Sonas Early Learning and Care has integrated a landmark protective behaviours program into its childcare curriculum in an effort to better safeguard young children.
Sonas is one of the first West Australian childcare companies to offer the Safe4Kids’ Protective Education Program, which teaches children as young as three about their bodies and fosters greater self-confidence and self-awareness.
“Sonas is ahead of the game. This is pioneering work. Other centres don’t contact me until they’ve had a critical incident, so what Shelley Prendergast and her team is doing is extremely proactive.”
Holly-Ann Martin OAM, child safety advocate, Safe4Kids
The program is the brainchild of Holly-Ann Martin OAM, a former education assistant turned child safety advocate, who quit her job, set up Safe4Kids and took out a $250,000 loan to produce the resources to better educate children and their families.
Ms Martin said the incidence of indecent dealings with children was alarming, with statistics showing up to 30% experienced some form of sexual abuse in their formative years. Children with disabilities are up to seven times more likely to be sexually abused by their non-disabled peers, she said.
Ms Martin said there were countless instances where young children inadvertently stumbled on sexual content when using iPads unsupervised or without appropriate child controls.
“Every little six-year-old girl loves Frozen. If a six-year-old puts either Frozen or Elsa into YouTube, eventually she is going to come across a video with two adults – one dressed as Spiderman, one dressed as Elsa having sex and having twins,” she said.
“It used to be four-year-olds saying: ‘You show me yours, I’ll show you mine’ which is totally normal behaviour. Now, children are mimicking acts they have seen online. There’s only three ways children become aware of these acts and that’s having seen it happen, having had it happen or having seen pornography and anecdotally it’s seeing pornography.”
Ms Martin, who was awarded an Order of Australia Medal in the recent Queen’s Birthday Honours, established Safe4Kids in 2010 with her husband Roger Cripps. Since then, Safe4Kids has educated around 4500 children a year, as well as 1000 teachers and 1000 parents, carers and educators across all of its education initiatives.
Ms Martin said childcare centres played a critical role in educating children to help prevent incidents of child sexual abuse.
“When I decided to write a program, I decided that we need to start protective behaviours at age three at the latest and it just made sense to write it so educators could deliver it to children in daycare and childcare environments,” she said.
“At that time, I was getting more and more calls from childcare centres that had had critical incidents at centres with children exhibiting harmful sexual behaviour.”
The Safe 4 Kids Protective Education Program offers lesson plans for teachers and educators, education resources and a range self-published children’s books.
The program involves a 10-week curriculum based on 10 concepts, with five activities for each concept. There are also lesson recaps and newsletters to inform parents about what their children are learning through the program.
In addition, staff undertake twice yearly training with input from Safe4Kids and there is an online parent workshop.
“The idea is that if kids only come to daycare one or two days a week, they are still going to get something from the program,” Ms Martin said.
“We use stories, songs and sign language. The idea is they do the activities with the educators and then take it home and share it with their parents and families. That in itself is a level of defence.
Ms Martin said parents could access an online course as part of the program.
“It’s important that we have parents, educators and children working together to keep children safe. I believe we need to start so much earlier when children are three and talk about pornography or ‘private pictures’ from the age of six at the latest.
“By Year 1 we need to be talking about being able to give kids the strategies of what to do if you come across pictures of people with no clothes on.”
Since the Protective Education Program was released in 2016, Safe4Kids has sold almost 300 resource kits and is also being taught around Australia and abroad in Canada, South Africa, Indonesia, the United States and the United Kingdom. But Ms Martin wants to see dedicated programs like this in every childcare centre in Australia.
“We need everyone working together. It’s not just up to a four-year-old to keep themselves safe. It is our jobs as adults,” she said.
“For me, kids are the last line of defence. But a really important step to put in is that 45% of all sex abuse is either children-to-children or teenagers-on-children and that’s why we have to start in the early years.”
“Sonas is ahead of the game. This is pioneering work. Often other centres don’t contact me until they’ve had a critical incident, so what Shelley Prendergast and her team is doing is extremely proactive.
“Lots of other centres have similar programs but they’re piecemeal. Sonas has made a real commitment to invest in this resource because they realise there is nothing more precious than keeping the kids in our care safe.”
Sonas Owner Shelley Prendergast said investing in the leading protective behaviours program across all 16 Sonas childcare centres in Perth was a ‘no brainer’ after it was a successfully trialled at Sonas Huntingdale in 2016 and 2017 as it was being developed.
“The safety of children is paramount, not only in our centres but as a wider community concern,” Mrs Prendergast said.
“Having a dedicated curriculum like Safe4Kids’ Protective Education Program is about Sonas taking on that village attitude and collectively doing all we can to safeguard and educate the children in our care.
“The trial at Sonas Huntingdale was so successful. It was evident that the children who were involved learnt some great strategies to being more self-assertive and self-aware.
“This is not just a program where we are just teaching children about how to protect themselves from predators, this is a program that has a whole lot of life skills attached to it where children learn how to speak up for themselves in all sorts of situations and circumstances.”