Friday 19 October 2012

Bullying is ruining our community

I’ve had my usual busy week, and on Thursday afternoon was just congratulating myself on getting the agenda papers out for our Trustee Board next week, and finishing a 14 page /40 references/links DRAFT “Strategic Review 2012” about issues in the sector- trends policies etc – when I received a vey poignant email from a 14 year old girl about bullying in school. (Hence the title of this piece). She points to the links between bullying, non-attendance at school, self-harm and depression/suicidal tendencies, and wonders what anyone is doing about it?

This was for me one of those strange moments in life when I had just written impersonally in the Strategic Review 2012 about the 10% increase in referrals to CAHMS in the last year, and here was a young person making the issue real by recounting her concern about (cyber) bullying, and the consequences for teenagers. We have exchanged emails and she is coming in to see us. I have her permission to refer to these matters, which I know are familiar to youth workers, but I wonder how big an issue this is in school communities? I will giving the issue greater prominence in the Review.

We are very busy here and have some 15 projects on the go, and so are now having weekly team meetings to keep up to speed and review progress. The projects include moving from our ancient IT to Fast Broadband and cloud computing, and commissioning an entirely new website. We are project planning the first pilot Surrey Youth enterprise workshop, probably in January to support the re-submission of our Lottery bid. And so on…but I am still troubled by the bullying issue…….

Mike

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