I thank the Deputy for her question on this matter.
The Consent Hub is a public resource on consent for young people, their families, and educators who work with them. The targeted website sections provide user groups with concise, accurate information relevant to their needs that is designed to be empowering and positive. Users can then learn about further training opportunities. These opportunities provide teachers with the capacity to lead workshops on consent, engage parents through information sharing webinars, enable Higher Education staff to lead on consent education initiatives, and offer consent ambassador training to students.
Content is added on a monthly basis. For example, videos were added in November 2022 from a collaboration with the Shona Project for women and girls, which address ‘Understanding consent’ and ‘Sex, consent, and pop culture’. Social media outreach campaigns promote engagement with the Consent Hub through short videos which provide useful information on consent. For instance a campaign targeted parents in May 2022 and the ‘Consent is for everyone, consent is for everything’ campaign targeted college students in October 2022.
The Active* Consent programme works closely with Galway Rape Crisis Centre (GRCC) as a key stakeholder in the rape crisis support sector. Consent Hub is an entry point to engaging with the First Point of Contact disclosure training programme, which is a joint initiative of Active* Consent and Galway Rape Crisis Centre offered to Further and Higher Education institutions. GRCC have also reviewed Consent Hub content to ensure it is consistent with trauma-informed principles.
Further engagement with stakeholders including the Further and Higher Education sector is planned to ensure that Consent Hub is meeting the needs of a range of user groups. For instance, the Active* Consent programme is working with the IADT ‘Moving parts’ campaign and the RCSI / IADT project on ensuring that consent education is culturally sensitive and inclusive of all groups.
Having developed a consent education portal during 2022, the Consent Hub project has designed a core set of resources, refined dissemination strategies, and developed stakeholder partnerships that allow for ongoing enhancement of this resource in the future.
