Lloydminster Sexual Assault Services (LSAS) recently launched a survey.
The goal of the online community assessment is to find out what Lloydminster teens and parents need in terms of support, in these highly tech-oriented times.
“What we’re noticing over the past couple of years, especially with COVID, is an increase in online harassment. Lots of hours focused on tech and social media. Increase in pornography usage at younger ages, showing pornography to friends—those kinds of things,” said LSAS community initiatives director Heather Sinfield.
“We first wanted to hear what kids and parents needed or what they felt could be helpful, or what are some of the barriers to having these conversations.”
The survey will support future funding for program development that will be free and accessible for families.
“Our goal is to find out what Lloydminster families need … and how our team can support them in the future by showing up effectively or having a website or resources or programs that people can access,” said Sinfield.
The project has been in the making for over a year. LSAS found out they received the funding last spring and they began by putting together an advisory committee of 18 people.
“That advisory committee consists of community members, parents themselves, folks that front-line work with youth—so the sexual assault centre, the youth centre, mental health and addictions, we’ve got both the public and Catholic school divisions on board with us,” said Sinfield, adding those on the committee put together the survey questions.
“We reviewed those and went through them over and over again to make sure we were correcting what we wanted to and wording it in a way that was really accessible. We went through ethics board approval in the fall, once all that was finalized and got our approval in December.”
The survey launched on Feb. 1st, and is divided into two categories. One for youth aged 10-21, and one for parents. It is anonymous, and takes an average of 5-7 minutes to complete.
“We do have a research team of four individuals, and they will be teaming up to review all of the data in April and writing a community recommendations report, and that will be used to secure future funding for project development,” explained Sinfield.
“The hope is we’ll publish that report and put it on the website so people can actually go and read it if they’re interested in knowing more.”
The online survey, funded by the Community Services Recovery Fund and the Lloydminster & District United Way, is available at lloydyouth.com until March 31.
