Anti-Bullying Policy – a journey

April 27, 2016January 24, 2018 ~ brianorbistc ~ Leave a comment

Everyone’s favourite thing I know but developing an anti-bullying policy is a crucial step for us all – it is vital if we want to create environments where bullying cannot thrive. Environments where bullying does not thrive are known for the quality of the relationships on show, they are known for being inclusive and safe and they listen. This does not happen by accident, there will be effective leaders in these places, valued staff, children and young people. There will be shared aims and an understanding of what it means to go there – to be a part of it.

Part of what builds a shared understanding and shared vision is that it is written down and explained, it is shared and understood. It sets the boundaries, ethical and professional, for how people are expected to relate to each other and allows us to hold each other accountable. Places where the tone and mood is set by one powerful individual can be effective but a top down approach which relies on unwritten rules, presents challenges for new faces as well as for those who may not be entirely in step.

I like to explain culture as ‘the way things are done here’. I want my children to go to a school where they value difference, where they care about the pupils, where they role model good relationships and listen to the pupils. Not a culture based on fear or a domineering Head or a Unit Manager and their acolytes. I have worked in places like this and one of the only ways I could hold colleagues appointable and start to influence change was to include and reference what polices we were supposed to be operating within.

I know many roll their eyes at the thought of policy and, given some of what we have to read and assimilate at times, it’s an understandable response. When we are looking at responding to bullying and, crucially, creating an environment where bullying cannot thrive, we need a written commitment to how we should expect people to behave.

In places where the culture is ‘Well, we all know how to behave and we all know what bullying is’ I ask, ‘How do you know and are you sure everyone thinks the same way?’ In the absence of a written statement that states ‘this is what we mean by bullying here is how you should be treated’ people remain free to interpret behaviour themselves and decide if they feel a response is warranted.

We know from experience that this is way too subjective and people’s own values and prejudices influence this hugely. If you think bullying is ok and didn’t do you any harm, you won’t respond effectively, if you think being gay is wrong, you can’t actually respond effectively to homophobia. If you think online bullying is nothing to do with you then you won’t be able to help anyone deal with it when it is happening to them. This is why we need policies, they are not theanswer but they are a part of the answer.

Based on the work we have been doing at respectme for the last nine years, around developing and influencing policy, we have found effective ways to ensure policies are better understood; they are co-produced with stakeholders, especially with children and young people.There is no legal requirement in Scotland for schools to have an anti-bullying policy, but it is good practice and those who regulate and inspect you will expect to see one.

But we know that employing a ‘scatter gun’ approach to policy development does not work, by this I mean working with any one school at a time. There is no evidence to suggest this is an effective way to improve practice across the country, instead we get very patchy and inconsistent anti-bullying practice. At respectme we help develop policies at an organisational level, these are then cascaded locally to ensure a more consistent picture and a greater reach.

In Scotland we have a National Approach to Anti-Bullying, which sets out the Government’s expectations. A revised version of this will be launched this year and it will be called ‘Respect for All’. respectme has influenced this a great deal and our experience of developing and implementing policy has been central to this. I will describe the rationale for the process first rather than just what you need to put in a policy.

Our approach is to support organisations and local authorities to develop anti-bullying polices that are in step with the National Approach. This means they are underpinned by the same values of fairness, inclusion and equality, and there is a consistent definition of bullying and consistent guidance on what to do when bullying happens. It means that your local authority, school and sports club should have the same definition and use the same language when talking about and when you are challenging bullying.

The 2011 evaluation of respectme highlighted that adults and young people having a shared language and understanding on bullying was critical to success and in creating environments where bullying cannot thrive. respectme helps an organisation or a local authority to develop a strategic overarching anti-bullying policy that is cascaded to each individual service, club or school within it.

We advise on and support a process of collaboration; getting the views of children and young people, parents, adult’s, staff and volunteers. This way the policy does not just appear out of the blue and it can be launched in the knowledge that the right people were asked and included.

Experience has also shown that the most effective way to integrate this into local practice, the most effective way to ensure individual schools, clubs or service have a good and well understood policy, is for them to take the organisational one and develop their own one locally.

This policy will be underpinned by the same values, definition and crucially it will mirror the process of collaborating with children and young people, parents and staff. This should lead to a shorter local policy that starts by referencing the organisational or local authority policy. This allows schools to say, ‘Glasgow City Council states.. and at Bellahouston Academy we do this…’ or ‘Aberdeen City Council sates… and at St Mary’s our pupil council said … about bullying.’ This is taking national policy and making it relevant locally. If every school just put a copy of the local authority policy on the shelf, there would be no ownership of it, no journey embarked upon where local issues and local parents got involved and this approach is far less likely to be successful.

This is not about doubling the workload but ensuring a very robust policy framework is in place to help those being bullied and to support those who are dealing with it. So in Scotland we would expect to see an individual school, service or club with an anti-bullying policy that is developed to reflect the organisational or local authority one. respectme will help ensure the local authority or organisational policy reflects the National Approach.

This means that in practice an individual badminton club, primary school or football club can have a policy that shares the values and principles of the organisation they are part of or that governs them. That organisation should have a policy that reflects the National Approach. This consistent language and framework should benefit children and young people, their parents and cares and those who work with them. Everyone gets the same message.

So when a parent asks for the schools policy, they should get the individual school policy but also see the local authority one, as this will give greater detail on what they can expect and what routes to take. It isn’t one or the other, best practice is both. If you are a local club not part of an organisation, you governing body, such a Sport Scotland will have a policy to reference, if you are even more local and not part of this set up, you should still use the National Approach as a guide for your policy – this will ensure it is in step with the policies the same children and young people will experience at school or other places.

All of this is designed to ensure that policy is more consistent at every level, local, organisational and strategic.

There are some things you need to put in you policy whether you are an organisation, a youth club or a school and one of these is a commitment to challenging prejudice-based bullying. Every single policy must be explicit about the Equality Act 2010 and each of the protected characteristics. This has been covered in other blogs on this site. We know from the research we did for the EHRC that where policies explicitly mention things like homophobia biphobia and transphobia, racism, gender-based prejudice etc. staff feel more confident to respond to this type of behaviour when they see it. The policy gives them permission to challenge and discuss these issues and crucially, raises an expectation that they will challenge prejudice-based bullying.

There was also evidence to suggest that establishments where their policy does not mention specific types of prejudice-based bullying , practice is not as good and both staff and children and young people felt less confidence about dealing with this kind of bullying.

Policy is a journey, a values based journey to share understanding of what bullying is and what is expected of everyone involved what behaviour you can expect and how you can expect people to respond. It gives us a framework for anti-bullying practice and something we can and should be held accountable to.

So don’t be put off, get it right, make it inclusive and that in iself is a big part of developing environments where bullying cannot thrive, why would we not do that?

For more information on what goes in your policy, visits www.respectme.org.uk

This is designed to illustrate the process and context for anti-bullying policies at every level and how we can ensure consistency in overarching values and principles from a Government level to an individual school or youth club level.


Brian

Prejudice-based Bullying and promoting equality

November 25, 2015January 31, 2019 ~ 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

Making a difference internationally

April 24, 2013 ~ brianorbistc ~ Leave a comment

This month I had the real pleasure of delivering two days of anti-bullying training to colleagues in Vienna. Samera is a project based in Austria dealing with violence against children. Their team is made up of psychologists, social workers, and educators that focus on kindergarten and social pedagogy. They have over 20 years of practical experience in the prevention of violence against children and adolescents. Their approach is ‘trans-cultural’, they recognize the changing face of European countries and they use this term to explain the focus on respect, appreciation, collective action, openness, and engagement with other cultures.

Representatives visited Scotland last year and as part of their visit I met with them to discuss respectme’s approach to bullying and how our approach reflects the culture and how we are governed in Scotland. They were I am pleased to say, very impressed with our approach. Despite their years of work around violence and relationships they had never focused on bullying or ‘mobbing’ as the behavior is known as across Central Europe. They were becoming increasingly aware of this behavior and were looking for a framework or approach that they felt could help compliment their work and they chose ours.

I was invited to deliver two days training to around 30 members of their network in Vienna. My challenge was to put together a program that covered all of the core messages that underpin our approach, the national context and a critique/reflection of some other anti-bullying approaches they knew a little about and this also had to be translated into German for the benefit of the audience.

Perhaps the biggest challenge faced was my tendency to speak very quickly and when I get going on a subject, to speak even quicker. Many of the delegates spoke English very well but did not take the Glasgow dialect classes! I have discovered just how different the word ‘parents’ can sound. An Austrian will learn to say ‘Paa-rents’ where as I would say ‘Pay-rints’- which to them is another word altogether.

The delegates were an eclectic group of social workers, teachers, psychologists and youth workers. They responded very positively to the approach we use. They found our definition of bullying as it impacts on a person’s agency, to be one that made a lot of sense. Many of them felt the notion that bullying took something away from a person and their role was to help get it back, was one they found very useful. Many of them deliver training to teachers and commented on this being something they would use. They, like most people do I have to say, get the notion that intent and persistence are not they key defining factors in recognizing and importantly responding to bullying. Responding to behavior and the impact it has is what matters.

The issue of labeling was an interesting discussion. The word ‘bully’ has made its way into their language. They liked our take on not using terms like ‘bully’ or ‘perpetrator’ when talking about bullying but feel many in their country do use this word. What was interesting though is that when bulling was translated, the word they use is ‘mobbing’. When I asked what word they use to describe someone who is mobbing someone else, they have no word. The concept of calling someone a ‘mobber’ was strange to them; they would talk about mobbing or people who mob. We agreed this was the right approach and that they should challenge the growing use of the word’ bully’ especially as it contra to what they would normally do.

The other area where we learned a lot from each other was when talking about gender based bullying and sexual violence. Sexual violence was the main area of work for over 50% of the delegates. I wanted to share my concerns over the increased use of the umbrella term ‘sexual bullying’. As respectme has stated many times, we feel this is an unhelpful term to use and the guidance on this in other parts of the UK is not something we would support. We agree there is a link between gender based bullying and sexual violence but to label behavior such as a boy putting his hand up a girls skirt or forcing her to do something sexually she does not want to as a form of bullying is concerning. This is abusive behaviour. Sexual violence and sexually aggressive behaviour is not bullying, it is far more serious and needs to be treated as such. This is an area that in the UK opinion is still divided, there are many who are happy to use this term as an umbrella term that includes behaviours that are way beyond gender based bullying.

I am not suggesting that gender-based bullying does not lead to sexual violence or sexually aggressive behaviour, far from it. Rumours and names calling used in person and on-line toward girls in particular should and do concern us. We need to intervene in this behaviour to stop it escalating and become more abusive.

What was interesting was that none of the delegates would even consider using the term ‘sexual bullying’ they were able to make a clear distinction between sexual violence and abuse and bullying behaviour. To put these behaviours together seemed absurd to them. That was no doubt down to the fact most of them work with children who experience sexual violence and they have considerable experience and expertise as practitioners, councillors and teachers in this area. They too see a link between gender-based bullying and how, for some, this can lead to sexual violence but they are distinct behaviours. I welcomed their take on this issue and will use this learning as we take our work in this area forward.

What really helped the two days to flow for the group and for me was having the services of an extremely competent translator. I am always embarrassed when visiting other countries that most locals will speak very good English but our interpreter put that to shame with her four languages. I was able to plan and deliver a greeting, some limited personal information and finished off with ‘dies ist der einzige Deutsche satz den ich weiß‘– ‚‘this is the only German sentence I know‘– it did get a few laughs.

Vienna is a beautiful city (I even took in the ballet one afternoon – only 8 Euro for some culture) and I was made to feel very welcome by my hosts. The feedback was very warm and complimentary. I left a number of resources that will be used as part of a new practice manual for Austrian teacher in the year ahead. I am always very proud to see our resources and our approach being used and spoken about internationally.

I learned a great deal about the cultural differences between Scotland and Austria, how their Government structures differ and the similarities they face in ensuring they get funding every year and stretching this as far as they can. Similarly though, when visiting Slovenia and Ireland recently, I can see that we benefit from having a National Approach to anti-bullying in Scotland, a framework like this is a model for developing consistency and while we are getting there, many colleagues across Europe are looking at this as a model that does makes a difference. A national approach that is underpinned by values, promotes children’s rights and one that challenges inequalities makes sense but there are not many of them around. Hopefully we can keep contributing to changing that.

Brian

Cyberbullying – a focus for our partners

June 13, 2012 ~ brianorbistc ~ Leave a comment

I have had the pleasure of speaking at a number of events in recent week on the subject of cyberbullying. I have spoken to teachers, residential child care staff, police officers, and next week educational psychologists.

It remains no real surprise that demand on this subject remains high, it is the one area of work with children and young people that is seeing both innovation and fear and not in equal measures sadly.

The message that appears to get the most traction of late is that 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.

Lots of colleagues have said they are ‘technophobes’ or are not ‘tech savvy’ and how much they do not like facebook or twitter. The thing is though, if you work with children and young people or are a parent or carer – that is no longer good enough. You need to know and for some that will require a real effort to spend time and utilise the relationship they have.

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.

What remains my favourite part of the training we do is asking adults to reflect on how they communicated as teenagers. We hear of the red phone box, post cards, arranging to meet and hoping people turn up as well as locks on the house phone. The point being that staying in touch with your friends was always important and you used whatever means you had at your disposal.

Today is no different, even if some do get all misty eyed at remembering sending postcards and using pay phones but for many of us, we can now communicate, chat and share pictures with friends and family all over the world. We love to communicate and always have.

A great deal of the success we have had is supported by the concept that we need to think of the internet as a place, rather than a thing. We need to see it as a social space and like any other social space, relationships play out in it and there will be risks. People will fall in, fall out, argue and be horrible to others. So like any other social space, we need to discuss boundaries, challenges, risks, threats and how to keep safe and what we will do if there is a problem.

To some the internet is a tool, they buy stuff on or book holidays, but it is used by children and young people and many adults as part of their daily lives to connect with others. The differences between connecting face to face, by the phone or online are not as clear as they may have been before. It is just a new place to do so.

Last years campaign sums this up perfectly with the message, whether they are going into town or online they are still going somewhere. I have seen adults change their entire approach based on this premise,

‘When my daughter wants to go into town, I ask a dozen questions! Who with, how long for, is your phone charged? I never ask where she is going on her laptop!’

The video that supports this can be seen here http://bit.ly/MMtPOp

Cyberbullying is bullying, news to no one I know but we do need to remember that it is not the phone or the website that is doing this, it is people. We respond to this by connecting with people about what they do.

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.

I conducted research last year into children and young people’s experience of cyberbullyng and how they use the inetrnet and the findings were very interesting.

16% say they have been cyberbullied

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

Mobile phones and laptops are the most common devices

Facebook and BlackBerry Messenger two most popular platforms

This research involved 3,944 young people from 29 of Scotland’s 32 local authorities aged 8 – 19 years. This helps us tell parents, they need to understand and know how to navigate and make safe or private facebook and BBM especially. Being able to do so allows them to respond more effcectively if their children are having problems such as bullying on these platforms.

It is my intention to produce a fuller report on this research in time (meaning if I can get some!) but a summary report can be found here http://www.respectme.org.uk/Publications-Introduction.html

talk soon

Brian

13 June 2012

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March 26, 2012 ~ brianorbistc ~ Leave a comment

Reflections on bullying – some core underpinnings and a definition

Brian Donnelly Director of respectme, Scotland’s Anti-Bullying Service.

A great deal of learning has taken place over the five years respectme has been delivering anti-bullying training, policy support and campaigning. There are some core messages that underpin the approach we take which challenge existing thinking on bullying; I shall explore some of these in this refection. This reflection is also based on work done in partnership with Professor Howard Sercombe University of Strathclyde to develop an academic synthesis reflecting some of the theoretical underpinnings of the approach taken by respectme.

We challenge the traditional belief that persistence and intent are the defining elements of bullying situations. Instead we have focussed on the impact the behaviour has on individuals. Our reasoning for this is that it’s our role to provide pragmatic and practical responses, resources and skills that can be implemented by parents and professionals. What you do about bullying is much more important than how you define or what criteria you apply to determine if an incident merits the label. In our experience, many children and young people reflect a clear understanding that something needs to only happen once and it can be bullying, yet most definitions, and often anti-bullying policies, refute this, stating that the behaviour has to be repeated over a period of time. The actual intervention may not be repeated, but the threat will be sustained over time. Typically, the threat will be sustained by actions, looks, messages, confrontations and physical interventions or the fear and anticipation of these.

Similarly intent is not only difficult to prove but easily denied and this should not be used as criteria for this very reason. Many of the behaviours experienced are subtle, indirect and designed to unsettle and make people feel left out; again it is the impact that needs to be the focus for intervention.

respectme focuses on the need to develop interventions and approaches that recognise the impact bullying has and works to ensure adults are able to deal with it effectively and confidently. This involves supporting partners to come to a shared understanding of what bullying behaviour can be. When faced with an actual situation, how you define it is less important than what you do about it. This deflects the intervention from a dispute about whether or not a presenting situation should be classed as a bullying situation, and turns attention to where it ought to be focused: to the person directly affected. Then, the intervention becomes much more straightforward; really a matter of three questions:

1. What is happening?

2. What does the person in distress want to happen?

3. How are we going to make that work?

Bullying behaviours can include:

· Being called names, being teased, put down or threatened

· Being hit, tripped, pushed or kicked

· Having belongings stolen or damaged

· Being ignored, left out, or rumours spread about you

· Receiving abusive text messages or emails

· Behaviour which makes people feel like they are being bullied

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

This is not an exhaustive list; there may be other behaviours that can be classed as bullying, these are what we would call ‘practices of domination’.

Children and young people can experience bullying for a variety of reasons; including where they live, their sexuality, gender, disability, the colour of their skin, what clothes they wear or what team they support.
The one thing that these have in common is difference or perceived difference. Bullying is a relationship. It’s a two way thing. The attempt to dominate needs to be answered by subordination in order for the bullying relationship to be established. Bullying is therefore not primarily a description of a person or behaviour but a kind of relationship. Those who bully and those bullied are in a relationship with each other. What differentiates bullying, we believe, is the impact it has on a person’s agency. This ‘agency’ is their capacity for effective action and feeling in control of their lives. Bullying strips individuals of the capacity to do this.

As a result of the work and discussions with Professor Howard Sercombe, we defined bullying as:

“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 aim of interventions must be to restore agency, to replace that which was taken away. We must base our responses on this question: ‘how can I respond in a way that gives this person back their agency, to help them regain that sense of control over who they are and what they do?’ Not just ‘how do I fix this?’

Adults who adopt this perspective can make a much more effective intervention. These core principles are underpinned by our values of fairness, inclusion and equality and are supported by our commitment to provide practical resources for adults to use that promote and protect Children’s Rights. These values and principles apply when dealing with children and young people who are bullying others. They need to understand what the behaviour is that is unacceptable, why it is unacceptable, what the consequences may be and what is expected of them in future. They may also need help to repair relationships.

Another core message that underpins the work of the service is our approach to labelling, respectme does not label children and young people as ‘bullies’ or ‘victims’. 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. 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.

I look forward to sharing more of the learning in the coming months on topics ranging from cyberbullying to what our 24 month evaluation highlighted as critical factors for success.

Brian Donnelly

January 2012