The University is pleased to announce that its Centre for Child Protection (CCP) team has won a Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence (CATE) 2017.
The winners were announced at a formal event on 1 November. As part of the award, CCP will receive £15,000 to disseminate its learning.
Organised and hosted by the Higher Education Academy (HEA), the CATE recognises outstanding contributions to teaching by teams at higher education providers. The criteria for the award are excellent practice, teamwork and the team’s dissemination plan.
The CCP team’s success reflects how it has provided an alternative approach to teaching and learning in child protection. It also reflects the ways it has brought this approach to traditional students, health and social care students and, through them, direct to young people.
By transforming approaches from other industries, namely applying digital and gaming industry techniques to training in child protection, it has provided the discipline with a suite of modern learning tools to replicate environments where child abuse happens. By reproducing social media platforms where grooming occurs, it has also enabled professionals and young people to increase their knowledge, take risks safely and learn from the consequences of their actions.
The Centre for Child Protection, part of the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research (SSPSSR), was launched in September 2012. Set up by professors Jane Reeves and David Shemmings it aims to capture the best of contemporary technology and gaming techniques, help professionals learn in a modern and innovative way (to help them and protect children), and help children protect themselves.
It has collaborated with young people, technology experts and stakeholders from national organisations ranging from the police to probation services, gang experts, child sexual exploitation experts, counter-terrorism units, youth workers, social workers, academics, government and policy makers.
Examples of CCP tools and materials:
My Courtroom – for individuals and groups