Growing Against Violence
At Christ Church (Erith) CofE Primary School, we believe is it critical that our young people are aware of the risks and dangers in modern society. As part of this, we have invited Growing Against Violence to come into school and speak with year 6 pupils. They have also run a staff training workshop, so that the teachers are equipped to support pupils and answer any questions.
Growing Against Violence provides evidence-based public health and public safety education and training for children and young people in schools. We follow the World Health Organisation’s ‘public health approach to tackling violence’, using data to identify risk and protective factors for violence and to deliver evidence-based violence prevention programming.
We see violence as a disease that is preventable rather than inevitable and examine the causes of violence using a listening and investigative approach that is demonstrated to tease out issues specific to local communities.
Growing Against Violence provides evidence-based public health and public safety education and training for children and young people in schools and since 2008 we have reached nearly 180,000 young people across 700 schools in London and beyond.
GAV delivers primarily to 9- to 15-year-old students, who are at the ‘reachable moment’ before secondary interventions are required. Our programmes provide dynamic life skills and violence resistance education and training to support safe and enabling school environments.
Universal delivery to all students in a single year group helps to develop ‘herd’ resistance and the positive peer pressure needed to reject violence and the negative norms and values associated with it.
We have also developed programmes for parents and professionals as a way of broadening our reach to young people.
This primary prevention initiative has four key goals:
- To reduce the appeal of violence amongst young people
- To improve confidence of young people in police
- To provide a safe space for young people to disclose violent victimisation
- To be the information hub on violence (for schools, young people, professionals, parents and communities).
For photographs and information about our training days, please see our year 6 class blog pages.