respectme ANNUAL REPORT 2012/13
Contents Welcome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Anti-Bullying Week . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 National Conference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Anti-Bullying Week Competition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Youth group project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Campaign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Partnerships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 International Partnerships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Local Authority Partnerships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 respectme Saltire Schools Cup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 The year in numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Welcome Hello and welcome to respectme’s Annual Review of 2012/13. We can once again look back on a busy and very productive year. It’s been a year of many highlights and challenges, some of which I will reflect upon to illustrate our achievements over the last 12 months. We have learned so much from delivering respectme in the last six and a half years, but these last 12 months have taken our learning to new levels. We have contributed training and support to colleagues internationally as well as improving and updating our resources and, quite significantly, our training toolkit. Our understanding of what we mean by bullying and how to respond has improved greatly since the toolkit was first printed and the new version reflects this. This was a hugely rewarding experience for the team and feedback on the new toolkit has been universally positive. Anti-Bullying Week saw some fantastic activity last November. The conference at Murrayfield was a huge success. It was very well attended, had a great mix of content and, as ever, significant input from children and young people. It was a real pleasure on the day to hear directly from young people about some particularly transformational experiences as well as seeing them leading workshops.
attending The Parliament and the 2013 awards will be held there again. One of the things we will be incorporating into Anti-Bullying Week this year is our first AntiBullying Awards. There will initially be two awards, which will be given in recognition of where people have really made a difference locally in relation to bullying. I look forward to sharing the outcome of the nomination process with you all later in the year. This year also saw the launch of new Local Authority policies and training partnerships. One of our areas of work in the year ahead will be re-visiting and reviewing anti-bullying policies with partners as well as develop new partnerships across Scotland to influence and improve anti-bullying work. As it stands, respectme has had a direct influence on the anti-bullying policies of 25 Local Authorities through policy development support, training and capacity building. We look forward to an equally busy, challenging and exciting year in 2013/14, and I look forward to sharing our achievements with you again next year.
This year also saw our Anti-Bullying Week Competition awards ceremony take place in The Scottish Parliament for the first time. This wonderful event showcased and rewarded the work of children and young people and it was great to see the support of so many of their peers, their schools, their friends and their parents on the day. The young people loved Brian Donnelly Director of respectme 1
Anti-Bullying Week A number of the activities we plan and develop throughout the year culminate with the arrival of National Anti-Bullying Week in November, and 2012 was no exception! National Anti-Bullying Week is an opportunity for us to highlight not only our own achievements, but also to showcase some of the great work being carried out across Scotland.
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National Conference Our sixth national conference was held at Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh on 20 November. The conference was hosted in partnership with ChildLine and Parentline Scotland, and focused on how partnership working across agencies can help to make a difference to the lives of children and young people. Over 200 delegates attended and, as with all of our conferences and events, children and young people played a significant and meaningful role in the day’s activities. Children from two Edinburgh Primary Schools helped to deliver the Peer Mediation workshops alongside Carol Hope from the Scottish Meditation Network. They played out scenarios, illustrating exactly how peer mediation plays out in a school environment. This workshop proves incredibly popular at every conference, due to the enthusiasm and knowledge shown by the children, and this year was no different.
(SBYC) on Bullying took to the stage in the afternoon to share their policy journey with delegates. The SBYC was established in 2011 and involved 12 Youth Commissioners who undertook a voluntary role to advise on the rewriting and implementation of new Anti-Bullying guidance for educational establishments in the Scottish Borders. Susan gave an overview of the full policy development process, while Alan and Liam shared stories of their experience. They also engaged the audience in an interactive game around some data gathered in their annual survey of pupils about bullying, safety and support. Caol Youth Group from Fort William received funding from respectme to develop activities which were promoted within their local community during Anti-Bullying Week in 2011. The work the group generated was amazing and the group was invited to the conference to showcase it to delegates. Part of their input also included a poem which was written as part of their Anti-Bullying Week activities, and was read out by Ruaridh MacInnes.
Susan Robb, Liam Turnbull and Alan Wise from the Scottish Borders Youth Commission
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National Conference Call takers and young people from ChildLine also took to the stage to act out a typical phone call scenario from a young person who was experiencing bullying. The scene gave delegates a real insight into how calls are handled and the conversation that call takers take people through. Three budding journalists from Lourdes Secondary School in Glasgow spent the day dipping in and out of workshops and interviewing delegates about the their thoughts on issues raised during the conference and bullying in general. And a number of young people from LGBT Youth Scotland also attended the conference and spent time on their information stand talking to delegates and asking them how they would ‘pledge’ to help put an end to homophobia and homophobic bullying.
The 2013 conference will take place at the Crowne Plaza in Glasgow on Tuesday 19 November. Further information and an online booking form are available on the respectme website. 4
Anti-Bullying Week Competition It was another year of really creative and thought-provoking entries for the Anti-Bullying Week competition. Each year the calibre of entries and the levels of creativity get higher, and the judging becomes more difficult!
Melissa Anderson from Kirknewton Primary School won the creative writing category for her poem about the thoughts of someone who was bullied. The winners were presented with their prizes at an event at the Scottish Parliament at the end of Anti-Bullying Week. Sponsored by Kezia Dugdale MSP, the event was attended by competition winners, their families and classmates.
In the performance category, students from Forfar Academy were winners for their short film, which showed the impact of bullying from the perspective of the person being bullied. Their incredibly professional submission can be The Anti-Bullying Week competition is open viewed on our YouTube channel: to children from the ages of 9 up to 16 from www.youtube.com/respectmescotland schools and youth groups across Scotland. Information about the 2013 Anti-Bullying Week competition is available on our website. We look The artistic category award went to Naomi McConnell from Lenzie Academy for her image forward to receiving your entries! depicting the fear and despair felt by someone who’s being bullied.
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Youth group project In partnership with Youth Scotland we once again awarded funding to youth groups to develop anti-bullying activities that could be promoted within their wider communities. Our funding enabled 423 young people from six Youth Scotland projects to design, develop and participate in anti-bullying projects. The youth groups were based in: Dundee, Royston, Ayrshire, Edinburgh, Motherwell and Perth. Perth YMCA group ran a successful creative arts project using poetry, photography and film. They worked with young people who wanted to express their experiences of bullying through poetry and songwriting and produced a book and a music video of these. This project reached 97 young people. Canongate Youth Project in Edinburgh ran a successful songwriting group which was used to discuss different aspects of bullying behaviour and how it impacts on the lives of everyone involved. The group then produced a CD of their song. This project reached 9 young people. Machan Trust youth group in Motherwell produced a drama on bullying that was written,
performed, filmed and edited by young people. This project reached 157 young people. Dundee LGBT Youth Scotland group produced a comic strip on bullying that dealt with issues around homophobia and homophobic bullying in education. This project reached 21 young people. Royston group in Glasgow ran afterschool sessions to raise awareness of bullying. They also held a song writing workshop and held an event where this and other anti-bullying work was shared with the local community and teachers from the local schools. This projected reached 79 young people. The Maybole Youth club in Ayrshire held a variety of anti-bullying sessions. They made anti-bullying t-shirts and produced an antibullying charter as well as looking at all the different types of bullying and its consequences. This project reached 60 young people. This project is a great way for us to showcase the work of children and young people, and we are offering funding to another five youth groups in 2013 to help them develop realise their ideas.
Machan Trust youth group in Motherwell produced a drama on bullying that was written, performed, filmed and edited by young people. This project reached 157 young people. 6
Campaign For our 2012 campaign we revisited the message, ‘you have to respect me…’ This message is fundamental to respectme and underpins all of the work we do, so it made sense to communicate it in such a way that reached – and engaged with – a wide audience of adults, as well as children and young people. It’s a message which has been well received by adults and children and young people alike, with many commenting that it makes bullying behaviour easier to contextualise and to talk about.
We commissioned a campaign video and took a slightly different approach to promoting it, opting to use social media platforms to share the message rather than embarking on an advertising campaign. We wanted people to encourage people to like and share the message with friends, family and colleagues and to use it as a discussion point when talking about bullying behaviour. To date the video has been viewed over 2,500 times. The campaign can be viewed on our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/respectmescotland. Feel free to share with others and give us your views!
For our 2012 campaign we revisited the message, ‘you have to respect me…’
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Partnerships Partnerships are key to the work that we do, both nationally and internationally. Every year we build new partnerships, while continuing to work with wellestablished partners, and 2012/2013 has seen a lot of activity! We continue to work closely with ChildLine, who will once again be partners at our national conference in Anti-Bullying Week. We have developed new working relationships with colleagues at Zero Tolerance and the Violence Reduction Unit’s MVP programme (Mentors in Violence Prevention) both of whom will also play a part in the 2013 conference. We developed an innovative ‘Respect at Work’ policy for our management partner SAMH, and developed a training programme for staff to help implement the policy throughout the organisation.
Work is also ongoing with Secure and Residential Child Care Providers, Scotland’s Colleges and Aberlour Child Care Trust. Within North Lanarkshire, Balfour Beatty Workplace is contracted to deliver facilities management services to a number of different schools. Recognising their presence in schools, and their own desire to raise awareness of anti-bullying, the company have had a fleet of their vehicles branded with the respectme logo. They have also distributed 300 copies of our cyberbullying booklet among children participating in their ‘Soccer Sevens’ tournament, and their school-based staff and janitors have begun attending a programme of respectme training, which will see 40 staff members trained at four different events.
We have developed new working relationships with colleagues at Zero Tolerance and the Violence Reduction Unit’s MVP programme (Mentors in Violence Prevention) both of whom will also play a part in the 2013 conference. 8
International Partnerships In February respectme Director, Brian Donnelly attended an international conference in Slovenia as part of a Scottish delegation. ‘Breaking the Walls of Silence’ was a conference dedicated to exploring current situations and trends in addressing the topic of homophobia in education at an EU and national level. Brian talked about the respectme model, which has a clear focus on equalities and children’s rights, and is backed up by the National Approach to Anti-Bullying for Scotland’s Children and Young People. This model has enabled an approach towards homophobia and homophobic bullying to be mainstreamed in Scotland. Brian was also invited to Vienna to deliver two days of anti-bullying training to colleagues from Samera, a project based in Austria dealing with violence against children. Representatives from Samera visited Scotland last year and as part of their visit Brian met with them to discuss respectme’s approach to bullying and how it reflects our culture and the way we are governed in Scotland. Despite their years of work around violence and relationships they had never focused on bullying, or ‘mobbing’ as the behaviour is known as across Central Europe.
They were becoming increasingly aware of this behaviour and were looking for a framework or approach that they felt could help compliment their work - and they chose respectme’s. Training was delivered to 30 members of Samera’s network in Vienna, comprising 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 found looking at bullying as taking something away from a person and viewing their role as helping to get that back, really useful. Find out more about the training on Brian’s blog! (http://briandrespectme.blogspot.co.uk/) We also received a letter of thanks from Ruairi Quinn, the Minister for Education & Skills in Ireland, for our contribution to Ireland’s Action Plan on Bullying. The work of respectme , our academic paper on bullying and bullying definitions, and the National Approach to AntiBullying for Scotland’s Children and Young People have all influenced the development of Ireland’s Action Plan on Bullying. You can read the full document here: www.education.ie/en/ Publications/Education-Reports/Action-Plan-OnBullying-2013.pdf
They found our definition of bullying as it impacts on a person’s agency, to be one that made a lot of sense. 9
Local Authority Partnerships We continue to work with a number of Scotland’s Local Authorities on the development and review of their anti-bullying policies and practices. We worked closely with North Lanarkshire on the development of its Anti-Bullying policy, and a resource pack was also produced, incorporating the views of young people, together with supporting information leaflets for parents/carers and young people themselves. To support the implementation of the policy, 130 teaching staff from across North Lanarkshire attended respectme training – the biggest anti-bullying organisational training we have delivered to date.
Similar policy development work was undertaken with Perth & Kinross, West Lothian, Falkirk and East Renfrewshire Councils this year, and policy revisions are underway with North Ayrshire, Inverclyde, West Dunbartonshire and Argyll & Bute Councils. In addition, Edinburgh City Council is extending the scope of their anti-bullying policy to include residential units. respectme has now engaged with 25 of Scotland’s local authorities on the development, review and implementation of their anti-bullying policies. Information on each of the 32 Local Authorities and the position of their current anti-bullying policy is available on the respectme website: www.respectme.org.uk/ local_authorities.html.
To support the implementation of the policy, 130 teaching staff from across North Lanarkshire attended respectme training – the biggest anti-bullying organisational training we have delivered to date. 10
Case Study In the spring of 2013, North Lanarkshire Council undertook an ambitious programme of training in association with respectme. This followed the production of North Lanarkshire’s new antibullying package which was launched in March 2013 at St Andrews High School in Coatbridge. This new policy package was an impressive piece of focused teamwork by North Lanarkshire staff from all sectors of education, and chaired and co-ordinated by North Lanarkshire’s Inclusion Support Base. respectme’s Partnership Manager, Lorraine Glass, was involved at every stage of the process as it was North Lanarkshire’s desire to make sure its new policy conformed to both Scottish Government guidelines and to respectme’s advice on uniformity of language used. One of the central elements of North Lanarkshire’s new policy package was the commitment to have a respectme trained trainer in all 150 of the authority’s schools. Consequently the staff at the Inclusion Support Base delivered a programme of training partnership with respectme in which every school would send a representative to respectme’s Training for Trainers event, hosted by the authority. Although the training was mandated by the authority, schools responded enthusiastically to the training events. At the end of the process we managed to train 130 new trainers out of a target of 152. Staff took their new skills back to their schools and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. The intention is to train the remaining schools in the new session. I highly recommend this training package to every authority in Scotland, as its effects are seen immediately the delegates return to their schools. Ed Griesl, North Lanarkshire Council
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respectme Saltire Schools Cup We were delighted to once again be associated with the Saltire Schools Cup, Scotland Rugby League’s flagship schools competition. The Saltire Schools Cup rugby league tournament is open to every secondary school in Scotland, and plays a vital role in introducing the game to an ever increasing number of young people throughout Scotland. It’s great to be associated with such a tournament, which promotes friendship, team effort and dedication among young people. This year’s finals of the Schools Cup competition were played at Broadwood Stadium in Cumbernauld on Thursday 20th June. This year’s winners were Westhill Academy from Aberdeen (S1) and North Berwick High School (S2/S3).
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Training 2012 saw the introduction of our revised training toolkit,’ Bullying… it’s never Acceptable – A Practitioner’s Guide’. A lot of the learning and reflection we’ve experienced over the last six years have allowed us to refine some of the language we use, particularly when looking at issues such as bullying definitions. The revised training encompasses this and has been delivered to a number of adults across Scotland as part of organisational and individual Training for Trainers events. The number of adults attending our training remained high this year:
261 222
people attended our generic anti-bullying training, ‘It’s never acceptable’
78
people attended Cyberbullying training
people attended Training for Trainers
All of our training events are free to attend and details of available dates and times can be found on the respectme website.
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The year in numbers
4 O8 8 6 56 Total number of people who have attended respectme training to date:
Total number of people who have been trained to deliver respectme training to date:
Number of people who have been trained in the last year:
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The year in numbers
20 102, 40 Number of people trained by organisational trainers in the last year:
Number of respectme publications requested in the last year:
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The year in numbers
2 35% Number of respectme training events held in the last year:
Total increase in number of followers on Twitter from last year
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Scottish Charity No. SC-008897 Registered Office: respectme Brunswick House 51 Wilson Street Glasgow G1 1UZ T: E: W:
0844 800 8600 enquire@respectme.org.uk www.respectme.org.uk