance insofar as the programme evaluated The Stay Safe Programme (MacIntyre and Lawlor, 1991) is now conducted in almost all primary schools in the Republic of Ireland and has the full support of the Department of Education, the Irish Government and leaders of the major religious traditions in the country. The central focus of the paper is the gains in safety skills made by children who competed the programme. In a companion paper, the impact of the programme on the actual disclosure of child sexual abuse is addressed (MacIntyre & Carr, Submitted). Studies of sex-offenders suggest that enhancing children's assertiveness is one of the best ways of preventing sexual abuse (Budin & Johnson, 1989; Conte, Wolfe & Smith, 1989; Elliot, Browne & Kilcoyne, 1995). A growing body of research suggests that school based primary prevention programmes for child abuse are particularly effective in enhancing such assertiveness skills (Berrick & Barth, 1992; Conte, Rosen & Saperstein, 1986; Finklehor & Dziuba-Leatherman, 1995; Finklehor & Strapko, 1992; Kolko, 1988; Wurtele, 1987). While programmes vary in the topics they cover, most include modules on body ownership which emphasise children's rights to control access to their bodies; the concept of good and bad touch; training in saying No and the right to do so assertively when touched inappropriately; training in the skills for escaping from perpetrators; discussion of the distinctions between appropriate and inappropriate secrets; discussion of the value of trusting intuition when children feel that something is not quite right; skills for identifying and eliciting help from supportive adults; and clarification of the view that children are not to blame for victimization. A wide variety of programme formats and teaching methods have been used in school-based primary prevention programmes and not all are equally effective. The most successful programmes are those which maximize parent involvement so that they can reinforce concepts at home and provide children with opportunities to practice the application of new skills; those that involve a combination of relevant structured activities for children; those that involve audio-visual teaching materials to reinforce learning; and those that incorporate concepts which are appropriate for the child’s developmental level. Effective prevention programmes are also comprehensive and cover bullying and other forms of victimisation. In developing a child abuse primary prevention programme for primary school children in the Republic of Ireland, these characteristics of effective programmes were taken into account and in addition an effort was made to make the teaching materials culturally acceptable. The Stay Safe programme (MacIntyre and Lawlor, 1991) is a culturally appropriate, developmentally staged child sexual abuse prevention programme, specifically designed, for the Irish educational context. It utilises a multimedia format and focuses on cognitive, affective and behavioural dimensions of learning. The programme includes the concepts common to most prevention programmes. It teaches simple strategies for dealing with potentially dangerous situations including bullying and child sexual abuse. A fuller description of the programme is given in the procedure section below. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of this programme. Stay Safe Programme 5