SafeChildTM – Anti-abduction Program for Children
Few things are more frightening to parents today then the possible abduction of one of their children. Once taken, many children are never recovered. Those fortunate few who do return home never come back the same child they were before they were abducted.
During the large number of highly publicized child abductions which struck the San Francisco Bay Area a few years ago, Bay Area Parent magazine conducted a seminar on methods which parents could use to better protect their children. The magazine invited three experts to offer advice to concerned parents. One of these experts was a Los Gatos police officer. The second was an expert on sexual abuse. The third expert was Jim Mather, who developed our unique abduction prevention program, SafeChild.
We believe that every child deserves the opportunity to live his or her life as safe from the threat of abduction as possible. To achieve this, to better safeguard America’s children, every child today must receive the information and skills they need to avoid becoming a victim of abduction. This was Jim Mather’s goal when he created the SafeChild abduction prevention program. It is also why we are making it available to the children of our area.
How does SafeChild differ from other programs which appear to claim to be similar? Most others were founded by people who are experts not in preventing abduction but in preventing sexual abuse. Generally, they possess only minimal knowledge about methods for training children to escape or prevent abduction. Their real – and perhaps only – area of expertise is generally methods for preventing sexual abuse by non-strangers – i.e. teachers, family members, etc.
SafeChild leaves the important but unrelated subject of sexual abuse prevention to those who are experts in this specific area and focuses only upon those areas in which it is expert, those associated with abduction prevention. This is an area in which it is uniquely qualified. It was founded by an acknowledged world expert not only in anti-abduction techniques, tactics, and strategies but also methods for instilling the physical and psychological skills in children necessary for them to effectively and efficiently prevent or escape an abduction attempt.
Some of the issues covered in the SafeChild program include:
- Numerous role-playing scenarios topics such as how to answer the door or telephone
- What to do and say when a stranger asks for help or tries to “trick” a child
- Awareness and avoidance to help prevent a physical attack
- Simple, effective, easy to learn physical defense techniques
- Simulated attacks which help them overcome fear that would cause them to freeze during an actual abduction attempt
Each course runs approximately 8 hours in duration and can be segmented in a variety of ways. For example, any course could be comprised of eight one-hour sessions, 4 sessions of two hours each, etc. If taught during one session, the course can generally be completed in 6 hours. So, a Saturday session would also be a realistic alternative.
Location
SafeChild has been taught locally through the Forest Lake School District, The Anoka/Hennepin School District, as well as numerous day care facilities in the area.
Our goal for SafeChild is to bring it to the community. For this reason, we go where you are. If you have an employee program, social group, church group, club, scout group, organization, etc. we will work with your schedule to host SafeChild either at our school or at a location of your choice. Contact us for details on how this wonderful life saving program can benefit a child you love.
Special Presentations
We can do special two hour presentations of SafeChild as well as the full program. Most of the time these programs are free or a greatly reduced cost. Contact us for details.
