AN EVALUATION OF THE NSPCC S SAFE: PERSONAL SAFETY SKILLS FOR DEAF

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1 AN EVALUATION OF THE NSPCC S SAFE: PERSONAL SAFETY SKILLS FOR DEAF CHILDREN PACK Summary Report June 2014 Principal Investigator: Research Associates: Professor Alys Young Dr Katherine Rogers Rosemary Oram Social Research with Deaf People group, School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, University of Manchester

2 SUMMARY REPORT BACKGROUND In 2009, the NSPCC launched SAFE. At the time, there was nothing like it in the UK and it was also much more advanced than anything like it in the world, because it specifically looked at the personal safety needs of deaf children (we now call this kind of thing Safeguarding). SAFE is a toolkit with an educational programme of ten topics linked to personal safety skills. Ten topics include: feelings, relationships, differences, bullying, growing up/sex and relationship education, personal safety indoors, personal safety outdoors, road safety, safety using the internet and mobile phones, and someone to turn to. It is aimed at two age groups; children aged 7-11 years and children aged over 11 years old. The SAFE pack has a practical guide and a deaf-friendly DVD presented in British Sign Language (BSL) with English subtitles. It is also visual, to suit the way that deaf children learn, and has feelings (emotions) cards and cartoons. There is a practice guide for adults who deliver it. RESEARCH AIMS The formal aims of the evaluation were: To find out what kind of people bought and used SAFE; To look at how, why and where SAFE is being delivered and with whom; To work out the benefits of SAFE, whether it has any limitations and how good it is at the moment. METHODS Information was collected in three stages: 1. We looked at the NSPCC s sales records to see how SAFE was mostly being used. 2. We did a survey with people who have bought or delivered the SAFE programme. 3. We interviewed key people who have been using the SAFE pack with deaf children/young people, and people who were involved in creating SAFE. WHO TOOK PART? Survey: 2

3 In total, 14 people took part in the survey about SAFE, but a few people did not give us permission, and some information was missing. So, we could only use information that 10 people gave us. Interviews with key people: We interviewed 10 people 8 of them were key informants and two were from the development team that made SAFE. There were: 5 Teachers of the Deaf (2 had senior jobs), 1 clinical psychologist, 1 senior practitioner, 1 parent of a deaf child, 2 people who worked in the area of mental health and children. RESULTS LOOKING AT THE NSPCC S RECORDS OF SALES In 4 years and 2 months, the NSPCC sold 378 copies of SAFE to 250 organisations in 10 countries. At first, lots of people bought it (in 2009, 172 copies were sold), but the number of sales went down over time which could be expected and in 2012, 24 copies were sold. This is a low number, and we have explained why in the full report. SURVEY We need to be careful about what the few people who did the survey told us, because they may have filled it in because they liked SAFE so much. So, what they said may not have been very balanced. Even so, this information has brought up some important issues: Those who used SAFE were very positive about it because they thought SAFE was helpful and it had a positive impact on deaf children/young people. People who were not sure how good it was were either unsure if it was actually possible to clearly identify positive outcomes, or they were unsure because the deaf children/young people s needs had been influenced by other issues (not because the SAFE pack itself was not good enough). For example, sometimes group communication is more challenging for deaf children than hearing children. Some topics in SAFE were more used and seen as more helpful than others. These were growing up, relationships, feelings and bullying. 3

4 Personal safety indoors, outdoors and road safety were used the least, but it was easiest to see if they had a positive impact. The topic of internet and mobile phone use was seen as one of the main things that needed to be updated in the future. People said they really liked how young people presented the information, but they did not think the signposting section was easy to follow and did not think all of the resources provided were helpful. SAFE has had a positive impact also on those who delivered it. Their confidence, knowledge and awareness of personal safety issues for deaf children and young people has grown. Those who have used SAFE have liked and appreciated it very much, but it can still be improved. INTERVIEWS WITH KEY INFORMANTS In many ways, the key issues that came up from people s experiences of using SAFE were the same as those found through the survey. Some new issues also came up: People said they really valued how SAFE was flexible and could be adapted as a teaching and learning resource. This was because children with very different learning needs, backgrounds and ages could access it. If they wanted to, people could add things to SAFE and make changes to it to match their needs. Some of the ways that SAFE could be changed involve using technologies and media that had not yet been created when SAFE was first developed. The fact that people talked about adapting SAFE means that whoever develops SAFE further, or creates something similar to SAFE, might want to think about making sure it is easy for people to make flexible changes to suit themselves. This is something which has become more and more popular with digital based educational resources. The most used topics in SAFE (growing up, relationships and feelings) were the same as those that came up through the survey. One of the main things that needs to be done is modernise some of the content, because we now live in a digital world. Whoever develops SAFE in future might want to think about adding things linking to personal safety and growing up issues, to cover citizenship, taking part in society and preparing to become an adult. 4

5 The use of SAFE was limited in some ways that were not directly about the SAFE materials themselves, but were a result of other things, like schools preferences for other resources, school ethos, the amount of time people had to prepare and deliver SAFE, and whether SAFE was used as a main resource or as extra back-up when using other things. SAFE was not seen as having kept up with the national curriculum s changes, moving from PSHE to PSD to citizenship. This made it a challenge to deliver within the curriculum. However, deaf children/young people still needed access to resources that had been created for them, and SAFE was seen to be good at meeting this need. It was recommended that SAFE had more publicity and marketing, also that the government was involved to support its importance. CONCLUSIONS Nobody who took part in this evaluation said they did not like SAFE. Everyone appreciated its strengths and was committed to using it. Of course, this may be because the feedback given was not balanced, as the people who were most likely to use and value SAFE were those who replied to our invitation to take part in the research. However, all of the people who did respond criticised things about SAFE that had come up through their experiences of using it. Some of these negative things were linked to how the content of SAFE had not been able to keep up with changes in the world. Other negative things related to how people thought SAFE did not fit within mainstream curricula and government guidance. Deaf children were often taught in places which did not allow SAFE to be used in the way it was meant to be. SAFE was also not well known nationally if it had been, it may have been used more widely, even if there were pressures linked to time and the curriculum. Even so, it is clear that there are many ways that SAFE could be developed for the future, but this will need to have a new digital/online format. SAFE s strengths should also continue to be used so that it can be used with lots of different children in lots of different ways and it should be within general educational and central government policy. It is definitely still very important to have an educational resource specifically for deaf children/young people that meets their learning strengths and needs. 5

6 We hope that this report will encourage a further development from SAFE and carry on contributing to deaf children/young people s protection, safety and best possible personal development. 6