What is the Protective Behaviours Approach?

Protective Behaviours is a practical down to earth approach to personal safety.

It is a positive approach to personal safety.

The Protective Behaviours process can increase our self-confidence and empower us to develop our own thinking and problem-solving skills.

This can enhance our confidence to take protective action on our own behalf and seek the help of others when we need it in order to help us feel safe again.

When we are feeling safe we are more likely to feel confident, strong and empowered so we can get ‘out there’, have some adventures and live life to the full within a framework of safety.

Protective Behaviours is a framework for personal safety consisting of 2 Themes and 7 Strategies.

This is very different from the ‘lock your doors’, restrictive approach to personal safety - it is a dynamic, confidence building, empowering approach that links safety with having adventures and taking risks.

Theme 1

‘We all have the right to feel safe all the time.’

With that right comes a responsibility not to do anything that would leave other people feeling unsafe and we can identify if we are feeling unsafe by tuning into our early warning signs, those things that happen in our body like butterflies in the stomach, wobbly knees etc. that let us know we don’t feel OK in this particular situation.

And if we get those ‘Early Warning Signs’, Protective Behaviours encourages us to think clearly about what our options are and work out what action we might need to take.

Theme 2

‘We can talk with someone about anything, even if it feels awful or small.’

Protective Behaviours encourages the development of a clear ‘support network’ which we can call upon having identified that we are feeling unsafe.

On the support network we would ideally have 5 people who might be able to help us do some problem solving. We teach our children to identify their network.

The 7 Strategies

1. Theme reinforcement

2. Network review

3. One step removed

4. Protective interrupting

5. Persistence

6. Risking on purpose

7. Language of safety including Body Privacy &  Early Warning Signs