Talking to Your Kids About Healthy Relationships

Parents and caregivers play a critical role in modelling and teaching young people the importance of respectful, honest, and positive relationships, including: making responsible decisions regarding relationships; resolving conflicts; establishing good boundaries; and maintaining a sense of self in their relationships.

Building Healthy Relationships on School Campuses

Community Solutions partners with local schools and organizations to implement the Healthy Relationships Curriculum which promotes the following: increase knowledge and skills of healthy, nonviolent intimate relationships; increase comfort in talking about healthy relationships with one another; create dialogues and identification of sexual harassment, sexual violence, bullying, and human trafficking; and how to be an upstander.

We also create protective environments by addressing school safety through Safe Mapping. We have completed several school assessments to help improve safety and school connectedness. We work in partnership with school administration, staff and students to collect feedback on school safety; host focus groups to identify ways to improve safety and increase connectedness; and develop actions plans to accomplish these goals.

Outreach & Training Requests

Community Solutions’ Solutions to Violence Division provides prevention and outreach services throughout Santa Clara and San Benito Counties. In addition to staffing resource tables, our team offers interactive workshops and professional trainings on healthy relationships, intimate partner abuse, sexual assault, human trafficking, and more.

• Examples of presentations we offer include:
• Overview of Services (Santa Clara or San Benito County)
• Intimate Partner Abuse 101 Professional Training
• Sexual Assault 101 Professional Training
• CSEC 101 Professional Training
• Human Trafficking 101 Professional Training
• Intersections of Gender Based Violence for Youth
• Talking to your Child about Healthy Relationships
• Parenting in the Digital Age

Survivor Leadership Opportunities

Community Solutions believes in centering survivor voices by creating spaces and leadership roles to empower survivors to make change in our communities. If you are a survivor of gender-based violence and are interested in stepping into a leadership role, please consider the opportunities below:

PROMOTORES PROGRAM
Community Solutions’ Promotores program was implemented to reach traditionally marginalized and underserved individuals in our community. Promotores are members of our communities with lived experienced. We recruit, train, and mentor our Promotores who then create change in their communities by providing community outreach and presentations and by linking individuals to services available for survivors of gender-based violence.

SURVIVOR LEADERSHIP ADVISORY COUNCILS
Survivor Leadership Advisory Councils provide opportunities for survivors to participate in meetings and take an active role in policy and advocacy meetings within Santa Clara County. The Councils increase survivors’ voice and leadership in providing feedback and recommendations for systems change within the County.

Communities In Action

In the past five years, Community Solutions has worked with teams of youth and adult community members to develop community-led initiatives to prevent domestic and sexual violence from happening in our community. Using the “Close to Home” approach, Community Solutions helped train, support, and guide our youth and adult leaders as they completed community assessments, talked with fellow community members, and built campaigns directed to address needs specific to their community.

Policy Advocacy & Reports

Community Solutions’ violence prevention programs center on an intersectional framework that acknowledges different forms of gender-based violence as symptoms of a larger issue. Because gender-based violence can take many forms and generates complex intersections, it is important to ensure an intersectional framework in prevention efforts and to not treat each form of violence as mutually exclusive from another.

Community Solutions’ Solutions to Violence Division is committed to upholding a collaborative and intersectional approach to gender-based violence. To create real change, we need to not only inform individuals, professionals and our community but also address policies and systematic structures that may be creating climates that perpetuate violence.

Below is a sampling of policy and reporting efforts we are involved in (click to view):

• • Victim Rights Advocacy Policy Report
  • CEDAW Task Force
  • CEDAW Housing Report
  • CEDAW Gender Based Violence Prevention Recommendations
  • County of Santa Clara Office of Women’s Policy
  • County of Santa Clara Office of Gender-Based Violence Prevention