Resources

Download the fourth individual comic 'Public identity disclosure' from 'Seeing things from both sides: A comic to help young people and professionals understand each others's views about young survivors' participation in efforts to address child sexual abuse and exploitation'

Download the third individual comic 'Feelings of Anger and Frustration' from 'Seeing things from both sides: A comic to help young people and professionals understand each others's views about young survivors' participation in efforts to address child sexual abuse and exploitation'

Download the second individual comic 'Triggering' from 'Seeing things from both sides: A comic to help young people and professionals understand each others's views about young survivors' participation in efforts to address child sexual abuse and exploitation'

Download the first individual comic 'Readiness and Risk Assessments' from 'Seeing things from both sides: A comic to help young people and professionals understand each others's views about young survivors' participation in efforts to address child sexual abuse and exploitation'

This comic is intended for both young people and professionals. The perspectives of both groups are explored through a series of four specific themes that were identified in our research as particularly complex areas associated with young people’s participation in this context.

As readers move through these themes, we hope to spark discussion between and amongst young people and professionals to help them understand each other’s perspectives, needs and concerns when creating safe spaces for young survivors to be heard. We hope to highlight that a consideration of different views can help to support meaningful participation opportunities and outcomes.

This reading list was compiled by staff at the Safer Young Lives Research Centre at the University of Bedfordshire. The list includes materials we have found helpful in thinking about participation rights for children and young people affected by CSA/E in research, policy and practice. This is a living document and will be updated quarterly.

Camille Warrington

Given the centrality of the concept of children participation rights in Our Voices III this concept paper has been developed to clarify our use of the term and support an understanding of the concept in its fullest sense.

Our seven core principles that guide the work of the OVUN and its leadership.

Thinking of writing a blog for the OVUN? Fill in this form to share your ideas with us!

Practical guidelines to help you write a blog for the OVUN.

This toolkit attempts to capture the International Centre's, and partners', learning about promoting safety and managing risk when undertaking group work to address sexual violence with young people. We consider it a working document and recognise that it will benefit from revision and refinement in the future. However, we are sharing this resource to both document elements of the Our Voices Too project and to support wider learning and feedback on this topic.

This document outlines the Safer Young Lives Research Centre (SYLRC)'s commitment to children and young people’s participation, explaining the SYLRC's underlying principles and ethical framework for participatory research with young people. A checklist is also available to support project planning for developing participatory practice and can be applied to any participatory project or initiative with children and young people.

The paper and its contents are open and subject to on-going review as part of our commitment to reflective practice.

This activity helps young people to talk about sensitive topics by creating case studies of young people’s journeys following sexual abuse through a ‘third person’ lens. Within this activity, participants are asked to draw on their experiences to consider how a fictional child or young person might experience support for mental health and emotional well-being needs following sexual abuse. Creating an initial medium for engagement that is removed from their personal experiences, it offers a gentler route in for participants to engage in personal reflection about these sensitive and potentially traumatic issues should they wish to do so. 

The document contains step-by-step guidance and methodological notes for a 3-day youth facilitator training and 12-session life skills and leadership programme for young people who have experienced or are at risk of experiencing sexual violence.

This toolkit provides the necessary resources for youth facilitators to deliver together with adult facilitators:

• a 3-day training programme for youth and adult facilitators; and
• a 12-session programme on life-skills and leadership for young people who have experienced or are at risk of sexual violence.

Both programmes aim to strengthen participatory practice amongst service providers and increase young people’s participation.

Access the resource at Childhub

A 3-day Youth Facilitator training & 12-session life skills and leadership programme for young people who have experienced, or are at risk of experiencing, sexual violence.

The theme for this years’ European Day on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse is ‘Learning from victims and survivors of childhood sexual violence to inspire policy change’.

This is an opportunity to highlight the importance of engaging with, and learning from, victims and survivors.

To mark this day, the Safer Young Lives Research Centre at the University of Bedfordshire will be hosting an online event to share some new resources we have developed that are relevant to this theme.

These resources are informed by an international research study exploring the potential outcomes associated with the participation of young survivors of child sexual abuse and exploitation. We will share some of the key findings and outputs from the study, including a series of practitioner briefings and our comic, ‘Seeing Things From Both Sides’.

For any questions, please contact: claire.cody@beds.ac.uk

Please note there are limited spaces available.

REGISTER HERE

The webinar is taking place on Friday 17th November 2023 from 10 - 10:45am (GMT).

The SYLRC are pleased to be part of this event hosted by the Centre for Social Justice and Community Action (CSJCA) at Durham University, exploring participatory research. A note from the hosts:

"Participatory research approaches draw on various traditions but often share the ethos of creating useful knowledge for positive change with people and through democratic processes. Centre for Social Justice and Community Action (CSJCA) at Durham University has been promoting participatory research at the university, national and international levels for more than 12 years, and is seeking to explore the future of participatory research with community and academic researchers in our annual events.

Our Centre is very keen to bring together participatory researchers at Durham University and in the community to explore challenging issues in collaborative and co-produced research.

Following the keynote speech of Prof. Michelle Fine, there will be parallel interactive workshops to explore innovations in Participatory Research in different disciplines, including a panel co-facilitated by the SYLRC's Young Researchers' Advisory Panel."

If you are curious to find out, come join the annual event of the Centre for Social Justice and Action on 29 November 2022, 12-3 PM via Zoom!"

For more information and to register, click here.

The Our Voices University Network (OVUN) held a webinar on 14th December 2022, 1 - 2pm GMT to explore the complexities around legally established minimum ages of consent to sexual activity as experienced by young people and those representing them.

Brief presentations addressed:

• Is the legal age of consent to sexual activity created to protect children against sexual abuse and exploitation, or to restrain children’s sexual autonomy?
• Are laws based on the dominant moral codes or on informed evidence of child development and child welfare?
• Do laws help or hinder those implementing the law in accounting for young people’s different developmental stages, and in balancing rights to protection and sexual autonomy?

To see the event flyer click here

The Our Voices University Network (OVUN) invite you to join an online interactive workshop on 29^th September 2 – 3:30 pm UK time which is all about youth advisory groups.

This workshop will bring together teams from:

• The University of Bedfordshire’s Safer Young Lives Research Centre and Young Researchers’ Advisory Panel (YRAP).
• The Global Early Adolescent Study and Global Youth Advisory Board, coordinated by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
• Accelerating Achievement for Africa’s Adolescents (Accelerate) Hub, a collaboration led by the Universities of Oxford and Cape Town with one of the Hub’s Teen Advisory Groups.

Workshop participants will get to hear the perspectives of both youth advisors and the academic researchers they work with, as each ‘team’ gives a short presentation focused on a key challenge they have experienced from collaborating on research projects that explore adolescent health and wellbeing. For more information and to register, click here

EUPHA INJ, OVUN, WONCA Europe come together during European Public Health Week to discuss educational settings and community responses in relation to child sexual abuse, and in the broader theme of building resilient health systems. The event takes place on 20th May 2022 at 3pm CEST. For more information click here

A key topic of interest that emerged from scoping undertaken as part of the development of the University Network Children Challenging Sexual Violence (CCSV) is the need for standardised ethical guidance for doing participatory research with children and young people on sexual violence against children. 

In this webinar, members of the network, including Jenny Pearce, Elisabetta Biffi, Camille Warrington and Catherine Maternowska, share thoughts and examples from their practice to explore how existing guidance, which is predominantly informed by Western-centric protocols, may need developing for participatory research embracing issues facing low and middle income countries. 

This webinar was hosted on the 18th November, 2019 to mark the European Day on the Protection of Children Against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse. In the webinar Claire Cody and Silvie Bovarnick share findings from the Our Voices Too Youth Advocacy Project. As part of this project, the IC is working in partnership with three national NGOs in Europe: Different & Equal in Albania; the National Center for Child Abuse Prevention (NCCAP) in Moldova and ATINA in Serbia.

Each organisation is working together with young people to implement participatory advocacy activities in their respective countries. The IC worked with the partner organisations to design a toolkit for adult facilitators from these three NGOs to help them support young people (Youth Advocates), who are current and former service users, to design and plan an advocacy campaign on sexual violence against children. Throughout the process a team of researchers at the IC have been collecting data to capture the learning from this project.

In this webinar, held in collaboration with the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children, we introduce our new International University Network to challenge sexual violence against children and share ideas with participants for future developments. Read more about the International University Network here. 

This will be the first in a series of case study discussions that will explore different ethical challenges that can arise in participatory projects.

This webinar introduces the Make-IT-Safe project and explores how young people got involved in preventing online abuse and exploitation.

During the webinar Stellit, an NGO based in St Petersburg Russia, share their experience of supporting the Youth Volunteer Movement "Do You Know the Way? Do it Your Own Way…"

To mark the first European Day on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse, this webinar shared young people's views on preventing sexual violence. Findings from a series of consultations with children and young people affected by sexual violence in Albania, Bulgaria and England are explored.

We have developed this paper to summarise the study’s methodology, including data collection methods used, sample, and approach to analysis. This paper accompanies a series of briefing papers, and other outputs, that have been developed based on the findings from this study.

We asked participants to comment on some of the logistical and practical considerations surrounding the participation of young survivors, particularly in group-based activities.

One area we were interested in was the concept of ‘readiness’ – when and who decides when a young survivor may be ‘ready’ to be engaged in particular types of initiatives and activities, such as joining an advisory group or contributing to resource or project development.

We also wanted to understand more about risk assessment processes, who was involved in these processes and how they were undertaken.

We have produced this briefing to convey what participants shared in response to this topic.

Our research highlighted a number of issues that require careful thought and consideration when supporting the participation of young survivors in decision-making processes or activities that seek to address the sexual abuse and exploitation of other young people. Four areas that were particularly notable were:

• the potential for triggering

• feelings of anger and frustration

• public identity disclosure

• compensating young survivors for their time and contributions

We have produced this briefing to share what we found out about these complex issues – and to highlight that young people and professionals can have different views about them.

We have produced this briefing to share what our panel of experts felt were some of the potential positive outcomes for young survivors who engage in collective, group-based participation. While there was agreement that participatory group work could support a number of positive outcomes, it was also highlighted that this very much depended on the focus, aims, content and activities included in these sessions. Often there is potential for both positive and negative outcomes to co-exist.

Facilitators are key to moderating the potential outcomes for young survivors engaged in participatory group work. Facilitators being equipped with the right skills, experience and knowledge is central to supporting positive outcomes.

The findings from this study illustrated that there are many factors to consider that may influence and determine the outcomes associated with the participation of young survivors of child sexual abuse and exploitation. Five key messages were identified:

• Good quality ethical standards are critical
• Young people must be supported to develop the knowledge and skills they need to engage and influence
• Everyone is an individual
• Facilitators and other professionals involved in participatory projects and activities have a central role to play in ensuring standards are maintained and risks are mitigated
• Structural barriers at various levels may limit the influence of young survivors’ participation

This report shares learning from a participatory advocacy project addressing sexual violence with young women in Albania, Moldova and Serbia. The report draws on M&E data collected as part of the project to explore key themes and lessons learnt.

This briefing paper, the final of four, is based on exploratory research into peer support for young people who have experienced sexual violence. This briefing paper explores one area of the findings, the risks, tensions and challenges associated with peer support interventions.

This briefing paper, the third of four, is based on exploratory research into peer support for young people who have experienced sexual violence. This briefing paper focusses on one area of the findings related to the value for those: receiving peer based support; giving support and; organisations supporting such initiatives.

This briefing is based on a review of the literature that was carried out in preparation for a scoping study that aimed to learn lessons from those engaged in peer support interventions for young people who had experienced sexual violence.

This briefing paper, the first of four, provides a brief introduction and overview of a research project which aimed to explore peer support for young people affected by sexual violence.

This report shares findings from an international scoping review conducted by the International Centre on the engagement of children and young people in participatory research on sexual violence. The report discusses a range of ethical and practical challenges of involving vulnerable children and young people in participatory research on sensitive issues and draws out key considerations for research practice.

This review formed part of the Life Skills, Leadership and Limitless Potential project (LEAP).The aims of this literature review were to; review the global literature on life skills and leadership initiatives for vulnerable and/or hard to reach children and young people, including relevant projects that aim to prevent  sexual violence and take a participatory or peer-led approach within their work;  collate existing information about the value of life skills and leadership projects and  programmes in order to inform the plans for participatory and creative workshops to develop the LEAP  toolkit and; provide case studies  illustrating what we know about life skills and leadership training for vulnerable children and young people.

This review is part of the Life Skills, Leadership and Limitless Potential (LEAP) project. This literature review concentrates on the nature and scope of participation of children and young people who are affected by sexual violence and receive services relating to this.

Making Justice Work was a one year participatory pilot research project. The research explored young people’s experiences of the criminal justice system in child sexual exploitation (CSE) cases,and the ways in which these could be improved.

This report presents the findings of a desk top review into activities across Europe involving young people as participants in efforts to prevent sexual violence against children. The work was initiated and supported by the Council of Europe programme 'Building a Europe for and with Children', with the Institute of Applied Social Research

This presentation was delivered at the High Level, Cross Regional Meeting on Protection of Children from Sexual Violence, Council of Europe and the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General on Violence Against Children, Strasbourg, 19th June, 2015.

This presentation was delivered at the 3rd International Conference of the International Childhood and Youth Research Network, European University Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus, 10-12th June, 2015.

This report provides a summary of a meeting that was organised following the Cumberland Colloquium. With funding from the Council of Europe, the meeting brought together academics from the Universities of Bedfordshire, Queen’s, Sussex and the New Bulgarian University, along with practitionersworking directly with young people affected by sexual violence, and representatives from International NGO’s including Plan International, Save the Children and Terre des Hommes. Together 23 participants attended the meeting bringing with them experiences of working with young people across the UK, Europe and further afield.

Conference programme for the Cumberland Lodge Colloquium held in September 2015 on 'Young people affected by sexual violence as change makers in prevention efforts: what are the opportunities and what are the risks'.

This report provides a summary of a colloquium held at Cumberland Lodge in September 2015. The aim of the event was to provide a space to think about the risks and responsibilities, and general ethical dilemmas, which can arise when working in a participatory way with young people affected by sexual violence. The day brought together speakers and delegates with a wealth of experience of working with young people affected by sexual violence from across the UK, Europe and beyond. Participants came from both academia and practice.

This report summarises the meeting held in 2014 which brought together members of the ‘Our Voices’ Reference and Dissemination Group and Advisory Group alongside country project partners and youth associates from the International Centre.

The objectives of this first meeting were to:

• Share updates from the ‘Our Voices’ project
• Hear from other organisations to understand what work is happening on sexual violence prevention
• Learn how others are involving young people in sexual violence prevention efforts

This illustration summarises key messages from an international research study that explored the potential outcomes associated with the individual and collective participation of children and young people impacted by child sexual abuse and exploitation.

The findings illustrated that while there was consensus surrounding myriad potential benefits associated with the participation of young survivors, there were differing views and concerns surrounding the potential risks and tensions. This illustration seeks to convey that participation can lead to a number of outcomes and that these may be influenced by a range of different factors.

Read more about the study in the Research and Consultation Reports section of the website.

YRAP members at the Safer Young Lives Research Centre designed an infographic with artist Zuhura Plummer to show how young people's participation in research and services can be protective at an individual level and for young people more widely.

YRAP members at the Safer Young Lives Research Centre designed an infographic with artist Zuhura Plummer to show how young people's participation in research and services can be protective at an individual level and for young people more widely.

This infographic illustrates in numbers the activities Youth Advocates were involved in as part of the Our Voices Too Youth Advocacy Project.

Get on the Map! Our interactive map includes details of OVUN members who have given permission to be included in this resource. If you are an existing OVUN member and not yet on the map - or you would like to sign up to the network, please fill in this short form and we'll get you on the map!

Researchers from the Safer Young Lives Research Centre at the University of Bedfordshire organised and facilitated two online workshops as part of the ‘Changing practice: prioritising participation in actions to address child sexual abuse project’.

The first of these brought together representatives from international organisations and international networks of NGOs working to address childhood sexual violence and related issues. The second workshop assembled representatives from funders and donor intermediaries supporting work on childhood sexual violence.

The workshops shared learning from recent research exploring the value of, and complexities involved in, supporting the participation of young survivors in developing and designing actions that effectively address child sexual abuse and exploitation.

The briefing summarises some of the key discussion points that were shared across the two workshops and suggests areas for further conversation. In sharing these reflections, we hope to help organisations and groups to reflect upon their own work and potential ways to strengthen and improve the ethical, meaningful and contextual involvement of young survivors in this field in the future.

The Our Voices University Network (OVUN) was established to facilitate links between academics around the world in order to develop and share knowledge about the prevention of and response to child sexual abuse and exploitation.

This briefing shares learning from the PhD student forum sessions that were held as part of OVUN. The briefing reflects what forum members have shared about:

• the tensions and challenges of doing doctoral research on child sexual abuse and exploitation (or related topics/other forms of harm)

• what they have valued about the forum

• what support needs they have which are not being met

It is hoped that the learning captured in this briefing will be of use to other PhD researchers and supervisors who are undertaking or supporting work in this field.

This third briefing paper summarises key points arising from the University Network's most recent webinar which explored ‘Ethical considerations for universities working with children challenging sexual violence against children’. This briefing also shares progress on the proposed University Framework and information on ' Get on the Map!' an effort to map active Network members.

This second briefing is based on our first international university network webinar, held in July 2019 with The End Violence Against Children Global Partnership. It provides a recap of presentations from speakers, key discussion points from the Q&A session with participants and signposts to resources. 

This briefing paper summarises initial findings from a survey designed to map universities and organisations working on challenging sexual violence against children (SVAC). The survey informs the development of a new university network which will capture and promote participatory activities undertaken by universities around the world to challenge SVAC by supporting children to be co-determiners of research agendas, activities, and teaching and curriculum materials. 

This submission, by the Our Voices Team, focusses on how involving children and young people with lived experience in decision-making should be key to any approach in addressing the sale and sexual exploitation of children.