The Tools for Change
Evidence-based prevention strategies include social-emotional learning, teaching & practicing healthy relationship skills, and teaching & practicing safe intervention skills. Primary prevention shifts norms toward a shared understanding that violence is not tolerated in our community.
Building Healthy Relationships
One of the most productive things you can do is begin having conversations with your friends, family, peers, and other community members about domestic violence and healthy relationships. Modeling healthy relationships, especially to children, is imperative to set foundations for healthy future relationships in their lifetime. Our peers, coworkers, church members, and friends can also benefit from this framework.
RESPECT! shines a bright light on respect in relationships – all relationships – those with family, friends, coworkers, and particularly an intimate partner. You can help the next generation build healthy, non-violent relationships by teaching young people early and often about the importance of respect. This conversation starter guide provides helpful starting points to have helpful and important conversations about what is and isn’t okay in a relationship.
With the help of this handbook compiled Love is Not Abuse (LINA) coalition, and the love and support of important adults in their lives, youth can build the skills they need to engage in balanced, rewarding, and loving relationships. By using some of the techniques and examples found in this handbook, you can establish a strong and lasting foundation for effective communication with your children.
As parents, it is quite common to want to take charge of a potentially harmful situation and make what we believe are the best decisions for our children. However, we can ensure that the youths within our life feel both protected and empowered to make informed decisions about their relationships.
It’s important that partners feel comfortable expressing their wants, goals, fears, and limits, and everyone’s boundaries are honored. That means everyone feels comfortable communicating their needs without fear of what another person will do in response.
Examining Gender Norms
There are several ways we can strive towards eliminating negative gender norms within our society by looking deeper into the ways we communicate with one another, how we can increase body image and self-esteem for each gender, how to promote consensual sexual relationships and create environments that have zero tolerance for harassment.
Bystander Intervention
The goal of prevention is to focus on primary prevention to promote healthy environments and behaviors and reduce the likelihood of an incident, condition, or injury before it occurs in the first place2. In typical bystander intervention education, there are four main approaches to intervening: direct intervention, distraction, delegation, or delay.