{"id":1749,"date":"2017-03-19T08:06:51","date_gmt":"2017-03-19T08:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/harlawacademy.aberdeen.sch.uk\/?p=1749"},"modified":"2017-03-19T08:06:51","modified_gmt":"2017-03-19T08:06:51","slug":"13th-17th-march-risk-taking-behaviours-and-child-protection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/2017\/03\/19\/13th-17th-march-risk-taking-behaviours-and-child-protection\/","title":{"rendered":"13th &#8211; 17th March: Risk taking behaviours and child protection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks back we held a set of assemblies linked with anti-weapons and knife crime.\u00a0 These assemblies were part of a city wide initiative aimed at keeping children safe.\u00a0 At the assemblies I made reference to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and to article 6 &#8211; the right to life.\u00a0 As well as speaking of the dangers of knives\/weapons I also referred to other risk taking behaviours which young people can engage in\u00a0and which have in my working life lead to fatalities amongst young people.\u00a0 These include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Road related &#8211; youngsters not taking care crossing roads or when cycling, youngsters getting into cars with dangerous or drunk drivers, newly qualified drivers not taking enough care<\/li>\n<li>Drugs related &#8211; youngsters who take substances\u00a0or who are put under pressure to smoke, drink or try drugs<\/li>\n<li>Behaviour related &#8211;\u00a0playing in derelict sites, unsafe actions (eg prodding things into electric sockets), daring someone to do something dangerous<\/li>\n<li>Emotion related &#8211; slagging people off, bullying, on-line humiliation or abuse<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All of the above we have had to deal with over the last few weeks.\u00a0 We all need to recognise\u00a0that some risks are not worth taking and\u00a0the consequences of some behaviours can be life changing or even fatal.<\/p>\n<p>We need to urge our youngsters that sometimes it is right to let others know if someone is putting themselves and others at risk.\u00a0 This is not &#8220;grassing&#8221; on a friend, it is helping to protect that friend or others from serious harm.<\/p>\n<p>We need to educate ourselves around what is acceptable risk taking and what crosses the line.\u00a0 When, for example, does &#8220;banter&#8221; or &#8220;mucking about&#8221; become &#8220;bullying&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>It is really difficult\u00a0for a young person to make that judgement and it is also difficult for adults to know when, and how,\u00a0to give\u00a0our youngsters\u00a0more freedom and trust.\u00a0\u00a0We simply have to keep thinking about the\u00a0risks and\u00a0recognising the impact of the behaviour or choices we take has on other people.<\/p>\n<p>We need to keep\u00a0encouraging youngsters to take risks and to learn from their mistakes.\u00a0 Alongside this\u00a0we\u00a0need to keep educating around\u00a0when a\u00a0risk is\u00a0too great and\u00a0empowering\u00a0them to\u00a0walk away from some situations or to\u00a0report\u00a0their concerns.<\/p>\n<p>The UN Convention on the rights of the Child sets out a lot of ideas around children being allowed to play (article 31) or to hang around with their friends (article 15)\u00a0and to do all of the things which make it fun to be young and\u00a0carefree.\u00a0 But\u00a0it is also about protecting children from dangers and empowering children to take action when they are being put at risk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks back we held a set of assemblies linked with anti-weapons and knife crime.\u00a0 These assemblies were part of a city wide initiative aimed at keeping children safe.\u00a0 At the assemblies I made reference to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and to article 6 &#8211; the right to life.\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":708,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-parents","category-weekly-blog","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.harlawacademy.org\/option1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}