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NCADD is currently delivering the Safe Dates program at PATHWAYS, Carteret’s School-based Youth Services Program. The information is taught through a nine-week curriculum delivered to all eighth and ninth grade boys and girls at Carteret Middle School and Carteret High School. The program also includes a support group, club, and other education activities.
Safe Dates is an engaging interactive program developed to help teens recognize the difference between caring, supportive relationships and unhealthy, controlling abusive dating relationships. Safe Dates is being enabled through a grant by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) through its New Jersey Health Initiatives Program to implement the nationally-recognized Safe Dates teen dating violence prevention curriculum in the Carteret School District.
The Goals of This Program Are:
- To raise student awareness of what constitutes healthy and abusive dating relationships.
- To raise student awareness of dating abuse and its causes and consequences.
- To equip students with the skills and resources to help themselves or friends in abusive dating relationships.
- To equip students with the skills to develop healthy dating relationships, including positive communication, anger management, and conflict resolution.
To further reach out to students, NCADD will establish both a therapeutic group for students to express their feelings about the issue and an after-school club designed to spread the message at the middle and high schools. In addition, the Safe Dates program includes a play depicting abusive dating relationships and the effect on teens, a poster contest designed to educate and involve the whole school community, and informational materials for both parents and teachers.
NCADD of Middlesex County, Inc. is one of eight organizations to have been chosen to implement the Safe Dates program by the RWJF’s New Jersey Health Initiatives Program, which is committed to supporting initiatives that introduce innovative health strategies into local communities. For more information about the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, please visit www.rwjf.org.
Where to Get Help:
If you or a friend are in an unhealthy or abusive dating relationship and need help, check out these two websites:
- The Safe Space, a project of Break the Cycle, is the most comprehensive resource on the web for teens and young adults to learn about domestic and dating violence as well as their legal rights and options. Click here to link directly to The Safe Space.
- If the way your boyfriend or girlfriend treats you bothers you, peer advocates at Love Is Respect, National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline can help you figure out if the things happening in your relationship are normal. For information and to talk to a live advocate via a private, confidential online chat click on the Love Is Respect icon below.
About the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focuses on the pressing health and health care issues facing our country. As the nation’s largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to improving the health and health care of all Americans, the Foundation works with a diverse group of organizations and individuals to identify solutions and achieve comprehensive, meaningful and timely change. For more than 30 years the Foundation has brought experience, commitment, and a rigorous, balanced approach to the problems that affect the health and health care of those it serves. Helping Americans lead healthier lives and get the care they need- the Foundation expects to make a difference in our lifetime.
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