The link Between Recycling and Child Safety
What Does Recycling Have to do With Keeping Kids Safe?
A recycling analogy may help us think more clearly about what we need to do to protect children from sexual abuse.
Before we look at the recycling analogy, let’s look at the facts.
Despite the prevalence of child sexual abuse, it is often overlooked by organizations.
Recently, the Association of Alberta Sexual Assault Services (AASAS) released a report with current statistics on the prevalence of sexual assault and child sexual abuse. Here is a Global News Story about the findings.
The report found that 45% of adults in Alberta have experienced sexual violence, and of those who experienced sexual violence, 75% experienced sexual abuse when they were under the age of 18.
This is important information for youth-serving organizations.
Take a look at this image, provided to Global News by AASAS, showing that 34% of children are sexually abused.
Consider what this means for youth-serving organizations.
34% of children are exposed to a harmful experience that may lead to: anxiety, depression, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, self-inflicted harm, delinquency, runaway behaviour, homelessness¹... the list goes on, but I think we get the point.
Child sexual abuse puts kids at greater risk for the life challenges that most youth-serving organizations are trying to help children avoid. Knowing that child sexual abuse is a common childhood experience doesn't mean that people know what to do about it.
Deb Tomlinson, the CEO of AASAS, is quoted offering sound advice to parents and caregivers,
“There’s a lot that parents can do,” Tomlinson said. “They can talk to their children about child sexual abuse in an age appropriate way, they can teach them about consent, they can teach them the proper names for their body parts.”
At Priority Kids, our training teaches adults to talk about sexual abuse as part of their personal prevention plan. We support parents and caregivers and encourage them to help reduce the risk for their children by taking the important step of talking about it. Our training helps get that conversation started.
Find out more about our training.
Organizations have an important role.
While parents and caregivers do their part, organizations also have a very important role in reducing the rates of childhood sexual abuse.
Now, let’s look at this from a different perspective.
Imagine that the topic of concern is recycling, not child sexual abuse.
Let’s go back 20 years (give or take) and imagine that recycling has just been accepted as an important (and necessary) step towards protecting the planet.
The environmentalists' say, this is a wake-up call for parents to talk about recycling with children. And so parents learn about the importance of recycling, and talk about it with their kids.
But what if there are no recycling plants? No recycling pick up? No recycling bins in any organization? How much change would we see if we spoke to children about the value of recycling, but didn’t put systems in place to take care of the recycling?
One of the benefits of talking about sexual abuse with children is that kids are given the language needed to come forward and report unwanted behaviours.
But what will happen when those children and their families bring their concerns forward?
Are our organizations ready to respond?
Imagine all those kids collecting and sorting their recyclables and then not being able to find anyplace to take them.
What kind of a community would ask children to do all of that work, and then be unprepared to participate?
Priority Kids was founded in order to inspire adults to make protecting children from sexual abuse our top priority.
Adults, parents and caregivers can talk to children, as Tomlinson suggests.
But, imagine what will happen when we also work in our communities and in our organizations to create a response system so that when children come forward they are met by caring adults who know what to do.
Do these statistics from Alberta inspire and motivate you to advocate for child sexual abuse prevention policies?
Register for our free Walk the Talk service to create or improve the response system you have in place in your organization. Children need you to be ready to respond appropriately when your organization faces discovery, disclosure and suspicions of child sexual abuse.
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If the content of this article causes you distress or discomfort, please seek support.
Where to get help in Nova Scotia
Kids Help Phone 1-800-668-6868