Addressing sexual (problematic) behavior of young people in residential youth care: the Flagsystem

Young people (12 -18) in residential youth care are at increased risk of becoming victims or perpetrators of sexual problematic behavior. On the other side, young people are entitled to explore and express their sexuality in... [ view full abstract ]

Young people (12 -18) in residential youth care are at increased risk of becoming victims or perpetrators of sexual problematic behavior. On the other side, young people are entitled to explore and express their sexuality in an appropriate way. Professionals in residential youth care often find it difficult to address sexual behavior of young people in an effective and adequate way. They often lack knowledge about the sexual development of children and young people, and lack skills to determine which behavior is normal and which isn’t.  Professionals tend to overact to or ignore sexual problematic behavior. The Flagsystem, which was originally developed in Belgium, is a method to assess sexual behavior in children and young people. The Flagsystem provides a set of criteria which help to rate sexual behavior on a scale from “normal” (green flag) to “severe sexual abuse” (black flag). The criteria are: (1) mutual consent,  (2) voluntarity, (3) equality, (4) age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate, (5) appropriate within the context and (6) self-respect.’ 

To support the method an extensive, research based normative list has been developed which provides an idea about what sexual behavior children and young people might be engaged in at a certain age category. The method comes with a training and provides also training materials (e.g a set of drawings which show sexual behavior between youngsters) to discuss sexual behavior with children and young people.

In this workshop I will introduce the Flagsystem. The participants will work in small groups and assess three situations of sexual behavior while using the training material from the Flagsystem.  In the end we will evaluate the three situations with the whole group.