Senior Love Bites Program
This week Kirsty Turner had the absolute pleasure of delivering the Senior Love Bites Program to our year 10 students.
Love Bites is an extremely successful school-based Respectful Relationships Education program that evolved on the Mid North Coast of NSW and is an interactive and innovative program aimed at senior students.
We had open conversations about understanding and building respectful relationships, explored how gender stereotypes affect respectful relationships. We also took a deep dive into abuse in relationships, and what it might look like when things start to go wrong, and had honest and raw conversations about sex and consent!
We watched the confronting ‘Loves Me Loves Me Not - The Angela Barker Story’.
The story of 16 year old Angela who was savagely assaulted just up the road in Benalla, by her 20 year old partner at the time. Angela’s story has been used by many organisations, including schools, to educate young people about intimate partner violence amongst young people.
In the afternoon we had some fun in the creative session while students had the opportunity to create some artwork reflecting the important messages students thought the community should know about relationships, sex, consent and driving positive change. And a huge thank you to Elli Cuttriss and John Atley for your support across the week!
What do the Statistics say:
The Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) found that 29% of 18–19 year old's experienced at least one form of intimate partner violence in the previous 12 months. That’s 3 in 10 young people.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) report, around 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 16 guys have experienced sexual violence since the age of 15.
- 1 in 5 women (22%)
- 1 in 16 men (6.1%)
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) also report:
At least 2 in 5 police-recorded assaults are family and domestic violence related in most states and territories in Australia.
I encourage you to watch Angela’s story (Loves Me Loves Me Not The Angela Barker Story) and discuss with your young person.
It can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8VVk3oHFdM
For more information, please visit: www.napcan.org.au
How young people want to feel in a relationship and what behaviours they want in their relationship.
