Dfuse has developed a Young Dfuse programme to help young people acquire the skills to defuse confrontation, deescalate aggressive situations and avoid harm.

Youth Groups

Dfuse has developed a programme for young people to give them the skills to respond to challenge and confrontation. Working with young people ‘at risk of gang involvement’ and with Met Police Cadets in 2 London boroughs showed us that there is a huge need to give young people the skills to respond to challenge and conflict in more ways than just ‘fight or flight’. By raising awareness of different strategies and approaches when conflicts arise we brought out hidden talents for compromise without showing weakness and for negotiation under stress. Participants also loved learning the physical defensive skills and said that it made them feel more confident.

Programme for Schools

A local education authority in London described to us their concerns about young people facing confrontation and aggression in and out of school, of the problems of gang culture , of the prevalence of young people carrying knives and of the intimidation of young people who are not themselves involved in gangs. They also told us that teachers face confrontation from pupils, risk when intervening between pupils and occasionally even threats from parents.

As a result we have developed the Dfuse programme for schools which provides: a one day initial training for teachers. This will give them the skills to defuse difficult situations with pupils and parents/guardians/other. materials to enable teachers to pass on some of these skills to pupils, in a range of settings:

PSHE classes

Citizenship classes

RE

English language classes

Drama

a one or two day course for pupils, during/at the end of the programme to:

Consolidate what pupils have learnt during term/year

Further skills:

on recognize potential risks and assessing appropriate response options

Further skills on:

staying safe