KWDI Korean Women’s Development Institute

The Actual Condition and Improvement Plans of Violence

Prevention Programs in Preschool and Daycare Center

 

Mi-Hye Chang
Deuk-Kyonng Yoom
JaeYeong Cheon
Jiyoun Jeoung
Eh-Ehn Song

 

The society has been putting various effort into establishment of a society where children and youth are protected from violence. As one of the efforts, the government extended trainings to prevent sexual violence, the core of prevention of violence, to kindergartens and daycare centers nationwide. The government implemented trainings to prevent sexual violence on 68,708 kindergartens and daycare centers nationwide since 2013 and reported the result to 'Integrated Management of Prevention Training(http://shp.mogef.go.kr)' of Ministry of Gender Equality & Family.'

Kindergartens and daycare centers, being different from other public institutions that implement violence prevention trainings, implement the training for relatively shorter period of time and the main target is children. Thus it is necessary to understand the current situation and to analyze ways to improve efficiency of the training. In this research, the result of sexual violence prevention trainings provided by Ministry of Gender Equality & Family in 2013 is analyzed and FGI has been done against teachers and heads of daycare centers. The problems in violence prevention trainings implemented in kindergartens and daycare centers are studied and the ways of improvements are suggested on the basis of the results of site examination and consulting done by Ministry of Gender Equality & Family and minutes of meeting with Korea Edu-care Association.

On the basis of quantitative data, the rate of implementation of sexual violence prevention training in kindergartens and daycare centers is 76.8% being lower than the overall average of 81.7%. The rate of kindergartens and daycare centers showing poor performances is 29.3% being lower again than the overall average of 23.3%.

As a result of FGI and analysis of reports of Ministry of Gender Equality & Family, violence prevention trainings currently implemented in kindergartens and daycare centers are considered as part of various safety trainings. General safety trainings include safety training for fire, disaster, disappearance, abduction and traffic. This is well stated in the proposed annual plan. According to the proposed annual plan, different safety trainings should be practiced taking turns every year. Thus daycare centers were not aware of the fact that the main party enforcing violence prevention training is Ministry of Gender Equality & Family and that training resources are provided on the website of Ministry of Gender Equality & Family.

Violence prevention trainings were performed by various parties such as teachers of kindergartens and daycare centers, outside trainers, police officers or fire fighters and training teams from NGOs. However confusions can be created on description of offenders and different ways of emergency management as the contents of the training differs according to the party who executes the training. The contents of the trainings targeting teachers and parents of children, pupils of kindergartens and daycare centers does not include after-crisis support system and psychological support plans which makes it difficult for trainees to learn appropriate ways of response.

Upon the analysis of the above, the ways to improve effectiveness of violence prevention trainings in kindergartens and daycare centers are as follows. Firstly, various ways to get management teams of kindergartens and daycare centers with poor performances involved should be developed. In order to do this, care information system commonly used by heads of daycare centers and local governments should continuously be involved. And opportunities should be provided for more management teams of daycare centers by providing cyber trainings rather than on-site trainings. Secondly, trainers to provide violence prevention trainings for pre-schoolers should be trained. The effectiveness of the training can be improved by having trainers who can develop and teach appropriate violence prevention trainings according to developmental stages of children. Thirdly, various models of violence prevention trainings according to types of kindergartens and daycare centers must be developed. Compared to other public institutions, there is relatively larger number of kindergartens and daycare centers with many different types. Thus in terms of site examination and consulting, appropriate examples according to types and sizes of kindergartens and daycare centers to enable them to benchmark proper models of violence prevention training must be developed.