Dr. Paul Downes:

I have two more points to develop that. Trust building with some of the most alienated parents is a slow and difficult process but it needs family support centres as a dimension of that strategy, as well as parenting programmes, which gain credibility in the community by word of mouth. Not all the parenting programmes have to be delivered on a school site. They can be in community settings as well.

Again, we need a community dimension to this strategy. Those parenting programmes are not just focusing on preventing bullying. It is about a social and emotional education, as well as a culture shift. There are interesting examples of that such as restorative practice approaches at community level that are well developed in many Irish contexts. We need to seriously expand those dimensions. It is not impossible but there certainly is a trust issue that needs to be bridged, which needs more than schools in that trust-building process.