Domestic violence awareness raising has been a feature on the curriculum in a number of schools across Norfolk in the past few years. The current Norfolk Children and Young People's plan has required that an education pack in respect of domestic violence awareness raising be developed and rolled out to all schools across Norfolk. A working party including the 3 charities currently involved in delivering domestic violence awareness raising in schools, police, district councils, health, the Domestic Violence Reduction Co-ordinator and Children's Services have put together the draft education pack based on identifying a common set of standards.

The key aims of the guidance are:

1.	To provide Norfolk schools with information and general guidance on how to enhance the welfare of children and young people through prevention, identification and well informed and safe responses to domestic violence.
2.	To provide a framework for structured lessons about domestic violence focused on both encouraging disclosures by pupils, and shaping attitudes of the next generation.
3.	To support the current curriculum and relevant educational objectives within the PHSE, SRE, Citizenship and other programmes.

There is some current intelligence mapping work between the police and Children's Services to identify 'hotspots' of domestic violence reporting and location of children subject to child protection plans across the county with a view to identifying the schools in these locations as priority for the delivery of the education pack.

The education pack will be discussed in the Local Safeguarding Children Board Operations Group in November 08 with a view to ratification by the LSCB.

Access to the Draft Education Pack can be found on the Norfolk Local Safeguarding Children Board website.

Other links: National Union of Teachers paper 'Silence is not always Golden' Tackling Domestic Violence from: www.teachers.org.uk

Deadline for comments is 7^th November 2008. These should be sent to:

Stella Lovie
Major Projects & Investigations Manager
Children's Services
County Hall
stella.lovie@norfolk.gov.uk
Tel: 01603 222669