Empowered Consent: The shift towards affirmative
Apr 2025
Written by Belinda Lorek
Over the past few years in Australia, our laws and approach to consent education have evolved. For many of us growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, consent education centred around the word ‘no’ or physical resistance. Consent was sometimes assumed; silence was sometimes read as consent, and ‘no’ was not always taken seriously. Gender roles, societal attitudes, and legislation underpinned these unhelpful, unsafe, and dated beliefs and approaches.
It was on this basis that some of us who are now carers and parents were educated about consent and relationships. Some of us probably did not receive any education, struggling to piece together our understanding through peers, books, movies, or direct experience. Thankfully, as attitudes have developed, legislation has strengthened, gender roles have been challenged, and with the growth of rights awareness, the past few years have steered us towards the concept of affirmative consent.
For many of us, this legislation and approach is new territory and requires us to pause, reflect, and check our beliefs and understanding about consent. We need to understand this clearly to be able to actively and safely support young people to also understand.
Affirmative consent moves us away from the ‘no’ and resistance approach to negotiating consent, which must be enthusiastic, clear, and an ongoing yes. This negotiation of consent never assumes that silence or a lack of resistance means a person is consenting. It also makes it very clear that you cannot consent if you are so affected by drugs or alcohol. Affirmative consent requires people to check, keep checking, talk, and read the situation to make sure no one has changed their mind and is still consenting to specific interactions on every single occasion.
For the next generations of children and young people growing up, this new affirmative approach offers greater safety and protections. This is particularly important for children and young people in out-of-home care who have the right to feel safe—and be safe. They are often also working through experiences of trauma and interactions or relationships where their boundaries have been ignored or violated.
However, us just being aware of this affirmative approach is not enough. Young people need to hear, feel, see, understand, and engage with this concept in ways that are meaningful and relevant to their age and stage of life. This understanding will change as they develop, their networks widen, and relationships deepen.
The When Yes Means YES project is focused on educating the community about affirmative consent and building the capacity of carers and safe adults to have trauma-informed consent conversations with young people aged developmentally 12-14 years.
We are excited to launch the When Yes Means YES course for Victorian foster carers and professionals this month. Supported and funded by the Department for Families, Fairness, and Housing, this online, self-paced course has been developed by carers, young people, ACF, and CETC. It includes information for carers about the new laws and what they mean in everyday situations, as well as activities for carers and young people to do together to start and foster consent conversations.
There are a limited number of no-cost registrations for Victorian foster carers and foster care support workers/case managers available from March. We welcome you to register and participate in the 90-minute course, which you can jump in and out of as you need to. It features living experience carer videos, quizzes, reflective activities, and posters for young people.
CETC – When yes means YES: A carer’s guide to conversations about consent with young people
Talking about consent is not a one-off conversation. It can be tricky to navigate and time our chats, but our hope is that this course is a safe and positive conversation starter for carers and young people. Feel free to share with us what you think!
