Raising awareness amongst young people

Schools

During 2018 the Trust began working to raise awareness among 14–18-year-olds about coercive behaviour and stalking through talks at secondary schools and among Duke of Edinburgh award-scheme groups.

In March 2019 we launched the Alice Ruggles Trust Relationship Safety Resource, quality-assured teaching materials and lesson plans on stalking and coercive behaviour aimed primarily at Key Stage 4 (14- to 16-year-old) students that are freely available to secondary teachers throughout the UK as part of the new statutory RSE strand of PSHE education. Since the launch, the lessons have been downloaded many thousands of times. In addition to this, several police force areas—including Durham, Sussex, South Yorkshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Oldham (as a pilot for Greater Manchester), and the Metropolitan Police Service in London—have taken up our PSHE resources for delivery to state schools in their areas by their community support teams.

In 2021 we updated our resource, revising the existing two lessons and adding a third that focuses on perpetrator behaviours. We are also preparing for the development of lesson plans suitable for Key Stage 3 pupils, something for which we have been repeatedly asked by our education partners.

Stalking Awareness for Education Environments (SAfEE)

The Alice Ruggles Trust, St Mary’s University and Transcend Awards have worked together to develop an Ofqual-registered suite of qualifications aiming to upskill professionals working with young people so that they recognise stalking and respond appropriately.

We are delivering three courses:

• SAfEE Ambassador. This one-day course is uniquely designed for those working with young people in a variety of education environments.
• SAfEE Campaigner. A two-day course to gain an understanding of stalking together with campaigning techniques.
• How to Identify and Respond to Stalking, Relationship Abuse and Coercive Control. A free two-hour on-line training session aimed at teachers and school support staff.

These courses, launched in April 2021, are currently being delivered on-line and evaluations are in progress. A number of other universities have expressed interest in delivering the qualifications once the package has been tested.

Girlguiding

Working with Girlguiding Kent West, we have developed a relationships badge to teach Guides about healthy and unhealthy relationships, managing unwanted behaviour, supporting friends and safeguarding themselves.

Social media

A short video interview with Alice’s parents Sue and Clive and brother Nick was recorded in 2018 by Broadly UK, a digital platform focusing on women’s issues, and distributed on social media as part of their “UnFollowMe” campaign together with Paladin National Stalking Advocacy Service. This aims to raise awareness of the dangers of domestic abuse and stalking among young people and has had over a million viewings.

In December 2021 we launched a three-minute animated video to help young people recognise stalking behaviours and encourage stalking victims to seek help.

In order to raise awareness on-line, the Trust has been working with Paladin’s Stalking Ambassadors to create short, animated videos to be used on Instagram and other social media channels.

We continue to expand our social media presence, enabling us to reach more people with messages about stalking and coercive control.

Support

Whilst not a support service, the Trust recognises the paramount need for good, local, stalking-specific support for victims. Using data from Protection Against Stalking, the Trust maintains a public list of stalking support services across the country to help victims gain access to information and advice.

Professional training and best practice

Representatives of the Trust have delivered invited presentations at numerous conferences and events for criminal justice professionals and mixed audiences of professional practitioners who might find themselves dealing with stalking cases.

These have included a meeting of the national network of stalking SPOCs at an event organised by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) in 2019 and a Crown Prosecution Service “protocol masterclass” ahead of the introduction of the new Protocol on the appropriate handling of stalking or harassment offences, as part of a package of measures to improve the way that the criminal justice system deals with stalking and harassment.

At its own day-conference in October 2019, the Trust brought together academic criminologists and forensic psychologists with police from 14 different forces, CPS prosecutors, magistrates, probation officers, and representatives of local councils, stalking charities, community support and the NHS. The aim was to stimulate further integration between these groups in order to improve strategies to tackle stalking and thus make victims safer. A year later our second day-conference brought 196 participants together on-line to explore how best to support stalking victims under 25 years of age. Our third conference resulted in a resolution calling for an urgent and comprehensive independent review of Stalking Protection Orders, while our forthcoming conference in 2022 will focus on cyberstalking.

The Trust, in cooperation with other agencies and charities, has also delivered training for social and healthcare professionals and workshops for domestic abuse caseworkers across England and Wales. We are currently working with Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust to produce a comprehensive package of training materials relating to stalking and harassment.

Campaigns

The Alice Ruggles Trust has played an integral role in the major campaigns affecting stalking victims over the last four years. This includes the successful campaign to introduce Stalking Protection Orders via the 2019 Stalking Protection Bill and contributing to the Home Office guidelines that accompany the SPOs.

We continue to campaign for statutory measures to deal with serial offenders, while working in the meantime to ensure adequate perpetrator monitoring and intervention and “joining of dots” and hence the best possible risk management. We support campaigns to provide more funding for stalking advocates (“Gracie’s Law”) and to change how police approach the sudden unexpected deaths of women known to be victims of domestic abuse.

By telling Alice’s story, the Trust works to ensure the victim’s voice is at the heart of all campaigning.

Research

The Alice Ruggles Trust takes an active part in an academic collaboration group working to identify and expedite research that will improve knowledge relating to young people and stalking in the UK and have practical benefits in the future. We have also commissioned a number of projects from Dr Lorraine Sheridan’s students at Curtin University in Perth, Australia to inform our work in raising awareness among young people. The overall aim is to create and evaluate effective ways of educating young populations about stalking and related problem behaviours, including coercive control.

National Stalking Consortium

The Alice Ruggles Trust is a member of the National Stalking Consortium, a collaboration of organisations working in stalking whose overall aim is to improve support to victims of stalking throughout the UK, and attends regular consortium meetings.