Useful resources

There are lots of resources available to help you support children and young people affected by crime.

If you or someone you know would like support after crime, contact us for help.

Getting it Right for Young Victims and Witnesses

‘Getting it Right for Young Victims and Witnesses’ is a report based on evidence gathered from Victim Support’s Young Victim and Young Witness services. It identifies individual young people’s experiences, and the ways in which they felt they were helped as well as the times they felt let down by criminal justice agencies.

The report also analyses how services can best be commissioned, providing a commissioners checklist, and ways in which to provide different levels of support depending on the needs of children and young people.

Circles is a mobile phone app designed by young people, for young people in relationship abuse situations or those who may be at risk of being in an abusive relationship. It helps young people keep safe by creating their own tailored safety plan and providing quick and easy access to safe contact details. The app is designed so that the information is stored safely and discreetly to prevent others accessing it.

The ‘Support toolkits for children and young people’ are a series of age-appropriate workbooks, with guidance booklets for staff and volunteers, containing practical interventions to support children and young people. There are a variety of interventions, but they ultimately help children to identify risks and when they feel unsafe, develop their protective behaviours, such as identifying early warning signs and safe, trusted adults, as well as building a sense of resilience through action planning and confidence and self-esteem exercises.

The toolkits are also developed to aid relationship building between the staff / volunteer and the child, to establish and foster trust and understanding, and to discuss the issues the child faces. Working alongside children enables staff and volunteers to develop a collaborative action plan that will help the young victim or witness to cope and recover from the effects of crime.

The toolkits include:

  • Support Toolkit 1 (aged 4-7 years) + Worker Guidance
  • Support Toolkit 2 (aged 8-12 years) + Worker Guidance
  • Support Toolkit 3 (aged 13+ years) + Worker Guidance

The activities in this booklet are to help parents work together with their child to help them keep safe and reduce the likelihood of them becoming a repeat victim of crime.

These briefings reflect the learning from our Domestic Violence and Relationship Abuse Project (DVRAP). These highly successful four pilot projects were funded by the Department for Education to support children impacted by domestic violence and/or relationship abuse.

The aim of this toolkit is to enable other professionals to increase skills and competencies, and develop some of this learning into their own practice. The nine guides in this You & Co toolkit include:

  1. The effectiveness of the Risk, Protective, Resilience model
  2. Children who are harmed and harm
  3. Effective safety planning with children and young people
  4. Nurturing positive identity in children who’ve experienced domestic abuse
  5. Promoting healthy relationships through schools and group work
  6. The importance of multi-agency collaboration in addressing domestic violence and relationship abuse
  7. The role of the non-abusive parent in protection and fostering resilience
  8. Understanding the ‘absent presence’ of the abuser
  9. Working age appropriately with children and young people

Based on consultation with children and young people about personal, social, health and economic (PHSE) messages, You & Co has developed the Safer Schools Programme alongside teachers, pupils and their parents. Young people found that one-off sessions on different crime types did not provide them with the skills to be able to negotiate the many risks they were facing. That’s why You & Co developed a whole-school vulnerable victims’ programme, to provide children with consistent safety messages that make them aware of risky situations and provide them with practical tools and knowledge to keep themselves safe. Safer Schools focuses on:

  • reducing risky behaviours
  • supporting parents and teachers to identify vulnerable children
  • developing children’s skills to understand early warning signs, to increase their protective behaviours and to make safer choices.

Our safe and supportive framework covers every year group throughout primary and secondary school, with four sessions delivered directly to each year group. Each session builds on the last to reinforce key messages and provide a consistent approach.

Alongside our direct work with children we provide teachers and parents with a toolkit to help them support the child throughout the programme, and we give ongoing support to help staff deal with any issues that arise. We also support schools to map out pathways to refer children into specialist services for young victims.

The Suffering in Silence report by Victim Support and the University of Bedfordshire looks at the hidden victimisation of children and young people and their preference to report crimes to trusted adults, such as teachers, rather than the police. The report suggests that children and young people need to be given lessons in crime prevention and what to do if they are the victim of crime. It recommends that teachers, social workers and medical staff get training to empower and support young crime victims appropriately, and for every school to have a commitment to keep their pupils safe.

Working with young victims of crime

How to identify warning signs and talk to children about crime.

You & Co

Help and support for young people experiencing crime.