Love Bites leaves an impression with the ABC’s 702 program

A Love Bites participant’s poster

NAPCAN’s National Programs Manager, Trudi Peters spoke on ABC radio’s 702 Mornings with Linda Mottram program today about the need for more investment in education programs about domestic violence and respectful relationships for young people.

As the announcement was made today that NSW high schools will teach students about domestic violence, Ms Peters spoke about the high demand from schools for NAPCAN’s Love Bites program – a relationship violence and sexual assault prevention workshop.

“We get requests constantly across the country for the Love Bites program, that would suggest there is a major gap in this education.”

The interactive program targets year nine and 10 school students, and teaches them about respectful relationships and consent.

“It’s great to talk about domestic violence with young people, but we need to talk about how to have respectful relationships and make good choices about relationships”

The manager of Love Bites said that the school’s curriculum, needs to go beyond recognising domestic violence, but to focus on young people’s relationships, be strengths based and facilitators need to to be skilled in this area.

The state education reforms were sparked by a letter written to the NSW government by a 14-year-old girl, weeks after the suicide death of her mother, who asked them to help educate children about domestic violence and how to seek help.

Listen to the ABC 702 interview.