Category: equality

Bullying & Agency. How we can actually respond to bullying

~ brianorbistc ~ Leave a comment

I will not be starting this by offering my definition of bullying, it is only once we explore agency will the definition be worth sharing.

It is vital that we understand that bullying is both behaviour and impact –never always one and not the other. It is itself a relationship between certain behaviours and particular type of impact.

Bullying is not defined by persistence or intent. This is relevant because if you were to look up definitions online and in peer reviewed articles, the vast majority of these will refer to bullying as persistent and deliberate behaviour.

I would argue that these are unhelpful criteria to apply to situations. So much time can be lost trying to apply all the various factors, many of which are entirely subjective.

Let’s look at intent – if you tell me bullying must be deliberate and then accuse me of bullying, what is my first response? – That I didn’t mean it. Intent is difficult to prove. It can tie situation up in knots and the focus on responding to what someone did and the impact it had is lost.

Schools can waste a lot of time trying to prove intent –I have been involved in examples when intent is denied the adults are stumped.

It’s usually deliberate not always – sometime children use language they hear at home and have no idea of how offensive or inappropriate it is. We should not get caught up in using this as qualifying criteria though – it’s too easily re-framed

Let us now consider persistence – that the behaviour must be repeated before it can be considered bullying – again this is something I do not agree with and neither do most young people have I spoken to. Persistence is difficult to define and also, who defines when it’s persistent enough? Me, the person it is happening to or the intervening adult? Something need only happen once and the impact can be severe; a child may not get on the bus in the morning again or get changed for PE after this.

The fear of repetition can be sustained through looks or perhaps threats or just the fear of it happening again.

These two factors are present in the majority of definitions of bullying across the globe; both of which, we feel here in Scotland are unhelpful. What you do about bullying is actually more important than how you define it.

The questions we need to ask are;

What was the behaviour?

What impact did it have?

What do I need to do about it?

Every situation is unique. You might over hear some name calling in the corridor and discover this is chat between to close friends who are ‘winding’ each other up; it is not part of any power or dominance game.

What was the behaviour? Name calling

What impact did it have? None – made them laugh

What do I need to do about it? Nothing – perhaps remind them about language or being overheard

You may hear the same name calling ten feet further on but the person on the receiving end is upset and embarrassed in front of her peers.

What was the behaviour? Name calling

What impact did it have? Left someone embarrassed and fearful – who ran off

What do I need to do about it? Help this person get back into her routine, listen to how she feels and decide on next steps – you will need to challenge the people who called her names and look at possible consequences too

This does not mean we only focus on the impact behaviour has – this means that if someone shouts a homophobic or racist slur at someone and it bounces off them and they don’t care –this does not mean you do not need to do anything about the language used and the attempt to bully or dominate.

Just as not all attempts to bully are successful, people can feel bullied but not be – it is possible some people over react –you still need to deal with their reaction and their feelings but you might not need to do much about the behaviour – A useful workplace analogy might be a boss saying something as simple as – ‘you’re a bit late today’ and the staff member over-reacts and assumes this is an attempt to exert power and control and may then claim they are feeling bullied. They may panic, become restless, loose sleep and this will have an impact on them but the boss’ behaviour was perfectly legitimate and reasonable. This person needs help to work through their response but they have not been bullied.
So when we look at impact – things like feeling hurt, angry, scared, frightened, that knot in your stomach- what is happening there? What do these reactions say to us?
Young people reflect in a range of ways that they feel unable to speak out and feel trapped – they draw pictures of themselves in large rooms feeling caged and so on. This learning helped us articulate the notion that bullying actually takes something away from people.

All of these feelings which are regularly articulated reflect a loss of being in-charge of yourself, of being capable of taking effective action, of making choices and of being an effective actor or agent in your own life.
This is where agency came into our thinking. Lister calls agents ‘autonomous, purposeful actors, capable of a degree of choice’
Giddens talks about how we have agency within structures and our agency is utilised when we consciously alter our place in the structure’
Young people get this notion – as it can be a bit if a head scratcher the first time you hear it – though when you explain a ‘typical day’ of meeting friends, going to school, laughing, joining in and knowing what is happening and how you’ll respond. Bullied children don’t feel that. Someone else is in charge of how they feel, where they go even or how they will participate.

The ‘structures’ this dynamic takes place in is schools and communities. When they can exercise choice in what happens in these ‘structures’, they are utilising their agency.

The ability to negotiate relationships and difficulties is something all children and young people need to learn and develop – it is a life skill many adults still don’t always get right

We learn from our past experiences, from imagining what we would do in future similar situations and what is happening to us now – these elements combine and enable us to make choices and act – this is agency.
Managing change and responding to challenges requires hope, a belief you can handle things – and agency and these underpin resilience.
Bullying is not about just any kind of injury, nor just any negative impact. It involves a particular kind of harm. It is aimed at engendering a kind of helplessness, an inability to act, to do anything. It is an assault on a person’s agency (Sercombe and Donnelly 2012)
It is not even the establishment of dominance. The person bullying is not satisfied with dominance. Bullying involves the attempt to deny another any settled place, even a subordinate one. It goes beyond subjection. In bullying, the goal is abjection

Considering that bullying is both different types of behaviour and a particular impact that re-focusses our understanding of the dynamic – this can re-define bullying in a way that helps practitioners’ responsd to feelings and actions. This is always more effective than checking off criteria and having uniform sanction based responses.
Bullying is not defined by the type of person who did it either. 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.

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. 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 and naming the behaviour that is unacceptable, being clear that what they are doing is bullying and that it needs to stop.

It is a fundamental part of behaviour management that we tell people what the behaviour was they did, why it is not acceptable and help them figure out what to do the next time they feel that way – I did get asked recently if not labelling children as ‘bullies’ is gobbledygook at parliament

With this in mind – we offer up a new definition for people to consider

Bullying is a relationship of violence involving practices of domination that strip another person of the capacity for agency, using interventions carrying the sustained threat of harm.(Sercombe and Donnelly 2012)

The actual intervention may not be repeated, but the threat at least needs to be sustained over time. Typically, the threat will be sustained by actions: looks, messages, confrontations or physical interventions.

Lastly, if we can accept that bullying takes something away from people, that they can no longer take effective action our response must focus on helping get that back.

This is the real shift in anti-bullying practice – how do I help someone get back a feeling of being in control of themselves and in a place to take effective action to feel safe and get on with their day?

Things like moving desks or even just excluding people won’t on their own help restore agency – young people must be included in what will happen next and given the chance to steer what direction it goes in. They need to be asked what they would like to happen and we need to take that seriously.

This is not always easy but it must remain our goal with every intervention – to help young people get back to a place where they are in control and can take effective action. Where not all attempts to bully are successful – this can see you continue to challenge people’s behaviour but you may need a lighter response to the young people they are attempting to unsettle.

In reality – what does that look like? What does it sound like? You will need to ask questions like

What would you like to happen?

What do you think will happen if I tell his or her parents?

What will happen if I tell your teacher?

What are you worried about?

Be prepared for them to say

Don’t tell my dad – you will out me to him and I’m not ready for that

I just want you to know what is happening and if I need you I will come and get you

If you talk to his dad he will get a doing/beating and it’ll get worse
So you explore what options they do have and sometimes that means pointing out that you need to do something as not doing anything is dangerous
Open conversations like these promote communication – this promotes positive relationships and they promote and role model problem solving behaviours –these relationships can become stronger and children become more resilient to what is happening because of this strong purposeful relationship – even with just one person.

The process of listening and consciously trying to get back agency – a sense of being on control – won’t always lead to a perfect outcome but it will help the person being bullied
So in conclusion, I would suggest that we have in fact re-framed our approach to and understanding of bullying based on children and young people’s experiences – that this understanding compliments the significant and long standing work on resilience, and on how we promote and enable this in our children and young people.

When we are promoting respectful relationships, when we are building capacity to respond effectively, when we are helping young people learn to negotiate tricky relationships and when involve them we help them to become more resilient.

Brian

Goodbye and thanks for all the fish…

~ brianorbistc ~ 3 Comments

It is with mixed emotions that I sit down to write this. After ten years as Director of respectme, Scotland’s Anti-Bullying Service, I am moving onto a new challenge. I am returning to the Looked After Sector for an exciting new opportunity with Care Visions.

Ten years is a reasonable amount of time to reflect on, in any role. When I started at respectme (or Better Futures to give it its working title) it was a tender document and an ambitious idea formulated by Fergus McMillan at LGBT Youth Scotland – and Charlie McMillan, formerly of SAMH. 

Ten years ago the policy landscape across schools and Local Authorities was, frankly, very poor. It was as patchy with no coherent approach in place. People used bits of models form Scandinavia and Canada, so it was a real challenge to try to get all of Scotland’s 32 Local Authorities pulling in the same direction. This required a considered approach; a way of thinking about things rather than a fixed model for intervention and policy.

People like having a model to work to, although, ‘just tell me what to do/what to say’ is an understandable and common request. I have always preferred to be encouraged and supported to think about situations in terms of what was happening, and what I could do about it. This helped to focus on developing pragmatic materials and resources that were designed to help someone, whatever their situation – on a Tuesday morning in school or on a Friday back shift in a residential unit.

Our approach to anti-bullying in Scotland is different.  We define bullying differently and we want to build the capacity and confidence of all adults to recognise and respond to bullying effectively.

I am proud of this approach, which addresses what someone did and the impact it had. We have not focused on labeling or stereotyping those involved or making assumptions about why. We ask adults to consider the following; What was the behaviour? What impact did it have? What  do I need to do about it? While also considering,  ‘what does the child or young person want to happen?’.  This is designed to let people respond to each individual incident and the people involved, to focus on a response that’s appropriate for them.

I am very proud to have helped change the conversation about labelling children, that we can achieve more by talking about what they did not how that then labels them for life.

My research showed that children and young people who are being bullied want options.  They want to consider things that help them feel better as well as things that make bullying stop. Adults need to help them explore these options. They know that what worked for them won’t necessarily work for someone else.  They are not convinced by assemblies or lessons on bullying or detailed recording systems or playground monitors – they genuinely prefer the ‘whole school’ things we do.

Our combination of policy, training and resources and campaigns, has been designed to help colleagues change the culture and ethos in their organisation.   This approach has been well evaluated, with respectme being cited as a ’catalyst for change ‘and a ‘credible and robust’ service. Crucially all 32 Local Authorities in Scotland now have an anti-bullying policy, and I’m proud that respectmehas worked with, and directly influenced, 31 of these. We have trained around 7,000 adults who play a role in children and young people’s lives and our materials and campaigns have reached millions.

What has been even more pleasing though, is seeing schools where their attitude to bullying has changed; where they are inclusive and ask children and parents what they want to happen, and what they think relationships should be like in their school. This happens every day – it doesn’t make the news but it does happen. Children, for the most part, enjoy very positive and supportive relationships in school.

Yes, there are areas where schools still feel they’ know best’. But in my view policy and practice is far more consistent than it has ever been.  Schools have a national policy framework to work within – they have a local authority policy that reflects this, and access to free tools and training that reflects the values of respectme’s approach to develop local policy and practice. In places where they acknowledge and utilise this, you will find better practice.

I have seen first-hand the confidence and commitment from teachers who have attended our training, or worked with us on policy, champion change locally. I have also seen teachers and senior teachers who still refuse to accept bullying is an issue. While some still feel that if it happens out of school it is not something they can deal with. Bullying happens ‘to’ someone – where it happens is not really the issue. It impacts on them – on their agency. Our role is to respond to that, to focus on ‘what’ happened, less on ‘where’ it happened.

We have focused on getting it right with Local Authorities so that they can cascade their expectations to individual schools; an approach that works more effectively. To help address the gap between authorities and schools, respectme has developed new materials to take individual schools through a process of self-evaluation and local policy development.

We do need to improve on other things that will have a greater impact on anti-bullying work, but which anti-bullying itself cannot and should not be expected to achieve. We do need more inclusive education, one that reflects the lives and experiences of our LGBTI pupils and families.  We need better mainstreaming for children with a disability, if indeed that is the right step for them, more inventive and realistic resources on inclusion, racism and diversity. We need to address gender-based issues more openly; the pressure on girls to behave a certain way, and for boys too, is as strong as ever. The impact of these gender norms and expectations reaches way beyond bullying. Addressing these issues will help create environments that are more inclusive and respectful; things which also make dealing with bullying easier.

I am proud of the fact that, since day one, respectmehas ensured that the Protected Characteristics and prejudice -based bullying is included in every policy it works on and in every single training session it has delivered – as well as being included in the National Approach. This explicit commitment to equalities has been one that has helped define us as a service and will remain a key focus moving forward.  I am proud that every single resource we have developed has been influenced by the views and experiences of children and young people. They are the ones who helped us stick by our messages when others were going in a different direction. I am thinking mainly about cyberbullying. ‘Cyber’ is not is not really a word young people like or use, they  see bullying online as, well bullying, it is just were it happens that is different. It is the same behaviour – mainly name calling and rumours – and it is still less prevalent than face to face bullying but is more visible.

I am proud of the research and the published work undertaken over the last ten years.  We have trained colleagues across Europe and in the USA, and our materials are used and accessed across the globe. Our Scottish Approach is influencing and is contributing to how bullying is viewed and discussed far beyond our own shores.

I want to thank all of the people I have worked with in the last ten years; and I want to thank the TESS for stating back when we started, that we had ‘an impressive boldness’ about us. I never ever wanted to lose that. I will miss this.

Brian Donnelly

Prejudice-based Bullying and promoting equality

~ brianorbistc ~ 3 Comments

This is to give this some contect and to explore why we take the approach we do when creating environments where people feel safe and included and the challenges we face with this. We also explore what protected characteristics are and why they exist and how do our values affect how we challenge prejudice.

Probably the best place to start would be with prejudice – to ‘pre-judge’
Noun
1. An unfavourable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.
2. Any preconceived opinion or feeling, either favourable or unfavourable.
 
So, everyone can be and is likely to have some prejudices – some things we have favourable views towards and some less so. When we act on this prejudice and treat people less favourably, we are discriminating.
Bullying, as has been covered in many of these blogs, is a mixture of behaviour and impact that affect a person’s capacity to feel in control of themselves. This is what we term as their sense of ‘agency’. Bullying takes place in the context of relationships; it is behaviour that can make people feel hurt, threatened, frightened and left out.
When this behaviour is motivated by prejudice, we are talking about prejudice-based bullying.
Prejudice will be based on a personal characteristic or a group that someone either belongs to or people believe they belong to or identify with.  So what might these characteristics be? Their gender?  Are they gay? Is it their religion? Do they have a disability? Or is it how they look or what they wear? It can be any of these and more.
So why are some personal characteristics mentioned more than others?
Some personal characteristics are protected within the law – the reason for this is to address the imbalance – to address the years of unfavourabletreatment experienced by some groups over the years
The experience of women, of LGBT people, of black people or of people with a disability, has shown that they have received less favourabletreatment in many ways over the years – in terms of being picked on, excluded and not having equal access to employment  and education. This was initially responded to through legislation such the Race Relations Act 1976, that ‘outlawed discrimination’ or the Equal Pay Act 1970, that was intended to address the less favourable treatment of women in the workplace. Legislation such as the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, was also intended to address discrimination on gender and married status. These Acts were needed specifically because of the imbalance and  the unfair treatment these groups were clearly receiving.
This has evolved and led to the Equality Act 2010 which is designed to protect people from discrimination in the workplace and the wider community such as in Education or as a consumer. This Act sets out that it is unlawful to discriminate against a person due to the following personal characteristics –
  • age

 

  • being or becoming a transsexual person

 

 

  • being married or in a civil partnership

 

 

  • being pregnant or having a child

 

 

  • disability

 

 

  • race including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin

 

 

  • religion, belief or lack of religion/belief

 

 

  • sex

 

 

  • sexual orientation

 

 

Based on the historical prejudice and discrimination experienced by people who have these, or are perceived to have these characteristics, they now warrant special protection under the law to address the inequality they experienced. These characteristics are protected and as such are referred to as The Protected Characteristics. Age and being married do not apply in Education.
Public examples of this have been highlighted in the media such as cases where people who refuse a service like a hotel room to same sex couples or build new schools that are inaccessible to wheelchairs, will be in breach of the Equality Act.
I get asked a lot why red hair, wearing glasses or being tall or overweight isn’t a protected characteristic too, people experience bullying for these reasons also.  One of the most common reasons young people cite for bullying is personal appearance –that could be related to the music they like or the income of their parents.
The answer to this is that while people do get picked on and excluded for a variety of reasons, the groups protected under law have clear historical evidence of societal and cultural exclusion and less favourabletreatment. It may sound a little glib – but once all of the tall people get together and can reflect on and evidence years of collective exclusion, not getting work, missing out on promotion, being made to take only certain lessons at school like home economics, receiving abuse or suffering violence and intimidation on a collective basis ; then that too may become a legally protected characteristic.
This does not in any way mean that the bullying of a person because of the way they look is less serious or not as important as bullying based on a protected characteristic. The protected characteristics are not designed to create a hierarchy but to help address the imbalance experienced by certain groups. We know from our work that children and young people who are disabled, who are or are perceived to be LGB or T can experience bullying more frequently than other groups – this just means we need to be aware of and be able to challenge what values and prejudice lies behind this behaviour.
We also know that children and young people bully others because they don’t get on or they don’t like each other – we sometimes forget the interpersonal elements of bullying situations.
You might not like a person who is gay or a different faith from you but that is not the reason you dislike them – a person is cable of disliking someone and being mean about them without using a personal characteristic, protected or not, as the topic for their insult or behaviour. There is a difference between ‘I can’t stand him he is a pain and he talks rubbish’ and ‘I can’t stand him, he’s a black (insert whatever word/insult here)’.  The latter is a clear example of a prejudice-based statement based on someone’s race or ethnicity.
Research has shown us that where polices are explicit about what they mean by prejudice-based bullying, where we name specific behaviour they find unacceptable – adults and young people feel more confident to challenge these prejudices and behaviour .
Policies that don’t mention things like homophobia, disability, race or even socio economic status are linked to environments where adults are unsure about challenging certain behaviour and language. This explicit commitment to equality and challenging inequality is clearly linked to better practice in dealing with and preventing prejudiced-based bullying.
Schools, services or clubs that are clear that they will challenge homophobia, that they will challenge bullying based on disability, race or ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, transgender status, religion and belief, socio economic status, appearance, if children are Looked After, are young carers or are refugees or their families are asylum seekers, will be creating environments that value difference and set out clear expectations about what behaviour is acceptable and what is not. Adults can then be held accountable to this as can children and young people.
This though presents a further challenge for the grown-ups. Are you confident to challenge prejudice? All prejudices or just the ones you object to? Confidently challenging some prejudice will be easy for many people – our own values and those of our chosen profession are compatible and we have the knowledge and passion to challenge and educate. Some of us need to get better informed on some areas – help is available form a range of agencies if you want to learn more about asylum seekers or migrants, about transgender people or a particular disability.
We normally learn more about things when we need to. When we are presented with behaviour or attitudes we don’t know much about, we go and find out about the issue to be better informed – the desire to do this is underpinned by values of fairness and equality. So what about the people whose personal values are perhaps not as ‘in-step’ as others?
You may well work or have worked beside someone who is misogynistic, who says racist things, is sectarian perhaps and this only appears on nights out or in the staff room or on social media.
I do find myself saying to colleagues that we are not the thought police – we cannot tell people what to think or that they are not allowed an opinion – what we can do is hold people accountable to the legal and ethical boundaries of their role or profession.  The reality is if a person is even a little prejudiced towards things like equal marriage, Syrian Refugees or women being as good as men at their job – this will be evident in how they challenge these prejudices.   If adults have these prejudices they will not effectively challenge behaviour because it conflicts with their values.
Our values underpin what we do and they will always make themselves evident – some people are good at telling you what their values are at interviews but not so good at showing these when they hear certain language.  They will say thing like ‘You are not allowed to say things like that here’or ‘someone might find that offensive’or actually say and do nothing because they agree with what is being said. When prejudiced language or bullying challenges your values – you will challenge it with passion and clarity, and people will believe you.
Inequality is a huge issue for society – we are addressing historical and cultural issues and responsibility for this rests with people at all levels – not just those who work with our children and young people.
We have had some high profile examples of this – the Ryanair passenger who racially abused a fellow passenger – his defence was that was not racist or when footballer John Terry racially abused a fellow player – his friends defence of him was that they knew him, and he wasn’t racist. I always respond the same way – maybe that’s not his ideology, that’s not what he is 24/7 but what he said was racist – and he is accountable for that. Not what he thinks he meant or feels on other occasions – what he said was wrong. 
So what can I do?
While these are huge cultural issues we can, as individuals and organisations, give children and young people a better experience, a different experience that values them, one that challenges inequality and involves them in setting the culture and ethos in places they go. When some of us talk about equality; we talk about treating everyone the same or the need to. For me, as a practitioner equality has always meant that I have a duty to challenge inequality.
The training I received helped me view my role as someone who is, for example, anti-racist – not simply ‘not racist’. I commit to challenging racism and racist language. I will challenge homophobia or practices that promote gender inequality and so on. This is what we can all do. On my shift, in my classroom, I will challenge prejudice and value individuals. The walls in our club or class, the activities we do, will clearly value diversity and we will learn about difference and respect. 
We won’t achieve this by starting off from a point where we treat everyone the same – our goal is to achieve equity first and we need to address the imbalance –

 

Creating environments such as these and role modelling how to challenge prejudice and promote what makes people different, and to learn to accept this, is exactly what we sign up for if we work with or even have children.
Brian