Bright Futures Workshops

Bright Futures workshops are a space for learning and building connections with the primary purpose of keeping children safe from abuse. Bright Futures’ workshops explore what harmful sexual behaviours are, their impact on children, and provide an opportunity to develop practical skills to confidently approach issues and implement effective outcomes.

Bright Futures workshops are designed for teachers and front-line professionals who directly interact with children or work with children or child safety roles within government and non-government organisations.

Register for a workshop today!

Making Violence Sexy? Pornography, young people and Violence Prevention

Readily available and aggressively marketed online, exposure to hardcore pornography is now mainstream. Porn has become a default sex educator for many young people, with serious implications for their capacity to negotiate free and full consent, for mutual respect, sexual health, and gender equality. There is growing concern internationally that pornography is contributing to cultural conditions that cultivate sexual assault.

Pornography has become a violence prevention issue we cannot afford to ignore.

This full day workshop will support participants to analyse pornography’s prevalence, nature and impacts, and explore how we can address pornography’s influence as part of broader efforts to prevent sexual abuse.

Presenter

Presenter Maree Crabbe

Maree Crabbe
Director at It’s Time We Talked – Young people, pornography and sexuality.

Porn is not the norm: Young people, neurodivergence and the impacts of porn

Readily available and aggressively marketed online, exposure to pornography is now mainstream.

For neurodivergent young people, pornography’s influence can be even more challenging. For example, monotropism, the key characteristic of autism, can make autistic young people particularly vulnerable to the impacts of pornography. The messages conveyed by pornography can be a source of confusion and concern, and shape unrealistic and unhealthy sexual understandings and expectations. At its worst, pornography exposure can increase the likelihood of autistic young people becoming a victim or perpetrator of a sexual crime.

This full day workshop will explore pornography’s prevalence and influence, its implications for neurodivergent young people, and how we can support them to navigate respectful, consenting and safe sexuality and relationships in this new reality.

Presenters

Presenter Maree Crabbe

Maree Crabbe
Director at It’s Time We Talked – Young people, pornography and sexuality

Presenter Dr Wenn Lawson

Dr Wenn Lawson
(PhD), AFBPsS. MAPs – Autistic Consultant and Independent Researcher

Preventing harmful sexual behaviours: Lessons from public health approaches to preventing child maltreatment

Daryl and Douglas will discuss how a public health approach can be used to prevent and appropriately respond to harmful sexual behaviours. As well as sharing some of the recent results from the Australian Child Maltreatment Study, Daryl will identify the core components and strategies of a public health approach to prevention of child sexual abuse and its application to addressing the problem of harmful sexual behaviour.

Douglas will discuss results from the Children and Young People’s Safety project and two systematic reviews of evidence regarding harmful sexual behaviours including what young people want in instances of experiencing HSB from others, interventions and strategies used at the primary level of a public health approach, and HSB between siblings.

Presenters

Presenter Professor Daryl Higgins

Professor Daryl Higgins
Director of ACU’s Institute of Child Protection Studies (ICPS), and the former Deputy Director (Research) of the Australian Institute of Family Studies

Presenter Douglas Russell

Douglas Russell
Chief Investigator of ACU’s Institute of Child Protection Studies (ICPS) Children and Young People’s Safety project

Reducing The Harm: Talking About Children, Pornography & Online Child Sexual Abuse & Exploitation

This workshop will explore the way we use the Internet and more recently portable electronic devices, has transformed the way pornography is accessed and how pornography accesses children and young people. In the absence of adequate education in the home, school and wider community, pornography is the primary and in many cases the only education children and young people receive about relationships and sexuality. As the trusted adults in our children’s lives we can support them to maximise the benefits and minimise and manage the risks.

Presenter

Presenter Kayelene Kerr

Kayelene Kerr
Founder eSafeKids
Dip(PublicSaf), AdvDip(PublicSaf), BA(Just) Child Safety Advocate & Founder eSafeKids Body Safety, Cyber Safety and Pornography Education Specialist

Upcoming

Brisbane

Making Violence Sexy? Pornography, young people and Violence Prevention
Presented by Maree Crabbe

14 June 2023, 9:00am to 4:30pm


Darwin

Porn is not the norm: Young people, neurodivergence and the impacts of porn
Presented by Maree Crabbe and Dr Wenn Lawson

23 August 2023, 9:00am to 4:30pm

More info


Alice Springs

Porn is not the norm: Young people, neurodivergence and the impacts of porn
Presented by Maree Crabbe and Dr Wenn Lawson

25 August 2023, 9:00am to 4:30pm

More info


Melbourne

Preventing harmful sexual behaviours: Lessons from public health approaches to preventing child maltreatment
Presented By Professor Daryl Higgins and Douglas Russell

20 September 2023, 10:00am to 2:30pm


Canberra

Preventing harmful sexual behaviours: Lessons from public health approaches to preventing child maltreatment
Presented By Professor Daryl Higgins

12 October 2023, 10:00am to 2:30pm


Adelaide

Preventing harmful sexual behaviours: Lessons from public health approaches to preventing child maltreatment
Presented By Professor Daryl Higgins and Douglas Russell

16 November 2023, 10:00am to 2:30pm


Hobart

Preventing harmful sexual behaviours: Lessons from public health approaches to preventing child maltreatment
Presented By Professor Daryl Higgins

21 November 2023, 10:00am to 2:30pm


Perth

Reducing The Harm: Talking About Children, Pornography & Online Child Sexual Abuse & Exploitation
Presented by Kayelene Kerr

6 December 2023, 9:00am to 4:00pm

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