What do we mean by bullying?

January 7, 2015 ~ brianorbistc ~ Leave a comment

This blog summarises and improves on a couple of the speeches I have made on this issue lately – I hope you find it useful.

What do we mean by bullying?

There have been many different definitions and theories about what constitutes bullying, but it’s not helpful to define bullying purely in terms of behaviour, bullying is both behaviour and impact.

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)

Bullying is a mixture of behaviours and impacts which can impact on 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.

This behaviour can include:

• Being called names, teased, put down or threatened

• Being hit, tripped, pushed or kicked

• Having belongings taken or damaged

• Being ignored, left out or having rumours spread about you

• Receiving abusive messages on social media or phone

• Behaviour which makes people feel like they are not in control of themselves

• Being targeted because of who you are or who you are perceived to be

This behaviour can harm people physically or emotionally and, although the actual behaviour may not be repeated, the threat may be sustained over time, typically by actions: looks, messages, confrontations, physical interventions, or the fear of these. Bullying is both behaviour and impact.

Online bullying

Online bullying, or Cyberbullying, is often the same type of behaviour but it takes place online, usually on social networking sites. A person can be called names, threatened or have rumours spread about them and this can (like other behaviors) happen in person and can happen online.

Advances in technology are simply providing an alternative means of reaching people – where malicious messages were once written on school books or toilet walls, they can now be sent via social media sites on mobile devices making their reach greater, more immediate and much harder to remove or erase.

Some online behaviour is illegal. Children and young people need to be made aware of the far-reaching consequences of posting inappropriate or harmful content on forums, websites, social networking platforms, etc. If a child or young person is being treated or threatened in a sexual way or being pressured into doing something that they don’t want to do, this is not bullying. There are laws to protect children from this very serious type of behaviour.

Persistence and Intent

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.

We would argue that these are unhelpful criteria to apply to all situations. So much time can be lost trying to apply a range of situational factors, many of which are in fact subjective. Many incidents of bullying will include deliberate and repeated behaviour but these are not in our view, essential criteria to define bullying.

Making these an essential criteria to be met excludes a significant amount of incidents of bullying that are not deliberate or necessarily repetitive. We know from our work with children and young people , that bullying takes many forms and something need only happen once to have a severe impact.

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 and do not know how to proceed. We must look at what someone actually did and the impact it had. If it wasn’t deliberate then they may be in a position to apologise or make amends sooner – of it was it may merit a more serious response.

Bullying is usually deliberate but 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 we do not agree with and neither do most young people we have spoken to. Persistence is difficult to define and also, is it more than once? twice? daily? weekly? Who defines when it’s persistent enough to intervene? 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 changed for PE after one incident were they were picked on, humiliated or threatened.

Is being humiliated by having your shorts pulled down in front of a class with 15 people laughing and pointing, some possibly taking a picture, bullying? Of course it is, is it repetitive? It doesn’t matter, we focus on the behaviour and the impact it had.

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

What you do about bullying is actually more important than how you define it.

We respond by asking;

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. Just because a person is not affected does not mean the behaviour they experienced should be ignored.

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 the experienced – it could have been a harmless comment not aimed at them but they have assumed it was and got into a terrible state over it.

Focussing our response

Bullying and Agency

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 tell us?

Young people have reflected to us over the years in a range of ways that they feel unable to speak out and feel trapped when bullied – 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.

When we use our agency, we have a degree of choice over what we do and how we respond within structures like families, communities and schools.

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 most children and young people recognise this day. Bullied children don’t have the same kind of day. Someone else is in charge of how they feel, where they go even or how they will participate in certain things, if they get on the bus or eat alone. They cannot exercise the same choice nor have the same autonomy as when they were not being bullied.

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.

If we re-visit the quote –

– we can see bullying is not even the establishment of dominance. The person bullying is not satisfied with dominance. Bullying can involve the attempt to deny another any settled place, even a subordinate one. It goes beyond subjection. In bullying, the goal is abjection

What does this mean for how we respond?

Considering that bullying is both different types of behaviour and a particular impact this should re-focusses our understanding of the dynamic – this can re-define an approach to bullying in a way that helps practitioners’ responds to feelings and actions. This is always more effective than checking off criteria and having uniform sanction based responses based on our view of the person who is doing it.

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.

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

Labelling

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 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.

All of this promotes respectful relationships, this approach builds a young person’s capacity to respond more effectively, when we are helping young people learn to negotiate tricky relationships and when we involve them in finding solutions and repairing those that can be fixed, we help them to become more resilient.

Brian Donnelly

Bullying in Scotland 2014 Reserch Survey Findings

November 17, 2014 ~ brianorbistc ~ Leave a comment

I have posted a brief summary of the results of a survey carried out earlier this year – I will be posting a lengthier blog in the not too distant future discussing the findings in greater depth but for now at least – here is a quick snapshot of what children and young people told us

The research

The primary aim of this piece of research was to obtain a picture of how children and young people are experiencing bullying in Scotland in 2014.

This research was designed to:

· Identify the types of bullying that is experienced by children and young people.

· Give a clear picture of where bullying happens and where online and offline/face to face experiences differ or crossover.

· Identify from children and young people’s own experience what they feel works and what is less helpful.

· Identify where children and young people go online and what technology they use to get there.

An online questionnaire was designed and tested and distributed to all schools in Scotland in May and June 2014. In total, there were 8310 responses, of which 7839 were useable. Responses came from all over Scotland with all 32 Local Authorities represented. Respondents were aged between 8 and 19 years old. Sixty five per cent were 12 – 14 years old.

This was an open survey and the findings presented here represent only the views of the children who took part.

Three focus groups took place with 45 young people to get a more detailed insight into children and young people’s experiences of bullying – in particular, their thoughts on what happens online and in person, where these two are different and where they crossover.

Key findings

The key findings from the survey are as follows:

30% of children and young people surveyed reported that they have experienced some sort of bullying behaviour between the start of school in August 2013 and June 2014. Of this 30%:

§ 49% experienced bullying in person

§ 41% experienced bullying both in person and online

§ 10% experienced bullying online only.

A number of children and young people had more than one experience of bullying. Children and young people surveyed reflected 12,003 experiences of bullying behaviours. Of these experiences: –

§ 60% took place in person

§ 21% took place both in person and online

§ 19% took place online only

92% of children and young people who were bullied knew the person bullying them (91% online and 92% offline). Anonymity therefore may not be what is driving bullying online.

· Behaviours such as name calling, hurtful comments and spreading rumours that make people feel angry, sad and upset happen both face to face and online.

· Children and Young people employ a range of strategies to cope with bullying; some are more successful than others.

§ Almost half (48%) of children and young people who are bullied tell their parents.

§ Friends and teachers are also providing support to a high number of children and young people who are bullied.

· The most successful anti-bullying interventions are embedded within a positive ethos and culture and don’t just focus on individual incidents.

Children and young people’s use of technology, especially mobile technology and social media, is woven into their everyday lives.
The majority of children and young people (81%) consider their online friends to be all or mostly the same friends they have in real life
Children and young people access internet content on mobile devices, such as phones and tablets, more than other devices such as PC’s or laptops.
Google, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook are the most popular websites and Apps used by children and young people when they go online.

Next Steps

We will further analyse the data we have collected and use it to help develop effective policy and practice around bullying. The data is likely to help us to address some questions more effectively including: –

· Given the relatively low proportion of exclusively online bullying, and the similarity of online and offline bullying behaviour, to what extent is a specific response to online bullying needed?

· What are the appropriate responses to gender specific differences in experiences of bullying?

· How can we help schools to further develop an anti-bullying ethos? And how can we continue to ensure children and young people are involved and included in this process?

· How can we continue to support parents to respond when their children tell them about being bullied?

· How can schools further help children and young people learn from other pupils about the strategies that they have found useful?

Bullying and the ‘One-off incident’…

October 7, 2014 ~ brianorbistc ~ Leave a comment

One challenge we have faced on several occasions over the years is around perceptions of what a ‘one-off incident’ is and ‘can it be bullying?’

At respectme, we have always stated that behaviour does not need to be persistent for it to be bullying – even though typically bullying may be repetitive, this does not mean it always is or has to be.

It is unhelpful to think of bullying this way and narrows our focus.

The most common response to this approach is that, by our definition, every single one-off incident or argument between young people can now be considered as bullying, and teachers especially are going to have to record every little fall out or cross word that happens.

Saying that something can happen once and it can be bullying is not the same as saying everything that happens once is bullying.

We never have and never will suggest that two children who fall out over something or who aren’t nice to each other are bullying. It is reasonable to expect adults to deal with this low level, everyday behaviour by challenging it when they see it, and by role modelling the right way to behave – and there is certainly no need to record that you have done so. Bullying is different.

Bullying is a mixture of behaviour and impact – the impact on 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.

Nowhere in this is it suggested that falling out or arguing with someone is bullying – children and young people will fall out, they will disagree on who and what is cool, they will bicker with each other and this is part and parcel of children being in social situations. People can argue without it being bullying.

A young person can be threatened and intimidated by other young people on a bus, leaving them feeling humiliated and embarrassed– This only needs to happen once to stop them from getting on that bus again, or being terrified at the thought of it, or re-living the experience and not being able to concentrate in class.

The threat of it happening again is very real; the likelihood of it happening again is also real if that’s the bus they need to get to get to school every day. Regardless of whether it happened on the last day of school, when all of the people who took part were leaving for good, or whether it was the last time that bus ever ran, or whether the person being bullied is moving to another country the following morning and won’t see these people again, it is still bullying. The behaviour experienced sill stripped someone of their capacity for agency.

If I get humiliated and picked on when changing for PE one day, it could have lasting effects on my participation in it or enjoyment of it. Do I really need an adult to not take it seriously or consider it bullying because it only happened once?

How do we apply this to behaviour that takes place online? One post seen or read by dozens can have a devastating impact – is it the number of ‘likes’ that make it repetitive? In the playground or on the bus, people can hear nasty and hateful things being said. Would we consider a story being shared or gossip passed around as repetitive or persistent? It certainly can ensure the impact is greater.

Adults need to have the confidence to deal with behaviour when it happens. How often it happens might make it more serious; it could mean attempted interventions have not been successful and it now requires a more robust response.

Now, I know most adults are capable of responding in this way but I have seen first-hand and heard many times from children, parents and from some senior teachers, that because it only happened once, they couldn’t do anything – their anti-bullying policy said it needs to be repeated.

This very literal take on a policy document is in some ways understandable – that’s what many people do with polices. The thing is for me, if you need people to apply judgment and discern (and you do) don’t give them a definition that is limiting or reductive. Let them consider what was the behaviour, what impact did it have and what do they need to do about it? It is what you do that matters.

When I ask young people if something that only happens once can be bullying – the overwhelming response is ‘of course it can’.

I have always struggled with the subjective nature of the word ‘persistence’ to be honest – does it simply mean more than once? More than once a week? Or does once a day make it persistent enough to deal with? And also, who decides? My teacher – who has not seen or heard every incident – or me, the person it is happening to? Also, how does my teacher know it is not persistent? They never saw what happened on the way into school or in my last class in another part of the building.

I do understand if people’s motivation to exclude ‘one-off incidents’ from bullying is due to recording and the time this will take up. If what you mean by ‘one-off incidents’ are low level, everyday interactions such as a fall out, an argument or a cross word, then I support that- but then you need to define what you mean by a ‘one–off incident’. Make sure there is a shared understanding of what you mean and what is expected of people as a result.

Your policy needs to be clear that when you say a ‘one-off incident’ that it is not bullying you are talking about but the low level stuff just described. Be clear that you are not excluding certain bullying behaviours because they only happened once.

Make sure everyone understands repetition or persistence is not a criteria that is to be applied and used to determine if something is bullying or not. If there is not a shared understanding of this, then responses are less likely to be applied consistently and inconsistent responses form part of a culture where bullying is more likely to thrive.

Brian Donnelly

Do we really all have to be friends?

June 26, 2014 ~ brianorbistc ~ Leave a comment

The line that gave respectme its name has served us very well over the years and made for a very popular poster and video campaign – ‘You don’t have to like me, agree with me or play with me… but you do have to respect me’. The thinking behind this was the need for a way to describe how we wanted to help children and young people shape the terms for relationships and interactions with peers.

While this sounded quite catchy and lends itself well to a campaign – I always wanted to it have substance – and that is why we always follow this up by exploring what does this statement actually mean or what does it actually feel or look like for children and young people?

It is a nice demand to make of people I know but again, what does it mean. For the most part – it means simply leaving someone alone – you don’t need to connect with them, learn about them, understand them or become friends with them – just let them be.

The example I tend to use when discussing this, relates to an experience I had when my second oldest was at nursery. As reputations were being built and lost around the sandpit I heard the teacher tell the boys and girls who were playing and getting out of hand that ‘they should all be friends and play nicely’. This was of course said with warmth and with the best of intentions but at the time it really got me thinking – ‘’Do they all haveto be friends?’ how realistic an expectation is this?

Now, if a bunch of 4 year olds cannot behave around the sandpit we need to intervene and let them know how they should behave but do they all need to be friends? No – should they be expected to play near each other in a civilised way? Yes – perhaps a better response is along the lines of ‘if you are all going to play here together you need to be nicer to each other, no grabbing or shouting and you take turns – that’s one of the rules here’.

That is an easier boundary to set and easier to role model, if you tell them they need to be friends you are setting up an unrealistic expectation that they can’t possible manage – friends with everyone in your class? Are we as adults expected to be friends with everyone we work with? Do we even like everyone we are related to at times? Of course not.

I know for some this is not a huge issue but friendship is one of the first currencies children have to withhold or bargain with – it is a very powerful tool in early years and as such I think we can frame it more effectively. I would rather see a group of P1’s who can get along on different tasks, are respectful of each other and make friends on their terms. This also lets us talk about what it means to be a ‘good friend’ and help them understand that there will always be a wide group of people around them throughout school, some you’ll be friends with. Some you’ll know and say hello to and some you won’t get on with or agree with.

The skills needed to understand and negotiate this will serve them well in life not just school. Anti-bullying agencies get a bit of stick at times because the impression they give is that all they want is for everyone to be nice to each other and in fact this is unrealistic – I think it’s no bad thing to want everyone to be nicer but I agree that it’s not realistic.

What I do believe is that we should be asking children to respect their peers and that can mean a whole range of things. It can include talking and listening to someone and perhaps becoming friends, or it can mean fixing what was once a friendship or it can mean learning to be quiet and not shouting at or about someone you don’t like. I think friendships are vitally important to our children and young people – they rely on them, value them and as they get older, they turn to them for support and comfort – all this message and these campaigns seek to do is to help frame an understanding of what it really means to be friends.

Learning that it is okay not to like someone, that it’s okay not to agree with them is important – it’s what you do that matters. Not being friends does not have to mean that you are enemies. That is a message I have seen young people benefit from exploring on many occasions.

If you think about it there must be a few people in your life you don’t like, you don’t and never will agree with – you don’t hound and abuse them at every opportunity – you may have learned the hard way that a family Christmas dinner is not the time to get these feelings off your chest. It might be a colleague or your boss – most people learn to use their developed social skills that enables them to work effectively or not fall out with the whole family.

If you pick on, exclude or verbally abuse someone in person or online you don’t like or agree with then that’s the kind of bullying that will cause problems for everyone – if you are able to let them walk by, be online or in the corridor without you responding in some negative way – then everyone will be a lot happier.

We will always respond to bullying more effectively when we focus on what someone actually did and the impact it had. If they behaved in a way that is unacceptable then we focus on their actions and what they should be doing in future. This will be more effective than trying to fix or reframe a dynamic between two people that might not need ‘fixed’- nor will it ever fit into what we might think a ‘friendship’ is.

Brian

Gender is Everyone’s Agenda

May 8, 2014 ~ brianorbistc ~ Leave a comment

I have copied my opening speech from this weeks ‘Gender is Everyone’s Agenda Conference – some more thought son this event to follow

The name of this conference was chosen very deliberately – gender is everyone’s agenda

This title emerged as we began exploring the challenges young people face and looking at the work being done by the range of agencies – many you will see today – just how much of their lives can be affected by gender inequality

We start of the games or the clothes boys or girls are expected to wear or are marketed at parents, to name calling bullying, insults, stereotypes, to threats and fear and abuse because they don’t conform to what is seen as normal behaviour, or they don’t do what is expected of girls when a boy asks you out or wants your picture, to feeling safe being out, to being targeted online, being exploited or abused witnessing and experiencing domestic violence or being attacked in the street..

This spectrum is where some of us sit – a lot of us found that we play a small part on this huge spectrum or behaviours or issues – but there is no one monopoly position on them – neither in policy or practice – all of these issues and many more are underpinned by gender inequality – they all adversely affect girls more than boys.

Aggression and violence towards girls whether online, in school, in relationships is a complex phenomenon – not a new one either – the pressure to conform to norms or to be sexually active or to do what your friends tell you boys or girls are supposed to do – or are supposed to respond to if their girlfriend or boyfriend texts or speaks to another person are challenges we have been facing for years and at times we have tried to focus on each part of the spectrum of behaviours or looked at what the media does and then blamed that

When you look then at what each of us is doing on our small parts of the spectrum are doing – you ask – are they being consistent? Does it add up? It many places it does but many of us share the same frustrations at trying to get communities and schools and funders to look up and see the bigger picture.

We first became involved and were the catalyst for the partnership forming that brings you todays conference – based on our one area of influence – bullying

The term sexual bullying was being used more and more often and was appearing in policy and was being used to describe all manner of behaviours from homophobia to sexual assault – we felt this ran the risk of diluting serious behaviour – forcing someone, threatening to do something sexual they do not want to, isn’t bullying it abuse. Putting your hand u a girls skirt is not bullying – it is assault – these examples did and still do exist in policy in parts of the UK.

I as noticed a change when we were presenting evidence to the parliament on cyberbullying and after I spoke 5 other agencies spoke about exploitation and child abuse online – these are very very serious issues that need real policy and legislative focus – but we felt the term ‘cyberbullying’ was becoming an umbrella term for all negative and abusive behaviour online. I felt that if parliament is looking for evidence on exploitation and abuse online – we shouldn’t be in the room.

These two challenging issues converged and we decided it was time to talk to colleagues who were working on these very serious very relevant issues – we could learn from them about the areas they work in ad we could share what we did –so that we knew what children could expect from Childline, what Zero Tolerance was talking about in schools about relationships and violence and they knew what the anti-bullying messages were, what LGBT Youth Scotland say about domestic violence and violence that is routed in people not meeting gender norms – this vital and rich work being done runs the risk of being done in isolation

We wanted to get people together and look for where we can develop a consistent message – in policy and on practice. Every one of us was dealing with behaviour and violence migrating to the online world too but when we peel it all back and look at what we do – we are responding to gender inequality – pictures of girls being shared and commented on around school is misogyny 2014 – boys simply have new means at their disposal to perpetuate the myths about relationships, norms and how we talk about boys and how we talk about girls.

So ourselves, LGBT Youth Scotland, police Scotland, Local Authority colleagues, the Mentors for Violence Programme, NSPCC Scotland, Edinburgh University, Zero tolerance and Rape Crisis Scotland formed a partnership –

This group has formed in response to a shared concern and common interest in addressing gender-based inequalities and sexual violence. It sets out a partnership approach to lead and influence gender-related policy and practice, as it relates to children and young people in Scotland. It aims to challenge accepted behaviour, attitudes and relationships, with the purpose of reducing sexual violence amongst young people, acknowledging that the status quo is no longer good enough.

When each of us responds to reports or is delivering our area of work – we now know more about what our colleagues are doing and when we address gender issues – we have a broader and more informed position for some young people the link form say gender based bullying to gender based violence is clear for others less so but in understanding what each of us can do on that spectrum or for some continuum of aggression and violence we hope that we can develop more effective responses as we share our learning our understanding and listen to each other.

I am very proud to be standing here today opening this conference – I am very proud that it is not a conference about online risks, there are plenty of them happening, or a conference just on violence, or bullying – but one that hopefully gets straight to the point – and that is how these are affected by gender inequality – I want us to get the conversation right – not always focussing on our own bits bit ask – how can we change attitudes and behaviours about gender

I suppose for me an example is when we look at what happens when sexting goes horribly wrong – a very important area – and we spend time on reflecting on social media sites, smart phones and the challenges they present – when the issue is actually what motivated the boy involved what told him what he was doing was okay – not how did he did it or where – but why.

That is what I mean about getting the conversation right.

Today is our attempt to articulate the problem – to explore some of the key issues and to share these with you and to listen to what you have to say

We have avoided the temptation to present you with speakers all do and for you to sit there and appreciate – although I am sure you will appreciate the small number we have for you today – but we wanted it to be an active day – where the workshops and the networking are the focus – so please enjoy the variety on show – use the time at lunch and breaks to go round the various stalls and make connections.

Finally a quick thanks to Our Funders today from The Scottish Government – both The Learning Directorate and the Equalities Unit – thank you for this and we hope you can see that today has been money very well spent.

Brian Donnelly