Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 8 June 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills

School Bullying and the Impact on Mental Health: Discussion (Resumed)

Professor Carmel Cefai:

I will begin the answer to that question and will then leave it to my other colleagues to continue. From our report for the European Commission, we emphasise that a number of good practices have been found to be more effective and others which are less likely to engage parents. Within a whole-school approach where we include all of the parents, there also needs to be a particular focus on the selected preventative approaches. Those families and those parents where bullying is taking place or where their children have been engaged in bullying need to have a particular focus in our approaches.

Second, research shows very clearly that when we just provide information in a talk-down approach, those parents who we especially need to engage with do not engage with us. We need to take an approach which is very much a sharing of our thoughts and resources together and to focus both on capacity building of the parents such as through parental education but also, and this is a very important part, to do it in an empowering rather than a talk-down way. A further very important point is to have active parent participation.

It is not just providing information. If there is a need to go to the parents, then we expect them to come to us. The focus is more on community.

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