Small things that change how a conversation goes.
- A door that closes. Not a partition, not a corner of the library.
- Not the front office, where classmates walk past a window.
- Not a room somebody else needs at 10:30. A conversation cut short by a scheduling conflict teaches a student that their disclosure was an inconvenience.
- Sensory considerations. Fluorescent light, a loud vent, a strong smell. For some students that is the difference between being able to talk and not.
- Something to do with your hands. A pen, paper, an object. Not every student can talk while being looked at.
✓ Take Action. Book the room for the whole screening week, not for a block. Then check who else has a key.
# UNIT 7 – FAMILIES
SAFER Universal Screening Toolkit. Six Modules.
A family's first experience of this program is a piece of paper that arrives two weeks before screening week. Their second, for a small number of them, is a phone call. Everything in this Unit is about those two moments.
Two things run through the whole Unit.
The notice does not persuade. A family that feels pressured by the notice is a family that distrusts the program when the phone call comes. See Module 3.6.
The student is told first. Before anyone calls a guardian, the student knows the call is going to happen and knows roughly what will be said. There is no version of this where a young person finds out that their family was contacted by their family contacting them.
