Cyberbullying – a clearer focus

January 26, 2016 ~ brianorbistc ~ Leave a comment

I felt it was time to update some of the advice and information I have previously shared about online bullying. – As Safer Internet Day approaches there are many articles appearing online about ‘cyberbullying’ and conferences and events taking place, dedicated only to this type of bullying.

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

The research I undertook in late 2014 provided a picture of what types of behaviour children were experiencing and where it was taking place. The findings confirmed what many already thought while continuing to surprise many others.

Face to face bullying accounted for the majority of bullying incidents. The three most common behaviours experienced when being bullied face to face were:

Name calling

Hurtful Comments

Rumours

8,000 children and young people from across the country took part in the research. 30% of them said they had experienced bullying in the last 12 months. Of the incidents they experienced:

60% took place in person

21% took place both in person and online

19% tool place online only

They also told us that only 6% of bullying started online – and it was usually related to something that happened in school or face to face. The behaviour can then continue online, face to face and sometimes both.

The three most common behaviour experienced online were:

Name Calling

Hurtful Comments

Verbal Abuse

This shows that there is little difference between the behaviours experienced – only where they took place.

This has helped us work with colleagues to develop local surveys and questionnaires that ask the right questions, not ‘Were you bullied’ and ‘were you cyberbullied?’ But ask ‘Were you bullied?’ ‘What was the behaviour and where did this happen?’ Children and young people were able to tell us very clearly things like ‘I was called names and this happened on the bus and on Facebook’.

There should be little focus on where it took place – it was still bullying.

The findings from the research show that online bullying is more public and more visible. This is what contributes to the notion that it is a ‘bigger’ or ‘increasing’ problem. Bullying behaviour is not always seen by lots of people – threats and manipulative behaviour still takes place largely in private – away form everyone else. This is still the most common type of bullying; sneaky, under the radar behaviour, carried out in places where there is little or no supervision.

So what are the risks with this?

The main risk is that we have, and often still do, focus heavily on online or cyber bullying and have almost started to ignore the less public types of bullying. I even get asked about what has happened to ‘traditional’ bullying. We seem to have developed this notion that the only thing to be concerned about is the stuff that happens online. This is not to say what is happening online isn’t concerning, of course it is, but so is the behaviour our children and young people continue to experience face to face – and sometimes both face to face and online.

We do not need to develop specific polices for online bullying, but we need to ensure that all of our anti-bullying policies and practices reflect that things happen both face to face and online. This approach is in line with international research and best practice. When we talk about bullying we mean bullying that happens face to face and online.

When talking to children and young people recently about new national policy they told me they found it strange that people still talked about ‘cyber’ bullying as ‘cyber’ is just not a word they use for anything. The distinction between online and offline isn’t as straightforward as some adults may think. Relationships play out online and in person – whether chatting face to face or on Twitter or Snapchat – it’s all talking to friends.

Young people told us some very interesting things about their lives online. The majority of young people (81%) consider their online friends to be all or mostly the same as in real life. Only 4% of the 8,000 surveyed said they did not know the people they were ‘friends’ with online.

Crucially, 92% of children who experienced bullying online knew the person bullying them. This goes some way to challenge the ever present line that anonymity is one of the driving factors behind bullying online. Young people interact and socialise with an extended network of other people they are connected to through school, family communities and friendships as well as similar interests in music or sport.

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

On of the challenges we still face is the belief that if something happens onlineit did not take place in school and the school or teacher cannot do anything about it. Our advice on this has been consistent – we respond to what happened to someone – not where it happened. If a child or young person decides to inform their teacher – they are investing in them as an adult they trust to help them – that last thing we should be doing is sending them away.

I was talking to a teacher about this earlier this week and she feels frustrated that an incident that happened at a swing park between two pupils in the same class is being ignored by some colleagues because of where it took place. The school here is in a great position to help resolve this – they don’t need to do all the work but could lead on helping the children they know feel safer or behave more respectfully. It is the same if it happens on Facebook. Respond to what happened not where or when. Respond to how someone feels – that way you can role model effective ways of dealing with relationship and interpersonal difficulties.

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

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

Adult fear and anxiety has long been the biggest hurdle in dealing with bullying online. It has had a very high media profile at times and it appears ’new’. For parents or adults who do not use social media or connect with their friends using the internet, this can be a challenging and, at times, bewildering experience.

Lots of colleagues have said they are ‘technophobes’ or are not ‘tech savvy’ and have voiced how much they dislike Facebook or twitter. We have maintained that if you work with children and young people or if you are a parent or carer, that is no longer good enough. You need to know! For some that will require a real effort to spend time and utilise their relationships to learn. 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.

Many adults have experience of managing risk when working with children and young people, and 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 is not bullying?

One other phenomenon that has emerged is the conflating of all online behaviours and risks under one heading. Sexting is not bullying, it is largely a consensual thing, part of adolescents exploring relationships and attraction. Forcing someone to take a naked picture of themself or part of their body naked is not bullying, it is abusive and coercive behaviour. Threatening someone to do something sexually is not bullying – it is sexually aggressive behaviour. Some guidance in the UK had stated that grabbing a girl’s chest or putting your hand up her skirt is a type of bullying. We do not agree with this. That behaviour is a type of sexual assault. We must not dilute abusive behaviour. This is not an attempt to demonise children and young people, but to address the fact that if we dilute sexually aggressive behaviour we run the risk of normalising it. People are still of the opinion that ‘bullying is a normal part of growing up’ or ‘It’s just bullying’. This is why we work closely with colleagues who work in areas of violence against women and girls particularly, to make sure we give a consistent message that sexually aggressive behaviour is never acceptable and, while bullying and abusive behaviour can be linked, they are not the same thing.

There have been high profile examples of blackmail, extortion and threatening behaviour online that have been referred to in the media as cyberbullying. We need to be clear about what we are talking about. If someone is targeted, and forced to hand over money under the threat that someone will release pictures of them, they are being criminally extorted – not bullied. Using the term ‘cyberbullying’ to describe a host of other abusive behaviours only adds to the fear and confusion on how to respond.

As we move forward we must ensure that we focus on the fact that when we talk about bullying, we are talking about behaviour that happens online and face to face.

Brian

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 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

Resilience – Bullying and Agency

May 28, 2014 ~ brianorbistc ~ Leave a comment

Here is a copy of the speech I will be giving at UWS on 30 may 2014. The conference theme is resilience and I will be making the link to how we define and respond to bullying in terms of agency. It also reflects recent input to PGDE Students in Glasgow this week.

Good morning everyone – I am delighted to have been asked to come along here today and share some thoughts with you and also to hear from some of the other speakers.

I will be talking this morning about bullying and agency, covering the core theory that underpins our anti-bullying work – in terms of how we recognise and how we define bullying.

I will make the link between this and today’s theme, resilience and lastly how this influences our responses to bullying.

respectme is Scotland’s anti-bullying service – we build confidence and capacity in adults to recognise and respond to bullying. We provide training, policy guidance and support as well as campaign and develop resources for parents, children and professionals.

I will not be starting today by offering our 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.

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?

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

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.

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

Managing change and responding to challenges requires hope, a belief you can handle things – and agency and these underpin resilience.

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

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 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

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 Donnelly

Online Bullying – Evidence to Education and Cutlure Committe

March 13, 2014 ~ brianorbistc ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

These key messages include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brian Donnelly

Director respectme

February 2014