Network Member Profile: Sandra Paton, South Ayrshire Women’s Aid Training & Prevention Officer

Tuesday, 8th December, 2009

Zero Tolerance Volunteer, Helen Johnson, met Sandra Paton at the Dumfries 16 Days ‘Effective Interventions’ conference and took the opportunity to interview her about about prevention education.
 
Sandra Paton is well known and respected for her work on domestic abuse issues over the past two decades. She has been involved in: creating effective multi-agency support pathways for children and young people; developing and delivering study courses on women and children’s experiences of abuse; and working as a Domestic Abuse and Violence Against Women training consultant.
 
Prevention Education Capacity Building Workshops
 
Sandra is currently involved in a Violence Against Women Team funded prevention project working with 8 or 9 different local authorities in Scotland every year for three years. In each area she works with different agencies including Women’s Aid groups and multi-agency partnerships to set up prevention education capacity building workshops. She aims to recruit 12 individuals per workshop who must demonstrate that they have capacity in their job to deliver prevention work, and that they understand the principles of a gendered analysis of violence against women. The workshop provides access to resources as well as strategic assistance on how to plan, deliver and evaluate prevention education.
 
What works
 
At the root of Sandra’s education initiatives is an understanding of the need to develop emotional intelligence: the ability to name and manage emotions. Sandra points out that when people have heightened emotional intelligence, they treat people with respect. Further techniques for raising awareness amongst children involve examining gender roles and looking at issues of privilege, entitlement and oppression, without necessarily using those terms.
 
Sandra emphasises that different prevention education approaches work in different contexts. In general, schools and pupils are more relaxed when the focus is on talking about feelings and asking for help. With much younger children, who do not yet possess literary skills, an alternative approach is to draw pictures and talk about the emotions represented. Content must also be age appropriate, as children get older (Primary 2/3), workshops start looking at gender roles through talking about ‘unwritten rules’ and what is good or bad about being a girl or a boy. Interestingly, she finds that girls can see the good in being a boy, but boys often can’t see anything good about being a girl! When in secondary schools, however, Sandra states that it is necessary and appropriate to name the issue of violence against women and discuss it in these terms, looking at issues of power and control.
 
What doesn’t work
 
When asked what doesn’t work, Sandra replied that it mustn’t feel too much like school! There needs to be verbal interaction, explanation and visuals; even simple things like using coloured paper will make it seem different to schoolwork and will bring the workshops to life.  Sandra points out that the positive impact from workshops is much quicker in primary than secondary schools; this points to the need for early intervention. The positive impact is seen in child relationships, with teachers and with each other. The hope is that this will continue into adulthood.
 
Dealing with emotions
 
An important emotion to address in the context of violence against women is anger. She pointed out that anger is an emotion that is usually only addressed when a child actually gets angry, often they will be told off for their reaction and the message they receive is that anger is bad. Sandra argues that in order to learn how to manage anger and express it in a healthy way, children must be reassured that anger is a legitimate emotion, it enables us to know what is right and wrong with the world, and in this context, they must be encouraged to develop appropriate ways of responding to anger.
 
Sandra uses worksheets at the beginning and end of sessions that ask children to circle appropriate responses to anger, by the end of the session almost all of the children will not circle examples of physical or emotional violence as appropriate, no matter what their previous answers.
 
Bullying
 
Sandra’s prevention education also focuses on the issue of bullying as a prism through which to understand domestic abuse. This is useful for two reasons. Firstly, children can go home and say they talked about bullying as opposed to the potentially difficult and/or personal issue of domestic abuse, secondly, it enables children to understand that domestic abuse is in fact a form of bullying.
 
Challenges for the future
 
When asked about the main challenges for prevention work, Sandra mentioned a lack of resources as well as the need for an overarching strategy, stating that prevention work is currently very piecemeal.
 
Sandra’s observations point to the continued need for a strong and co-ordinated prevention sector that is able to ensure that violence against women is understood in all its context and is able to work together to ensure that the issue is high on the national agenda. Raising awareness amongst children and young people will not only serve to improve their relationships, but also to ensure that future generations continue to combat violence against women.