Our areas of expertise
Child abuse prevention
To help children be safe from child abuse, including sexual abuse, Kidpower teaches parents, teachers, and other caring adults:
- child protection strategies to protect children from abuse
- age-appropriate safety skills adults can teach to children without scaring them
- coaching strategies to practice the skills with kids in ways that can reduce fear and build confidence
To protect children in your personal or professional life from abuse and other harm, see our:
- Resources to stop child abuse
- PreK-12 sexual abuse prevention resources and trainings for schools and agencies
- Parentpower programs and resources.
- Kidpower Child Protection Online Institute
- Child Protection Advocates’ Workbook
- Child Protection and Advocacy Resources
Our abuse prevention trainings and resources include extensive boundary setting practice because boundaries are a powerful prevention tool – and, they are also powerful skills for strong, healthy relationships! See Kidpower Skills to Persist in Protecting Personal Boundaries Through the 5 Levels of Intrusion™
To explore workshop options, visit our Learn Online page or contact us!
Kidpower is an Erin’s Law child abuse prevention recommended resource.
Core skills taught in all classes
Kidpower core social-emotional safety skills help people of all ages and abilities take charge of safety and well-being – online and in person. Skills include how to:
- Act aware, calm, and confident
- Protect yourself emotionally from hurtful words or behavior
- Manage emotional triggers to stay in charge of what you say and do
- Recognize what is and is not safe
- Move away from trouble physically, emotionally, and digitally
- Assess – and think first or check first before acting
- Set powerful and respectful boundaries
- Apply safety principles about touch and attention in healthy relationships
- Advocate assertively and persistently for help with safety problems
- Use your voice and body to stop an attack and get to safety
We
teach age-appropriate, ability-appropriate adaptations of these skills
using examples and activities relevant to students’ ages and life
situations. Our trainings for parents and professionals teach adults how to teach these skills to others in their personal and professional lives.
Learn Online with our workshops and resources – or contact us about your needs!
Bullying prevention
Most bullying, including adult-to-adult bullying, can be stopped or prevented when everyone involved learns and uses core social-emotional safety skills. We teach:
- Social-emotional safety skills to be safe from bullying and cyberbullying at all ages
- Safety leadership strategies for adults to ensure that everyone in their homes, schools, and workplaces is safe from bullying and harassment
- Positive intervention and coaching skills to guide those using bullying behaviors to replace them with pro-social behaviors.
We provide tailored support for dealing with specific types of bullying such as social aggression, cyberbullying, adult-to-adult bullying, and prejudice-based bullying and harm.
Use our bullying prevention resources – and learn more about our preK-12 SEL school programs and curriculum.
Learn Online with our workshops and resources – or contact us about your needs!
Kidnapping prevention
To protect young people from kidnapping and abduction, we teach:
- Child protection strategies for adults
- Stranger safety strategies for young people
For related resources, see:
Stranger Safety – Assault and Kidnapping Prevention
Kidpower Child Protection and Advocacy ResourcesSelf-Paced Kidpower Child Protection Online Institute
We teach emergency-only physical self-defense to use as a last resort for escaping an attack and getting to safety.
Our in-person full-force self-defense skills workshops are paused during the pandemic. We include coaching in physical self-defense skills in our online workshops for those groups interested in learning these skills remotely during the pandemic.
We have more than three decades of
experience adapting physical self-defense skills for people ages six and
up of all abilities – including people with low vision; people who are
deaf/hard of hearing; people who use wheelchairs, walkers, canes, and
other mobility tools; and neurodiverse people representing a broad range
of cognitive abilities.
Related resources include:
One Strong Move: Cartoon-Illustrated Self-Defense LessonsHow to Pick a Good Self-Defense Program
To bring Kidpower Stranger Safety skills and programs to your school, see our preK-12 SEL school programs and curriculum.
Assault prevention
We teach teen and adults strategies to stop assault, harassment, and intimate partner violence.
To protect children from assault, we teach parents and caregivers how to use Kidpower Child Protection skills to keep kids safe.
Children and their adults learn Kidpower Stranger Safety by sharing Kidpower workshops and resources together.
We teach emergency-only physical self-defense to use as a last resort for escaping an attack and getting to safety.
Our
in-person full-force self-defense skills workshops are paused during
the pandemic. We include coaching in physical self-defense skills in our
online workshops for those groups interested in learning these skills
remotely during the pandemic.
We have more than three decades of
experience adapting physical self-defense skills for people ages six and
up of all abilities – including people with low vision; people who are
deaf/hard of hearing; people who use wheelchairs, walkers, canes, and
other mobility tools; and neurodiverse people representing a broad range
of cognitive abilities.
Related resources include:
One Strong Move: Cartoon-Illustrated Self-Defense Lessons
How to Pick a Good Self-Defense Program
Intimate partner violence prevention
To prevent dating/domestic violence and to help people replace harmful behaviors with safer behaviors to support safe, healthy intimate relationships, we teach skills for:
- setting, recognizing, respecting, and upholding boundaries
- expressing, withdrawing, and respecting consent
- managing emotional triggers in order to think clearly and make wise choices
- staying safe in the face of verbal and emotional attacks
- assessing situations and thinking first before acting
- moving away from trouble emotionally, physically, and digitally
- making safety plans
Related resources include:
Personal Safety to Help Stop Domestic, Dating, and Other Relationship Violence
Protecting Sexual Safety: Skills to Ensure Consent and Set Boundaries Fullpower Relationship Safety Skills Handbook
Visit our Dating/Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault Prevention resource page for more.
Online safety and digital citizenship
Technology changes, but Kidpower’s core principles for safety with people are timeless, preparing people for safety online now and throughout their online lives. We teach:
- Awareness to prevent problems before they start
- Assessment to avoid, de-escalate, or end unsafe situations
- Moving away from trouble emotionally and digitally
- Boundary setting to stop unwanted attention
- Disengaging to leave activities skillfully
- Assertive advocacy to get help with safety problems
- Safety planning for individuals and for groups of peers online together.
- Emotional safety to stay safe, calm, and effective in the face of threats, harassment, intimidation, peer pressure, bullying, or other emotional attacks.
To be safe online, youth need caring adults involved in their online lives.
Without
adult guidance, youth online are more vulnerable to abuse, coercion,
bullying, manipulation, and other harm. This is true even for digital
natives more skilled with technology than their adults. See:
- Strategies for Safety Online – and Everywhere Else
- Digital Citizenship & Safety Agreement Template
- Preparing Kids for Good Digital Citizenship
To explore workshop options, visit our Learn online page or contact us!
Workplace communication and safety
We coach employees and supervisors how to apply our core skills to support workplace safety in workshops tailored to each group’s unique situations. Depending on their priorities, we teach skills to:
Take
charge of personal safety going to and from work to protect employee
safety as well as to prevent employee attrition resulting from safety
concerns arriving early, navigating parking lots and other public
spaces, working late, or traveling to and from work.
Create safe,
respectful, and inclusive workplace cultures to promote healthy,
positive workplace communication and prevent, address, and end problems
that grow from:
- adult-to-adult bullying
- social aggression, including ‘badmouthing’, ‘backstabbing’, and gossip
- the formation of unproductive, potentially harmful workplace factions
- a workplace culture that allows or encourages sexual harassment and other behaviors that target, isolate, distance, limit, or call out others result of race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, body size, ability, age, or other actual or perceived identities.
Our
solutions-focused workshops are upbeat, engaging, and designed to be
enjoyable experiences that ‘call people in’ without ‘calling people out’
on their own words or behaviors. Skills covered include boundaries,
assertive advocacy, effective strategies for addressing disagreements,
and tools for addressing crucial yet challenging topics such as bias,
discrimination respectfully and assertively. Related resources: Fullpower Boundaries for Adults Integrity in Communication Workplace Violence Prevention Learn more about arranging a workshop for your group – or contact us!
Prejudice-based harm
We teach ways to use our core skills to protect ourselves and others from prejudice-based harm – and to take action to create greater justice and safety for everyone, everywhere.
We adapt for concerns ranging from body shaming and weight bias to protecting transgender and gender-diverse youth to taking charge of safety in the face of identity-based attacks against Asian-Americans during the pandemic to safety within a context of institutionalized oppression.
Given our decades-long commitment to learning everything we can about respecting cultural differences
while teaching skills for consent, boundaries, and interpersonal
safety, we are constantly growing, adapting, and improving our services
based in the insights of our students and community members.
See our resources to prevent and stop prejudice-based aggression and violence.
Adapting for all abilities
Kidpower makes safety accessible for people of all abilities.
We
have more than three decades of experience adapting safety education to
protect and empower people with disabilities – who face a high risk of
bullying, assault, harassment, and other harm at all ages.
The success of our Unlimited Adaptability approach to safety education grows from our our focus on possibilities rather than limitations and the proven Kidpower Positive Practice Teaching Method use in our services for all ages.
Read more about our services for people with special needs!
Our international team - a tapestry woven by many hands
Meet the people behind our courses
Leadership Team
As Kidpower’s lead author, Irene places time-tested life-saving skills and lessons directly into the hands of parents and professionals. Her work has gained world-wide acclaim from experts in education, law enforcement, and health for being upbeat, experiential, age-appropriate, emotionally safe, trauma-informed, and relevant in today’s often-challenging times.
She is the producer of the Safety Powers Project and other courses as well as a presenter in other courses. She is part of the Curriculum and Training Team and a Senior Program Leader. She is also the Québec Center Director: Pleins Pouvoirs KIDPOWER Montréal
She is the artist and editor for most Kidpower publications, including the Workbooks in our Online Learning Center and a presenter in many courses.
Since then, she has become one of the most active and experienced Kidpower instructors in the world, directly training more than 50,000 kids and adults, including those with special needs. Through her work MJ is truly having a global impact on child safety and abuse prevention.
Technical Support Team
Course Instructors and Presenters
She is a member of the Senior Program Leader Advisory Group and led the collaborative development and implementation of national programs like the NZ Confident Kids program with the NZ National Police’s Youth Education Services, the Healthy Relationships program for people with learning disabilities and the Teenpower Violence Prevention Project.
Conflict Resolution Consultant & Montessori Educator
In addition to her rich Montessori experience, she has received training in Children’s Creative Response to Conflict, Positive Discipline, Non-violent Communication, Be An Amazing Trainer, Kidpower, Mindfulness, and Cultivating Authentic Communication. www.tlcpathways.com
More about our other team members coming soon!
Explore our online courses now!
Diversity invitation!
Contact us at safety@kidpower.org
Thank you!
