‘Talk to Me’ is a free, interactive training simulation designed to give adults the confidence to hold difficult conversations with children about abuse, built in collaboration with the NSPCC.
Learn how to build trust, and ensure the young people you come into contact with always feel listened to.
Having a serious conversation with a young child can be tricky at the best of times. It can be even harder if you’re concerned that they might be a victim of abuse.
Created in collaboration with safeguarding experts from the NSPCC, ‘Talk to Me’ is an interactive training simulation designed to give adults the confidence to hold difficult conversations with children in the real world. The first two fictional scenarios are set in a school environment and deal with concerns about domestic and sexual abuse.
Launched as part of Innovate UK‘s national COVID-19 response initiative, ‘Talk to Me’ is available to play now, for free, through your web browser.
For best results, we recommend the latest version of Google Chrome and a 20Mbps web connection.
‘Talk to Me’ guides you through a range of interactive simulated scenarios that help you learn how to build the trust of fictional child characters who you are concerned may be experiencing abuse.
Hone your active listening skills in a safe, realistic 3D graphical environment.
Tackle a range of scenarios, created in collaboration with safeguarding experts from the NSPCC.
Feel more confident about having difficult conversations with children you’re concerned about.
Judge the behavior’s of the children to use the right language and approach at the right time. Build their trust to help them talk about their experiences to successfully complete each scenario.
Research from the NSPCC’s Let Children Know You’re Listening1 project has shown that adults don’t always recognize, understand, or react appropriately when a child or young person starts to tell them about experiences of abuse.
This can mean that the child doesn’t get the support they need. Many children will delay telling someone about their situation. And when they do choose to confide in an adult, they are not always comfortable in expressing themselves verbally.
When these subtle attempts to talk about abuse happen, it’s important that adults know how to spot that something isn’t right and make the child feel listened to in that moment.
‘Talk to Me’ is playable for free on a home computer and runs through your internet browser. Supported browsers include the latest versions of Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. ‘Talk to Me’ is not currently officially supported through mobile devices and tablets.
To download and play ‘Talk to Me’, you’ll need a stable internet connection with at least 10Mbps speed (but we highly recommend 20Mbps or more).
Having issues? Make sure you have the latest version of your web browser installed. For Chrome users, check that hardware acceleration is enabled. You can check both of these in your browser settings.
For any other problems, read our FAQ through the link below or contact our team directly – support@attensi.com
Let children know you’re listening, learning.nspcc.org.uk/research-resources/2019/let-children-know-you-re-listening