Learning Platform Designed by Young People for Young People to Bolster Consent Education Program
Consent education will be mandatory as part of the Australian curriculum from 2023, teaching children of an appropriate age about consent and respectful relationships, and providing education on gender stereotypes, coercion and power imbalances.
The move comes after years of consent education being available, but left to the decision makers in public and private schools around the nation as to whether it was taught.
Respected child and family services provider Kids First Australia has co-designed with young people an online platform - ‘To Future Me’, it draws upon the organisation’s decades of sexual abuse prevention work and is designed to guide educators through four e-learning modules, which feature a range of downloadable resources.
Co-designed with young people, and tested by teachers, the To Future Me program is aligned to the Respective Relationships National Curriculum.
Kids First CEO Aileen Ashford said To Future Me is about what safe and healthy relationships look like, and what they don’t, and has been piloted across several Victorian schools, and received positive reviews.
Over the past year, the Kids First team have worked with over one hundred young people to co-design an informed and relevant digital program, which uses relatable, diverse, and teen driven content, to help empower young people in making healthy relationship choices.
“As an organisation, we have experience over many decades, developing programs for children of all ages to ensure they grow up happy, resilient and ready for adulthood.”
“We were relieved to hear that consent education had become mandatory, and wanted to apply our expertise to resources which support the cause, transforming our previous face-to-face prevention program to an online version, - To Future Me. It is evidence-based and ready for roll out,” Ms Ashford said.
Development of the platform was initially supported by Westpac’s Safer Children, Safer Communities grant, with additional support from the bank received this year to expand the program. The grant will be used to create two new products, aimed at teachers and parents to help them feel confident about having direct conversations with students participating in the ‘To Future Me’ program.
To Future Me features accessible and inclusive content delivered through purpose designed videos and quizzes across four self-guided modules. Modules covered provide students with help-seeking skills and framework for consent assessment, The platform covers the topic of grooming and what it may look like, as well as exploring gender and sexual identities.
Kids First has been a leading provider of educational, family and support services for children, young people and families for over 120 years.