Category: education

Online Bullying – Evidence to Education and Cutlure Committe

~ brianorbistc ~ Leave a comment


I have posted this briefing that was submitted ahead of the Education and Culture Committee Evidence Session on online bullying – it is an extended version of the briefing posted earlier on this blog 


The service provides strategic policy support, offers skills development training and campaigns to raise awareness. The service was externally evaluated between 2009 and 2011 and was found to be a ‘catalyst for change’ and was a ‘credible’ and ‘robust’ anti-bullying service. The service was instrumental in developing the National Approach to Anti-Bullying for Scotland’s Children and Young People and ensures all stakeholders operate in-step with this approach.
 

respectme’s resources and approach to anti-bullying is recognised internationally, we have delivered training and materials across Europe and the UK as well as the US. We work with all adults who play a role in Children’s lives – parents to policy makers and we have trained teachers, social care staff, foster carers, football coaches, residential workers and many people in many other roles.

Bullying is behaviour that makes people feel frightened, hurt, threatened and left out. It impacts on a person’s ability to feel in control of themselves (their ‘agency’) and to respond effectively. This behaviour can harm physically and emotionally and the threat is typically sustained. This behaviour takes place in a variety of places, including on-line.


Online bullying was an emerging issue when the service launched early 2007 and at the request of the then Minister, respectme delivered a campaign on cyberbullying that urged parents to ‘connect’ with what their children were doing on-line not ‘disconnect’ from the internet. We found that parents and adults who understood how social media worked, what it was used for and how to make it safe or monitor it, were much more confident when dealing with bullying that happened on-line.



Over the year’s respectme developed resources, web content and a very popular training event on cyberbullying. We were able to refine and develop confidence with our core messages about online bullying and communicate these to our stakeholders through newer campaigns and resources aimed at adults and at children and young people. Our learning has now seen us bring the core messages on online bullying into our generic anti-bullying training.


These key messages include:


Bullying online is all about relationships – not technology We must focus on equipping young people with the skills to conduct themselves online in a more respectful manner; the skills to manage these environments safely, and to develop their confidence and abilities to negotiate relationships and problems. This is built on promoting and developing resilience. But we also have to equip parents with the knowledge and understanding about how these sites work; how to make them safe and, most importantly, how to talk to their children about using them.



‘Cyberbullying’ is bullying – it is still about relationships that are not healthy or being managed or role modelled well. It is behaviour done by someone to someone else, it is the ‘where’ this is taking place that is new. The behaviour appears to be migrating, as children spend more time on-line, the behaviour they have always exhibited and experienced comes with them.



It is important to include cyberbullying in your policies and procedures on anti-bullying and not see it as something entirely separate – it is still rooted in relationships between people. Our work and international research supports our assertion that you deal effectively with bullying that happened online as part of your whole approach to bullying. Carving it off as something different dilutes the reality of bullying experienced by children and young people – this is that they can experience bullying online and in person simultaneously.


The internet is a place, not a thing – for many the internet is a tool that they use for a variety of things, buying, sending messages or research. To most children and young people it is a social space that they spend time in and use to stay in touch with their friends. This principle underpins all of our anti-bullying work in this area. This led to a very successful video campaign in 2011 called ‘She’s still going somewhere’, the message for adults was, whether your child is going into town or online, they are still going somewhere and you need to be just as interested and concerned about where they are going and who they are going with.


Like all places children and young people go to, there are risks.


 

 

 

 

Children and young people do not differentiate a great deal between friendships online and in person – most of their interactions on-line or using their smart phones is with friends and people they interact with in other areas such a schools or where they live. This is not to say they do not know the difference but it is ads natural for your friendships to be evident in both your day to life online and where you live or go to school.


Children and young people use this to communicate –the purpose of using smart phones, consoles or laptops is primarily about staying in-touch with friends, this is as important for young people today as it was 40 years ago. They have different means at their disposal but the principle is the same.



Adult fear and anxiety – has been the biggest hurdle in dealing with cyberbullying. This has had a very high media profile at times and it appears ’new’ and for parents or adults who do not use social media or connect with their friends using the internet, this is a challenging and at times bewildering experience. There are so many types of phones, connections and complex safety features and so on. That is why respectme’s training focusses on developing adult skills and confidence and their understanding of how and why technology is used this way.

We have developed a two and a half hour training session for parents that we will be piloting across the Central belt later this year. This session will involve some ‘hands-on’ experience on social networking sites and leaning about safety settings and how they work.



Lots of colleagues have said they are ‘technophobes’ or are not ‘tech savvy’ and have voiced how much they dislike Facebook or twitter. We have maintained that if you work with children and young people or are a parent or carer – that is no longer good enough. You need to know! For some that will require a real effort to spend time and utilise the relationship they have to learn this. We cannot abdicate responsibility for this to software. We need to connect and learn about how young people use the internet and the phones or laptops they access it from. They use it mainly to talk to and meet their friends.


Many adults have experience of managing risk when working with children and young people, this is a new place for us to consider. We need to be as imaginative and creative with the internet as we have been in other places.


respectme undertook extensive research on October 2011 on this issue that both confirmed our messages and informed the work we do.


This research involved 3,944 young people from 29 of Scotland’s 32 local authorities aged 8 – 19 years. It confirmed that children and young people are online almost every day. They use phones and laptops, boys also use games consoles to connect with friends and socialise. For the most part, the friends they talk to at school are also the friends they chat to on-line. They do not draw any difference between talking to a friend on the phone, instant messaging or on the way to school – it’s all talking to friends.



16% say they have been cyberbullied – this is reflective of the findings from colleagues in the rest of the UK. 25% worry about cyberbullying,




55% say they are online every day for 1 – 3 hours, nearly 10% claim they are on for 5 hrs. or more



63% of children bullied online knew the person who was doing this and 40% of the time this carried over into school. Children who had been bullied on-line stated that reading a nasty comment was worse that hearing it or knowing it had been said. Children who had not been bullied on-line were ambivalent about the difference in impact.

There is a real fear that anonymity is pushing this behaviour online – however there is little research to support this – what we do know is that believing they will no get caught and not fully understanding how permanent posting are online link to bullying and aggressive behaviours more than anonymity – many social network sites have a /name’ culture and most abusive behaviour online is not actually anonymous.

 

 

 

 

The impact of this behaviour is the same as the impact of other types of bullying, fear, anxiety and worry about repercussions. It is likely for many children and young people that if they are being bullied, say in school, it is highly likely they may also experience bullying behaviours online as well.



71% of children who were bullied would like to tell a parent or carer, 43% would tell a friend and 31% would want to tell a teacher.


This year will also see respectme undertake new research into children and young people’s experiences of bullying online and off. This research will enable us to help parents and professionals get a clear national picture of how young people are experiencing bullying in 2014. Crucially this will support and influence effective responses that recognise relationships play out on line and face to face more than ever.


 

 

Schools have struggled at times to deal with bullying that happens on-line as they believe it happens ‘out of school’, respectme’s take on this is that bullying happens to individuals, the impacts are felt by them and they take this with them wherever they go. If they tell their teacher something happened and they are worried, like any disclosure of this kind, teachers and schools must respond in a supportive way. Children will be telling a teacher for good reason; they believe they can help them.

  

Cyberbullying can be more intrusive and children and young people may find fewer ‘escape routes’ as switching off their phone is rarely an option. While messages can be blocked, deleted or reported, they can be seen by hundreds of others within minutes and incidents can spiral out of control very quickly. A comment made while angry to a friend can be seen and shared in no time at all.

 

 

respectme has develop very successful guidance for children and young people on bullying, staying safe and their own behaviour on-line as well as resource for adults. There is a need to help adults develop skills and confidence in this area though. There is still a gap between what they currently know and what they need to know about the platforms and devices children and young people use.

A new publication for parents and carers will also be delivered this year and this will cover anti-bullying advice including online bullying.



Brian Donnelly



Director respectme



February 2014

Never judge a book by its label

~ brianorbistc ~ Leave a comment

I have been thinking a lot about what to chat about at this time following a very busy and successful anti-bullying week. There were so many issues covered in the build up to and since, everything from on-line bullying to the challenging messages contained in this year’s advert. We were able to get our advert on STV for the very first time and we await the figures for this. Anti-bullying week also seen the advert watched on YouTube 35,000 times in one week. The ‘click-through rate’ for this ad is apparently twice the industry average. You can view it here http://bit.ly/19d3bGO

There is also supporting videos discussing the campaign and on responding to bullying www.respectme.org.uk

I also had the pleasure of attending an International Anti-Bullying Conference in Nashville in early November. I spoke to many colleagues at this event and one issue that came up more than most was labelling. I had also had some feedback and discussions with other people about respectme’s approach labelling prior to this so I decided it was something to revisit and reflect on.

One of the first things I noticed at the conference was just how anti-bullying is an industry in The States. The volume of books written on the subject is staggering and having spoken to a few aspiring authors, it is a crowded market that is not easy to crack. A glance at many of the books on show – especially the ones aimed at younger children or the parents of younger children were a little concerning. Titles such as:  ‘How not to be a Bully’, ‘Llama Lama and the Bully Goat’. ‘What to do if your child is a Bully’ and other similar titles. This is not to single out or to critique any particular title just the very consistent use of the word and the label.

The large number of books like this made it easy to engage in conversations about labelling with many other delegates. Every speaker I heard talked about ‘Bullies’, ‘Victims’, ‘Bully/Victims’ and ‘Pure Bullies’. A part of my input covered the approach we have in Scotland to this explaining how respectme does not label children and young people as ‘bullies’ or ‘victims’.

Our approach reflects the view that care needs to be taken because labelling is not without its risks, labelling a child or young person on the basis of bullying behaviour can result in a confirmed identity as a ‘bully’ or ‘victim’ resulting in ongoing behaviour patterns based on this identity. respectme has developed approaches to working with bullying which hopefully avoid the labelling dilemma. A core theme in training, policy development and campaigning has been the exploration of the value judgements that lie behind labels.

This is not to dilute behaviour but is to keep the focus of the adult’s responses on the behaviour that is problematic, rather than the assigning characteristics to those involved.

The point is that if you label children a certain way – there is a significant risk that they effectively ‘live up’ to that label and all of their subsequent behaviour is viewed through this prism– which is unfair as no one is ever just the one thing. We hear of many situations where bullying has been overlooked or ignored because either the school or the parents did not think the person doing it was a ‘bully’, perhaps because they were clever or popular and articulate – however, on many occasions their behaviour was bullying. Our work tries to take away the perception people may have about who is doing it and focus on what the person actually did – bullying and what was the impact.

The response to this was warm and many delegates commented on how this approach would actually help them yet acknowledged that it would be a real struggle to get other people to move in the same direction.

‘Bully’ has become a word that commands attention; it elicits an emotional response from adults, an understandable emotional response that sees the children who do this dehumanised and caricatured from an early age, this can also reinforce the notion that it’s always someone else’s child who does this. This is not to suggest that the behaviour of some children towards other children is not outrageous and damaging – it can be.

The word itself conjures up particular images for each of us, ones that may represent our own experiences too. I do not seek to take that away from anyone as that is a natural response  – my role in this is to find solutions and try to help how we respond to bullying. Because that is what matters surely? How we respond to behaviour and help someone feel safe and feel like themselves again is what makes a difference. How we help children to see how unacceptable their behaviour is and what is required of them to share social spaces and classrooms with their peers. That is what makes the biggest difference.

We have had over 30 years of work in anti-bullying and somehow people persist in focussing on what a ‘bully’ is, the type of person who bullies, or who follows, or who is easily bullied, rather than what people actually did and the impact it had. Almost as if when we reach the point that everyone can accept that a particular child is indeed a ‘bully’ that’s our job done.

Children bully other children for a number of reasons, it’s not always because deep down they are afraid and scared or lack self-esteem – they might be but they can also be confident children with an abundance of self-esteem – they will now exactly what the impact is, that might be why they are doing it. The thing is no two incidents are ever identical – the dynamic is always affected by who is involved.

Success in dealing with bullying is usually rooted in having an approach like this:

What was the behaviour?

What impact did this have?

And what do I need to do about it?

This sees you deal with behaviour and impact – if the behaviour is completely out of character then that might influence any subsequent consequences, if it is the third incident this week, then that too will affect your response. If a child coped well with the attempt to bully, then that night influence the amount of support they need. This is the crux of the matter for me – there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ response. Success requires you to take the time to look at each incident and find a way forward with the young people involved that reflect their strengths, weaknesses and their wishes. What works for children on Monday won’t always work for a different group on Tuesday.

Too many schools and too many parents have lost days (and the interest of their children) arguing over whether the person who did this is in fact a bully or not. Have I found it easier saying to parents who ask me if I’m ‘calling their child a bully or not?’ to answer, ‘no. I’m saying that what he did was bullying’ then the answer is yes, I do think that is easier and focusses attention in the right places.

This is a solution focussed approach that is designed to help people change the way they behave, rather than attempt to change who they are. We help people change by telling them the behaviour that is unacceptable, being clear that what they are doing is bullying and that it needs to stop.

Consistency does not mean doing exactly the same way every time – the consistency is where children and their families will know that schools, other parents or youth clubs take bullying seriously, they will listen and have a range of ways they can respond to bullying that reflect the broad and complex range of relationships within our schools and social spaces – this includes their online social space.

It was pleasing to hear other people talk about ‘dropping the labels’, well one other speaker to be fair and also that they found this to be radical and innovative which of course, it is. What was pleasing is that it has been fundamental to our work and success for the last seven years in Scotland. Perhaps we can be more radical and innovative than we think sometimes.
Brian