Anti-bullying policies

An effective anti-bullying policy will act on two levels. Firstly, it will be preventative (designed to reduce bullying generally), through:

• Raising awareness of bullying throughout the whole community of people who use your services.
• Publicly acknowledging that the organisation you work for considers bullying to be a problem and is committed to dealing with it.
• Creating and supporting a culture of consideration and care for others.

Secondly, it will be curative (designed to stop specific cases of bullying; to care for and support the young person who has been bullied; and to address the behaviour of the young person/people doing the bullying, both in the immediate and long term):

• Setting out policies on dealing with incidents of bullying when they are reported to you or another member of staff at your organisation.
• Ensuring that all staff (and as far as possible all young people who you have contact with and their parents/carers) are aware of the policies and procedures involved.
• Having built-in monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to ensure that it is being consistently applied by staff.

To help your organisation develop and implement a new anti-bullying policy or revise an existing policy so that it is both preventative and curative and makes a genuine impact, there is in-depth information in all of our toolkits.

If you'd like to talk to someone about anti-bullying policies for your school or organisation, please call John Quinn on 0208 768 1020.