As part of the 16 Days of Activism this year, we spoke with Shane about what he does to help victims of domestic abuse. He also added that work to help victims can sometimes include counselling those who are doing committing the abuse.
Natalie is PARAGON’s Somerset Domestic Abuse Service manager and she sat down to speak with Shane.
Tell us what a CYP Domestic Abuse Advocate does
Hello. My name is Shane and I am the senior children and young people violence advisor. I work with 7 to 18 year olds, and that can be children that have witnessed domestic abuse.
Quite a lot of the time I work with young people that have been in their own intimate relationships and experienced abuse. I look at emotions and feelings work with them. We also look into healthy relationships. Work with them to help them understand what’s normal and what can be seen as abusive in a relationship.
What do you aim to do with your clients?
Shane: My ultimate goal for them really is to grow up into loving, healthy relationships. My role is to do some safety planning with them. That can be looking at, like ring doorbells or things like that. Locks on windows and plan what they would do in an event where they see that abusive person. Like where they would go if they were out on the street to keep themselves safe. Like making sure they go into a shop so there’s people around. So we’re somewhere where there’s CCTV. I also look, so if they haven’t already done so, we can look at, like, non-molestation orders.
And also because children are victims in their own right now, whether they’ve experienced it directly or whether they’ve witnessed it between parents. That’s key for the work that we actually really do.
How can we, as a service, help to prevent violence against women and girls?
I think the main part of it really is the safety planning. The safety planning is really crucial in our job. That will be one of the first things we do with them. We look into how they can keep themselves safe, whether they’re in their home, whether it’s internet safety.
I’ve worked with people that have had abuse online from partners trying to be really mean and abusive online. So, looking at blocking that person, keeping diaries, keeping journals of anything that happened so that they were able to record that to give evidence to the police. That would be also part of my job. I can support them in police interviews. We also support them in court if they go through court.
And then another program we also look at, with children is Aspire, which would be children that are abusive to parents. I work with a couple at the moment who’ve been abusive to parents. And if you look deeper into it, they’ve quite often experienced some trauma in their younger years as well.
Working with them to understand what’s right and what’s wrong and what’s healthy and what’s unhealthy is really key to helping them understand relationships.
What is it that you love about your job?
I love my job! Just because I get to I get to go and help people, like children. I’ve done all sorts of jobs, I’ve worked with adults. But working with children just gives you that sense of real achievement and trying to help them grow up to learn and live healthy relationships.
I worked with a young girl not long ago, last week, I think it was, and she asked me the same question. She asked me why I do my job, and I said to just because I care. I want to help people like you. To grow up to lead healthy relationships. So I asked her what she wanted to do as well, and she said to me, she said she wanted to grow up to be a social worker. I was like, oh, brilliant! Because that’s growing up to help people.
So, it’s really key that we have a great team that I work with; very supportive. And we have quite a lot of flexibility in our job. So, we can we can see children at home, we see children in school, make sure it’s a safe place for them. Yeah. And I just I love being able to go out and be a role model for, especially males. If I can role model them growing up, hopefully then that stops abuse to women and girls. If I can be the best version of me and I can help them be the best version of themselves!
