Last year researchers at the International Centre set themselves the challenge of communicating key messages from their research in under two minutes. The result was a set of 12 short films, covering a wide range of topics. In this week’s post Dr Lucie Shuker writes about what we learned in the process.
I don’t know what was more challenging. Asking colleagues to stand in front of a camera and lights to talk about their research, or demanding they summarise that research in under two minutes…
We are all used to writing in-depth research reports, and communicating data in ways that acknowledge the highly complex realities of child sexual exploitation and violence. But we’re also an applied research centre – meaning we have a responsibility to make sure our findings reach the people who can actually apply them to improving the lives of children. We have some idea of the pressures facing police officers, foster carers or social workers, and we know very few front-line professionals have time to digest lengthy reports – no mater how well they are written.
So our hope was that if we could highlight some of the core messages from our latest projects on film, we might be able to reach parts of the children’s workforce that don’t usually have time to engage with research.
We tried hard to avoid jargon, and to keep things short. We wrote research briefings to accompany each film, so that those who had time could then explore the messages in more detail – and the reports that generated them. It’s important that inherently simplified ‘key messages’ are also traceable to the more complex interpretations that sit beneath them.
So far feedback has been encouraging, so we will continue to look for innovative ways to disseminate our research to professionals, academics, parents and to young people themselves. Please do email or tweet us if you use our research and want to tell us what is most useful to you.
There are 12 short films to view. The first film below is an overview of what we know about CSE
The full list of films
- “10 key facts about child sexual exploitation” Dr Helen Beckett
- “Child sexual exploitation: a social model of consent” Professor Jenny Pearce, OBE
- “Peer-on-peer child sexual exploitation” George Curtis
- “Gang associated sexual exploitation and violence” Dr Helen Beckett
- “Safeguarding teenagers from sexual exploitation and violence outside the home” Dr Carlene Firmin, MBE
- “What young people affected by sexual exploitation have told us about the support they want from you” Fiona Factor
- “Raising community awareness of child sexual exploitation” Dr Kate D’Arcy
- “Parents as partners in safeguarding children from sexual exploitation” Roma Thomas
- “Managing child sexual exploitation workers in multi-agency teams” Dr Julie Harris
- “Making justice work for victims and witnesses in child sexual exploitation cases” Dr Camille Warrington
- “Multi-dimensional safety for children in care affected by sexual exploitation” Dr Lucie Shuker
- “Successful reintegration for separated children” Claire Cody
The Safer Young Lives Research Centre (SYLRC) Blog 