About LOVE BiTES

NAPCAN has been rolling out the LOVE BITES Train the Trainer (TTT) package since 2008. The LOVE BiTES program was originally developed in NSW by the North Coast Area Health Women's Health and Sexual Assault Service in 2004. NAPCAN took over the delivery of the TTT package and has since accessed over 35 communities in NSW and is expanding to Tasmania, QLD and the Northern Territory. 

The LOVE BiTES TTT package includes a manual with all the activities and information workers need to run the LOVE BiTES program. The LOVE BiTES program includes a one-day workshop that is usually run in a school-setting with students 14-16 years of age. A group of service providers who have been trained in the program team up with teachers to run the workshop. The program is delivered in an interactive manner with workers engaging the young people through activities in every session. The workshop ends with a creative afternoon session to consolidate the material learnt during the day. Respectful relationships between males and females are consistently modelled in LOVE BiTES.

In the afternoon session participants can write, perform and record a hip hop song, radio advertisement or drama piece; as well as develop art works for posters and other resources focusing on the prevention of gendered violence. These creative works are then used to develop local campaigns, led and delivered by young people, to challenge relationship violence in their communities.

Theoretical background

LOVE BiTES was developed to educate young people about respectful relationships and reduce the incidence of relationship violence in the community. LOVE BiTES utilises contemporary feminist analysis and recognises relationship violence (physical, sexual, psychological, verbal, financial, cultural and spiritual, social abuse) as a gendered crime. Analysing gender inequities are central to discussions in LOVE BiTES workshops but in line with contemporary feminist research it is also recognised that "a wide variety of factors...shape violence, taking as given that violence is ‘a multifaceted phenomenon grounded in interplay among personal, situational and socio-cultural factors'" (Flood et al, p. 34, Respectful Relationships Education, 2009). This means that social norms, gender roles and the role of bystanders to violence are also discussed.

A crucial part of the primary prevention of relationship violence is to focus on educating children and young people about respectful relationships. The rationale for intervening with young people is well researched by leading academics in this field, such as Dr Michael Flood who states, "Males' and females' adult relationships are formed in important ways by the norms and practices they adopt in adolescence. Interventions at this stage can change young people's personal and relationship trajectories, preventing problems in adulthood" (p. 9, Respectful Relationships Education, 2009).

LOVE BiTES is a school-based program founded on evidence which shows that school-based strategies can lessen perpetration and victimisation of relationship violence (Flood et al, Respectful Relationships Education, 2009). Schools are a positive site from which to run prevention education as they increase the accessibility of programs allowing the material to be integrated within the curriculum and the systems of the school. These programs also lend support to existing violence prevention initiatives that are operating in classrooms. It is also of benefit that schools run welfare departments which combine primary, secondary and tertiary prevention activities therefore providing holistic support to young people.

NAPCAN advocates for a whole-of-school approach to the prevention of relationship violence and has included in the LOVE BiTES package lesson plans on gender deconstruction, sexual harassment and bystander strategies that can complement the Personal Development, Health and Physical Education curriculum.