Independent evaluation suggested that we could deliver a bigger impact if we increase the amount of time young people spend practicing refusal or resistance skills (dose) and improve the quality of the role play activities (fidelity).

 

We have been delivering a lot of face to face work in the recent months and it feels great to be back in the classroom! We have been able to work on our ‘Grassing or Grooming?’ resource using forum theatre as a medium. The classes have been able to perform mini scenes where they can stop/freeze the action when they feel they have an idea of how to produce a more positive outcome.

Ariel have welcomed an opportunity to work with Merseyside Police Violence Reduction Partnership to help increase awareness of criminal child exploitation in Knowsley primary schools.

Ariel's Sessional Facilitator, Caitlin, talks about the processes of adapting delivery during the pandemic: "When the first lockdown hit in March 2020 many of our planned sessions in schools had to be cancelled. We lost contact with lots of children suddenly and immediately, sometimes half way through learning about some pretty tough stuff.

Rachael tells us about her experience of delivering virtual forum theatre workshops for primary schools:- “We have been creating virtual drama based activities for schools over the past month and have started teaching pupils online. My sessions are all about ‘Resilience online’ and how to decipher good from bad within social media and online gaming. 

Ariel Trust has published a number of resources for primary schools; CyberSense, SafeSkills and Skills to Resist Radicalisation. Evidence suggests that using these resources as part of a joined up programme will deliver best results. Using all three resources means that we increase the “dose” that we are offering to children. In other words, the more children practice the skills that they need to resist different forms of grooming, the more competent they become in using those skill.

During the Autumn term of 2020, which was disrupted by lockdown, 50 teachers from 18 Liverpool schools attended teacher training workshops. These where delivered as part of Ariel’s Grassing or Grooming programme.

We are currently working with Merseyside Youth Offenders Service (MYOS) on a resource focused on ‘Decision Making’.  Ariel worked with a number of young people within the MYOS system before the lockdown to help create the scripts and learning activities, this allowed us to make the resource feel accessible and truthful to the audience. 

Ariel is again working with our partners from the Evens Foundation to translate one of our resources, this time for use in Germany.  We are working with new German partners from planpolitik to translate and refine the ‘Skills to Resist Radicalisation’ resource for use in a German context.