Shark Cage®

 

Heart-based can facilitate face-to-face sessions for your client-base or female student cohort at a time most suited to your organizations' or schools' schedules.

 

The Shark Cage Framework was developed by Melbourne psychologist, Ursula Benstead. The Five Step framework is a way of preventing, understanding and healing from violence against girls and women. It is based on the concept of Universal Human Rights and draws on a powerful metaphor and multiple psychological modalities for working in trauma informed ways to help women interrupt patterns of abuse in their lives and in ways that empower girls and women and challenge victim blaming.

Shark Cage® for Adult Women

This 8-week evidence based program explores common types of abuse that women experience and how this abuse relates to violations in human rights. It is a manualised program that can be used in group or individual settings. This program is relevant for women who have experienced more than one instance of abuse in their lives and may have begun to internalise social messages of victim blaming.

 

The 5 steps in the framework are combined with key trauma and gender violence psycho-education to address the 11 program objectives. 

 

Shark Cage® for Young Women

Shark Cage for Young Women works to complement a range of other Respectful Relationships programs throughout Queensland high schools. This program is designed for those who identify more with the experience of being female, including teens who identify as trans, non-binary or queer as well as cis- gendered female teens.

 

Shark Cage for Young Women aims to create a safe space to address issues that may be difficult for some to fully explore with boys or men present, such as consent, love and control, and human rights.