Consent education boosted by online platform

An online platform designed to guide educators through a consent education program has been developed in consultation with young people.

From 2023, consent education will be mandatory as part of the Australian curriculum — children of an appropriate age will be taught about consent and respectful relationships, as well as gender stereotypes, coercion and power imbalances.

To assist in this process, child and family services provider Kids First Australia has co-designed with young people the online platform ‘To Future Me’. The platform 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. The program is aligned to the Respectful 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 look like — and has been piloted across several Victorian schools.

Over the past year, the Kids First team have worked with over 100 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 rollout,” 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. The modules covered provide students with help-seeking skills and frameworks for consent assessment, while the platform covers the topic of grooming and what it may look like, as well as exploring gender and sexual identities.

Image credit: iStock.com/courtneyk