PBs Evidence Base

Hi All,
Doing my best to persist with this and using as many networks as I can think of. Still working on identifying the commonalities between PBs and other evidence-based frameworks such as The Solihull Approach & The Family Partnership model - planning to persist with this.

Also just received the information below from Mayo Children's Initiative who have PBs embedded in all they do and had some research completed by The University of Lincoln:
www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/sites/def...nitiative-report.pdf
I'd be interested in hearing other PBPeoples' thoughts.

I feel really chuffed to have Olivia, Marian and Steph from MCI on my PBPeople network and excited about how they're finding ways to take PBs across Ireland.
The following links shows how they're achieving this so may also be of interest:
www.preventioninpractice.ie/services/mci-mci
www.preventioninpractice.ie/research/mci-ireland-research

I get the feeling 2015 is going to be another amazing year in the history of PBs 'home and away' :woohoo:

Yesterday Cochrane published a review entitled "School-based programmes for the prevention of child sexual abuse" ( description of the review , actual full review ). Cochrane are highly-regarded and trusted amongst scientists for performing valid "systematic reviews" on research topics - this basically means they gather disparate and independant research studies that have overlapping subjects/aims, and perform statistical treatments known as "meta-analyses" in a way that can uncover significant outcomes that might not have been revealed by the individual studies due to their limited scope. I recommend anyone and everyone to read Ben Goldacre's book "Bad Science" to learn more about how phenomenally powerful and valuable this approach is to, for example, our understanding of the actual efficacy or otherwise of medical treatments.

This rather quietly-announced piece of work is typical Cochrane stuff. It is factual, objective, doesn't make overblown conclusions. It also has, in my view, potential implications for how Protective Behaviours could be regarded by those with organisational influence in Safeguarding nationally and even globally. The studies Cochrane have gathered are described as having "many common elements, including the teaching of safety rules, body ownership, private parts of the body, distinguishing types of touches and types of secrets, and who to tell". If it can be demonstrated in a credible way that PBs addresses such issues (which it seems to me it does, although more through self-empowerment and awareness than 'rules'), it could be argued that the perfect approach to Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) prevention is already in our hands. Of course, PBPeople already knew that :whistle:, but the Cochrane report could help underpin the debate. In fact one could argue that PBs approaches the topic in a parallel way to Cochrane, in that it solves through the broad holistic approach. The report actually mentions PBs, but with small P & B...."This review found evidence that school-based sexual abuse prevention programmes were effective in increasing participants' skills in protective behaviours and knowledge of sexual abuse prevention concepts"

I note Di's comments about Freda Briggs' programme, and there could be a danger that CSE or abuse in general becomes the only discussion, so am interested to know what people think.

Thanks for posting this Steve. I agree with all you say
One of the difficulties in assessing all 'prevention' programmes is that even if evaluation finds children and young people can regurgitate accurately all the messages they have learnt, it doesn't mean they will put them into practice and this is our real challenge. For me that is why PBs is such a good programme to be taught from birth and embedded throughout childhood (and life)so it becomes second nature and not something that needs to be thought about or remembered.