Summary
Should bullying be viewed as trauma? In this episode of School Behaviour Secrets, we speak with guests Paula Timms and Nathalie Noret from Kidscape about groundbreaking research on the lasting impact caused by bullying.
Discover how trauma-informed practices can transform how schools support students, reduce harm, and challenge misconceptions about bullying. Tune in for practical strategies every teacher, school leader, and parent needs to know.
Important links:
Explore Kidscape’s resources and research by visiting their website.
Download our FREE behaviour resources for use in school: https://beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/resources.php
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Show notes / transcription
[00:00:00 - 00:03:59] Simon Currigan
Here's an important question for you. Should we be thinking about the impact of bullying on victims as trauma using a trauma informed lens to understand what they've gone through and how we can best support them in the future? The answer according to Paula Timms and Nathalie Noret from Kidscape is yes. They're gonna share their latest research with us about what happens when you do think about the impact of bullying through the lens of trauma and what that means for us as teachers and school leaders supporting kids in school. This is an important episode of School Behaviour Secrets. You don't wanna miss this. Welcome to the School Behavior Secrets podcast.
I'm your host, Simon Currigan. My co host is Emma Shackleton, and we're obsessed with helping teachers, school leaders, parents, and, of course, students when classroom behaviour gets in the way of success. We're gonna share the tried and tested secrets to classroom management, behavioural special needs, whole school strategy, and more, all with the aim of helping your students reach their true potential. Plus, we'll be letting you eavesdrop on our conversations with thought leaders from around the world. So you'll get to hear the latest evidence based strategies before anyone else. This is the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. Hi there.
Simon Currigan here from Beacon School Support with this week's episode of School Behaviour Secrets, and it's an important one because we're gonna be exploring what happens when you think about the impact of bullying through the lens of trauma informed practice. And in my interview with Paula Timms and Nathalie Noret, they're gonna tell us what their research found out, and I think one of the one of the things came about that was quite shocking actually that when you look at the experiences kids have had and the behaviours that you see and the impact on them, actually, when you look at clinical scores for trauma, actually, they do qualify as having a clinical trauma, so that's coming up in just one minute. If you're finding these podcasts useful, if you're finding this information helpful in your workout in schools, either with the kids that you work with or perhaps you're supporting a colleague, then don't keep it to yourself. Remember to like and subscribe because when you do that, it prompts the algorithm gods to share school behavior secrets with other school leaders, teachers, and parents just like you who really need this information. I've got some important news coming up as well about the podcast. I'm not gonna tell you what that important news is. I'm just gonna trail it down.
I'm just gonna leave it hanging in the air. I'll tell you more about what we're going to be doing and how the podcast is gonna be changing next week the week after. So, with no more ado, it's time for my conversation with Paula Timms and Nathalie Noret from Kidscape, who explain the implications of their important research. Today, I'm very excited to welcome Paula Timms and Nathalie Noret from Kidscape to the show. Kidscape is a bullying prevention charity offering practical help for children and young people to challenge bullying and protect young lives. Paula joined Kidscape as CEO in September 2023 and is an experienced strategic leader within the children's sector across the UK. She has worked in charity and local government organizations, including earlier childcare, education, family support, and mental health services.
Paula is passionate about fairness and equality for all, championing children's rights, and working to create a world where all children and young people can thrive. Nathalie is a senior lecturer at the Department of Education at the University of York. Her interest is broadly focused on understanding children's and adolescents' experiences of bullying, and her current research focuses on the relationship between such experiences, poor mental health, and the traumatic impact of bullying. She is also interested in evaluating interventions used to support those being bullied to reduce the impact of their experiences on their mental health. Paula and Nathalie, welcome to the show.
[00:03:59 - 00:04:01] Nathalie Noret
Welcome. Hello.
[00:04:01 - 00:04:15] Simon Currigan
So this is a really important topic. I think what we should do is look at what we already know about the impact of bullying. So can you tell me what do we already know about the mental health outcomes for children who are affected by bullying at school?
[00:04:15 - 00:05:34] Nathalie Noret
About 20, 30 years worth of research has shown us that being bullied in school is associated with a range of poor mental health outcomes. And those poor mental health outcomes can include a greater sense of anxiety, more feelings of anxiety, more likely to experience feelings of depression, greater feelings of suicidal thoughts, more likely to engage in self harm behaviour, alongside what we refer to as externalizing symptoms of mental health, so things like feeling angry, feeling more hostile. And these mental health outcomes, we see them almost immediately when someone's being bullied, but we can also see these mental health outcomes continue over a longer period of time. So what we know is that being bullied in school in terms of mental health outcomes is associated with really profound poor mental health symptoms alongside really challenging thoughts about the self. So poorer self esteem, more likely to struggle with feelings of loneliness, challenges with friendship. So the impact is is wide ranging. It can vary from child to child, but what we do now is that being bullied in school is consistently related to a range of poor mental health outcomes.
[00:05:35 - 00:05:37] Simon Currigan
And we're talking about a lot of children here, aren't we?
[00:05:38 - 00:06:19] Nathalie Noret
Sadly, there's a a report that just came out in September called the Good Childhood Report, and it's a national report that looks at a range of mental health outcomes for children and young people alongside their feelings of how happy they are, how much they they they like being at school, how much that they engage with school. And that good childhood report has highlighted that currently in the UK, we have the 2nd highest prevalence of being bullied out of European countries and that included 27 other European countries. So we are currently second in terms of the frequency of being bullied in school. So we are talking about a lot of children and young people.
[00:06:20 - 00:07:30] Paula Timms
The only thing I'd add is it really saddens me how many people I speak to as adults that were bullied as children, and it was it was regarded as a normal thing to happen. It was normal for them to be thinking, I've just got 3 more years to get through school, kept my head down for 3 years. And these people, when they become adults, they don't do the jobs they really wanted to do because they're too afraid. They've lost their confidence. They won't speak at events. They won't they won't tell partners about what happened to them because they're concerned. Their friendships are damaged because of it.
So it it kind of that that's the thing for me is what happens on a real life basis when we talk about mental health, but how does that really impact people going about their everyday lives? And the number of parents that phone us on our parent advice line concerned that their children are being bullied also experienced bullying themselves. And they're worried that that will spiral into the same kind of sequencing of behaviour, really, for them and this and circumstances.
[00:07:30 - 00:08:19] Simon Currigan
You make a really good point there, I think. You know, as someone who's worked in a school, when a child comes to us and they're saying they're being bullied, often our focus is what happens now in the moment. And, actually, what you're saying is the longer term, this is life limiting. It's potential limiting even even for adults in their twenties, thirties, forties, fifties. So these are significant events that impact us across our lifetime. We're here today because you've done some new research. That's kind of the that's what sparked this conversation.
And your new report, it's looking at that damage done, which we've started to touch on, through the lens of trauma. So before we actually get into what that research says, I think we should start by defining our terms for people that are are new to this topic. So when you talk about trauma, how are you defining that? What do you actually mean?
[00:08:20 - 00:09:44] Nathalie Noret
So when we're talking about trauma, what we're really talking about is events that have escalated to such an extent that we're no longer able to cope with them. What technically we refer to as it has basically damaged all of the resources we have available. Help seeking isn't working. Talking to others isn't working. It has really broken down the systems that we would typically use to try and manage a stressful experience. And what we see in people who are traumatized are feelings of being scared, feelings of feeling threatened, and feelings of really just being unsafe in their environment. So when we're talk talking about trauma, it really is that as an almost umbrella term.
And what we've tried to do in the first report that we've produced is try and explain trauma in in a little bit more detail, getting into the nitty gritty of quite formal diagnostic criteria about what does trauma look like if we're talking about things like post traumatic stress, and really tried to highlight how experiences of being bullied align with how we technically talk about trauma. So in my mind, in if I put it in the simplest terms, it's something that has just broken down our systems that we typically use to cope with challenging and stressful everyday experiences.
[00:09:44 - 00:09:52] Simon Currigan
So how did you set out then to research whether trauma was the right lens to look at the damage done by bullying?
[00:09:52 - 00:11:49] Nathalie Noret
In terms of trying to think about bullying as a trauma, for a bit of background, the the research in bullying typically comes from an education based focus. So it's those who are engaged in education based research. You may have some psychologists like my, like myself who are interested in how bullying impacts development and then you'll also have contributions from sociologists who take a broader sort of social lens on bullying. Then we have a parallel set of literature that has looked at trauma and that typically comes from a more clinical perspective. In other recent years there's been a growing movement to recognize how being bullied can be conceptualized as a traumatic experience because there is still this almost like persistent myth, I guess, in some people that bullying is just something children and young people will have to deal with at school. It happens. You even hear people say it's character building.
It helps children learn. All of these rather challenging misconceptions of bullying, which are still evident today. And I think for our perspective, we were trying to say if we adopt a trauma lens, if we try and recognize bullying as a traumatic experience, it opens up lots of opportunities to better understand why is being bullied associated with all these mental health outcomes? What what is it about that experience that leads to greater feelings of anxiety, depression, and all these negative outcomes? But also leads us with opportunities for different forms of intervention, which I'm sure we'll get onto in a moment, but I'm sure many people will have heard of a growing interest in what's known as trauma informed practice in school. And if we're adopting that type of approach and it's being used with other forms of traumatic experience, can it be used to help children and young people who are being bullied in school? And I think that's the research lens.
I'll pass to Paula for more of the Kidscape lens at that point.
[00:11:49 - 00:12:56] Paula Timms
So Kidscape will be 40 years next year, so we've been doing this work a long time. And you might wonder why, well why isn't it problem solved? And I suppose that's kind of what we what the crux of our problem is, is that, as Nathalie explains, you know, bullying is very prevalent. It's almost been regarded as a rite of passage for children through school by some people. What happens at Kidscape is that we do lots of bullying prevention work. We really promote whole school approaches of cultures of kindness and compassion. And, you know, for some children, that works really well.
You know, that prevention model works really well. But we also run a parent advice line where parents can call when they really are at the end of the line. They don't know where to turn. The impact on parents is quite severe. They often can't work, you know, because their children can't go to school. And for those children, the interventions just weren't available. You know, what do you do when someone has
[00:12:57 - 00:12:57] Simon Currigan
all
[00:12:57 - 00:13:48] Paula Timms
the early interventions haven't worked? All those prevention models aren't working? There are some children for which they were being chronically bullied so frequent and often. Also, though, may have other aspects of their lives and their makeup that makes them even more susceptible or vulnerable to any kind of outside influence and behaviour, such as bullying. And so I think that understanding what interventions would work outside of education and thinking about more clinical interventions and therapeutic interventions opens the door to thinking, actually, is there a trauma informed approach here to take? You know, what's happening the wider situation for this child in terms of their health and well-being, not just their school lives?
[00:13:49 - 00:14:53] Nathalie Noret
Kidscape is exactly the types of things that you've just been asking us about, you know, the sort of prevalence, the use of interventions. And what we're really beginning to see from a sort of research perspective is while there's lots of anti bullying interventions out there, they're not always effective, or they might lead to sort of smaller reductions in the behaviour. So we're left in a really challenging situations where we know what the mental health impact is. We know how many children and young people are being bullied. Our interventions aren't necessarily helpful for all children. So we have a real group of vulnerable pupils, and that vulnerable group of pupils are the ones who are being systematically, chronically bullied and we're asking them to go back into school. We're asking them to go to school and to return to that experience and that I think with my academic hat on, to sort of mirror what Paula is saying from the the sort of practical side of things, is why that trauma lens has huge potential to help us understand that experience in particular.
[00:14:53 - 00:15:06] Simon Currigan
Do we have any research on on how prevalent bullying is in schools? And also, are there any sort of common characteristics that make that might make someone more prone to being bullied?
[00:15:06 - 00:16:02] Nathalie Noret
The Anti Bullying Alliance's last national survey, I want to say, which was in 2022, did so they basically did a a survey looking at the prevalence of bullying in approximately 30,000 pupils in schools across the UK well, across England and Wales. Sorry. And they identified that approximately 71% of those pupils had ever been bullied. So that includes children at that point who report being bullied once or twice or every so often. So so the sort of less frequent end. The more frequent end, you're looking at approximately 25% of children, young people report being chronically bullied. So that's at least once a week or or more often.
So we're getting a sense that that's fairly consistent with the types of prevalence rates we see in the data, which typically show approximately 15 to 20% of children and young people are bullied in school.
[00:16:02 - 00:18:15] Paula Timms
It's it's really important to sort of cite this in the context of, you know, we we we do believe that bullying is a behaviour. And, obviously, children child development, you know, children will try out different behaviour. Behaviours will come through group situations of being coerced or intimidated or led in a certain way. So if we look at bullying through a behaviour lens, and then we understand well, actually, if we're talking 1 in 4 children. So if you've got a primary school of 200 children, around 50 children in that assembly hall are currently experiencing bullying of some kind. We need to accept this happens. It's not an issue that the school is doing something wrong.
It's not an issue that this football club has got the wrong culture. You know, it's everywhere, and it's a behavioral issue that we really need to understand more about and understand how to respond to appropriately. To go back to your other part of the question, Simon, there are more children there are certain children that are more vulnerable to bullying. We know that. Children who are neurodivergent, autism or ADHD, have a much higher percentage of bullying, often because their perceived interactions and social relationships are not quite as stupid as where they need to be or their communication levels are difficult. It's really important with those children that you hear what they're saying and you watch them and understand what's happening for them. And then any child with any kind of vulnerability, that means that they could already be in a heightened state of trauma.
So a child in the care system looked after child, child query LGBTQ plus, going through transition. Transition points are a key time in a child's life going between different schools or different school years. So there's lots of different things, your normal kind of fun little pupils that you really need to keep that extra eye on because they will be more susceptible to have being impacted by bullying.
[00:18:16 - 00:18:26] Simon Currigan
So when you did your research looking at a trauma informed approach, looking at the impacts of bullying, When your research came in and you got the results, what did you find?
[00:18:27 - 00:21:11] Nathalie Noret
I was quite surprised by the impact the bullying was having in terms of the widespread impact it was having on the parents who were reporting these things for us as part of the research. So basically what we did is we asked parents to tell us a little bit about their child's experiences of bullying, Talk about the impact the bullying had had on their child, but also the impact that it had had on their broader family. So them themselves, but also any other family members that were at home. And I think in terms of the findings of the initial part of the analysis, what we saw was in all of the 18 children that were part of the project at the start, all of them had what's known as clinically relevant levels of trauma. We also identified the types of negative outcomes that we've already talked about in terms of poor mental health, so depression, suicidal attempts. There was also instances of self harm. There was also a lot of discussion by parents in the questionnaire around the impact it was having on their education.
So it it sounds quite a common sense response, you know, in terms of, obviously, this behaviour happens at school. So therefore, the children and the young people were scared to go to school. They didn't want to be there.
They were avoiding going. But even if they were there, they were very vigilant to the potential threat of bullying. So they were watching out. They couldn't concentrate. They couldn't engage as well because they were frightened and they were scared. Alongside that, when we looked at the impact it was having on on the parents themselves, we saw that they were talking about the immense stress that it was causing the family, the sense of helplessness because they couldn't stop the behaviour. They couldn't, stop it immediately, that they didn't really know what else to do. They felt they'd followed the standard guidelines of talking to the schools, trying to get help, but the bullying was continuing.
So we get this real sense of helplessness coming out from the parents. There were parents who'd given up their jobs to look after their children who were struggling to go to school. There was conflict in the family. So there was disagreements between the parents about how the bullying should be managed, what they should do, you know, as Paula said earlier on, you know, there are parents who've been bullied who who may have a particular perception on how you help, and how you intervene. But there's also parents who think, you know, you just need to get on. You just need to get on. You go to school, you deal with it.
So the impact was varied, profound, and widespread in terms of it not just being on the child, but it being on the prof on the wider family as well.
[00:21:11 - 00:21:23] Simon Currigan
I think it's worth saying as well. When we talk about those parents who are saying you've gotta pick yourself up and and and, you know, go on with life, They're not callous. They're not hard hearted people that are saying that because they love their kids, and they want them to thrive and do well.
[00:21:23 - 00:22:55] Nathalie Noret
It's certainly not a criticism. You know, we can understand where that perception comes from because, you know, often when we're dealing with stressful situations, we don't hide away from that. It's a it's a it's a typical experience, isn't it, which we all face and we we deal with it, we we cope with it, and we use strategies to to try and overcome. What's important from these findings in terms of the impact of the family is just how the child's experiences of bullying can cause some tension in terms of knowing how best to support. And these differences of opinion coming through in terms of, well, actually, we don't know what to do. We don't know what to do for the best. And it must be really difficult for parents whose children, young people who are being so chronically bullied in school.
So that was almost the first phase of the research. And then the second phase of the research was basically to see how this trauma informed therapeutic intervention helps support those children and young people who are being chronically bullied in school. Very simply, what we found was some real beneficial impacts in terms of reducing levels of trauma symptoms and from the stories that the parents, provided us with, we got a sense that many of the children who had been struggling were beginning to reengage with their education, were developing their confidence and their self esteem again and they were able to go back to school. Some of them were able to move schools, but we found that that very intense intervention was really helpful for the children and young people who were involved in the study.
[00:22:56 - 00:23:19] Simon Currigan
You've started touching on interventions and support. So what are the implications here for schools? How does this affect how we respond to instance of bullying when kids come to us come to us as as, say, an individual teacher working in a classroom. A child comes to us or they find us in the playground and they say I'm being bullied. How should we change your approach, or what kind of approach is gonna be effective?
[00:23:20 - 00:25:14] Paula Timms
One of the overriding things that came through for me from the research was children saying not being believed and being told there is no evidence or you're not the kind of child that would get bullied. You're very popular. You're on the rugby team. What whatever. You know? That perception that there is a child a type of child that gets bullied and a type of behaviour that is experienced. I think my overriding thing to say to to schools and to anybody involved in working with children would be, if a child tells you that something's happening, please put your safeguarding hat on. And in the first instance, believe them because if you take that kind of approach, that pathway, you are then believing the child and alongside the child, you're giving them a bit of hope because I think the traumatic experience of children involved in the trial in the research was that not being believed just added to the trauma of having to having to prove something was happening to you, having to evidence that that was happening.
And I think that that probably then diminishes their resilience to be able to cope with and their coping strategies. You know? So that approach of I'll just go back, face your bully won't work in that situation if they're not believed. You you don't have to be a trauma trauma informed practitioner. You don't have to be a mental health practitioner because you all listen to children every day from a safeguarding context. Just view view it as that. Is there a safeguarding issue here?
Is this child at harm? Do I need to understand what's going on for this child? And that's where having that trauma informed lens really helps us, doesn't it?
[00:25:14 - 00:25:31] Simon Currigan
Believe the child, receive what they're saying, nonjudgmental, taking them seriously, taking the time to listen to their their stories and accounts of of what's happening to them. So we do that. We trust them. We believe that what they're saying is true.
What comes next?
[00:25:32 - 00:27:05] Paula Timms
We've then really got to think about that going back to that situation and said, well, bullying's a behaviour. You know, and understanding the dynamics of what's going on here in the classroom situation, in the group situation. It could be a gang of people involved. It could be a friendship group. Now, that's often a thing that comes back is, but they're your best friend. But that best friend might have been systematically bullying over a number of months. So, it's really important then to really observe those behaviour.
We do some we and the Anti Bullying Alliance have got some great resources and tips on our websites and videos about that group dynamic and to really think about that as a as a behaviour that needs to be changed. It's not about blaming an individual. It's not about punishing an individual. Please don't go down the punishment route because that never helps. It's about understanding what's going on for the children that are doing the harmful behaviour as well. You know, and that's where a trauma informed lens helps again, doesn't it? So it's about then going down that actually, is there a behavior approach here?
Is there a whole class approach that I can take about what behaviors we regard as the right behaviors in the school without victimizing the person that actually is doing harmful behaviors. And I would say that that that kind of those two approaches together, as well as that whole school culture of kindness, well-being, openness, transparency would really help.
[00:27:06 - 00:29:19] Nathalie Noret
Yeah. I agree completely. And I think what what you were saying before, Paula, in terms of believing the child or young person is is is something that has come through so strongly in the report. And it it ties very closely to that trauma informed approach of sort of validation and that that belief of the child that, you know, they've they've followed what they think they should do, which is all the guidance that comes through from the anti bullying charities. You know, tell a trusted adult, tell someone at home, and and they will help you. That's that's, you know, what we've been saying for years around bullying. So that validation of that report is really, really important.
I think the only thing that I would add to what Paula had said, you know, because the whole school approach is really, really important, But also for the child and the young person who's reporting the experiences, empowering them to have a say in what happens next seems to be really important. All too often, we're hearing stories, not just in this project, but but in in lots of projects. And and Paula and colleagues at Kidscape have, I'm sure, heard this as well. You know, they will often be the one that's moved. The child or young person who's being bullied is the one who gets moved into a different class, and it's a bit unclear as to why. And it might be a bit more disempowering because it's not clear why they're the ones who have to change or they're the ones who are being moved. So I think one of the questions is around, well, what would make you feel safer?
What would help you in this situation? What do you want us to do? And in some classes, it may be, I I don't want to sit near that person. I don't wanna see them in my own or whatever it may be. I need to sit behind them, for example, because that sense of having the person who's bullying you behind you is quite a threatening experience for someone who's being seriously bullied in school. So whether particularly at primary school, this is a bit easier than secondary, you know, a bit of a shift in terms of, sort of, the seating plans and things like that. So I think it is those 2 key trauma principles or trauma informed principles around validation and increasing perception of safety is key, which I think ties in really nicely with those whole school approaches around sort of cultural changes, around support, empowerment, and things like that.
[00:29:19 - 00:29:28] Simon Currigan
Are there any other whole school policy level implications from the research that if a school leader's listening to this they should be thinking about implementing?
[00:29:29 - 00:30:40] Nathalie Noret
There is a huge move as we said at the beginning towards the more trauma informed practices in school and obviously the intervention that we've evaluated for this was not an in school intervention, it was it sat outside the school so those children who were being chronically bullied dealt with a third party, they dealt with a counselling organisation, but the principles of trauma informed practice to support those who are being bullied in school. So if you have colleagues who are undertaking trauma informed practice how can you take that training and apply it to a bullying situation? So if you have an anti bullying policy, is there space within that in terms of how you're responding to incidences of bullying to to state and to articulate that that we will view this and we will support children and young people involved in bullying from a trauma informed approach. And those two key principles of of validation, belief, empowerment, and safety, and how you will try and help a child or young person through that process might be helped from us from a sort of policy point of view. Again, that's that's a sort of new approach, I guess, to anti bullying policies, slightly different, but what we always say about anti bullying work and school and anti bullying policies is they work best when they're integrated and not separate.
[00:30:41 - 00:30:57] Simon Currigan
If you're a school leader or a teacher or or indeed a parent listening to this podcast, what's the first step, the one thing that you can take away today based on your research to better support kids who might be being affected by bullying right now?
[00:30:57 - 00:31:53] Nathalie Noret
I think we're probably both gonna say exactly the same thing. Correct me if I'm wrong, Paula, but I think the first thing, the first one thing to do is believe children and young people when they tell you they're being bullied. And I think changing cultures nationally around education and where bullying sits within school has led, I think more recently to a fear that if bullying's going on in school that that's a judgement of the school And what we're trying to say is we need to move away from that and we need to focus on the children and young people who are who are involved in that dynamic. And for me, for those children who are experiencing the bullying, that need to be believed is just so important. And that need to regain a sense of safety so that they don't disengage from education, I guess is my one fundamental takeaway from this project.
[00:31:54 - 00:33:42] Paula Timms
Agree wholeheartedly. Absolutely. But I kind of feel that we've got 2 because there's 2 of us. So, I've got to put another one in, but I would say that's the number one. If you're a school leader, I think I would probably ask you to just be open to the fact, even though you may not be seeing it, it may not be in reported, open to the fact that bullying is happening in your school and just raise awareness about having those conversations. It may feel a bit like a Pandora's box that, oh my gosh, if I lift the lid, I've got to deal with that. But if you don't lift the lid, the consequences of not doing that could be far worse.
You know, your attendance will go up, your results will go up, your achievements, your health and well-being of your pupils goes up, your community engagement goes up, your parental support goes up. So I would say it's kind of like it's a it's it feels like it's something that's bubbling around onto the surface. It's happening for children every day. We're kind of using a lens of mental health and well-being, and we're using that to report on absences. I mean, school absences is a huge indicator of why aren't children here. You know? Is there something more going on?
So just be open to it. Open to it. Not be afraid of it. Seek out for guidance. There's lots of charity support that will help you, but just have that awareness that this is probably happening here and how are we having these conversations? Because the more we open up about them, the less the stigma there'll be around it.
[00:33:42 - 00:33:48] Simon Currigan
And how can we find out more about the report that you've written and the resources you have and the work that you're doing?
[00:33:48 - 00:34:25] Paula Timms
So we've set up a new page around trauma and bullying on our Kidscape website. You can download, a webinar that, Nathalie delivered for us that goes into the research in a bit more detail. The report is there.
The summary is there. We are working together to follow-up that with some specific training that we hope to do later, well early next year. And, yeah, lots reach out to us if you want us to come in and talk to you. We'll do talks. Natalie, has there anything to add?
[00:34:25 - 00:34:51] Nathalie Noret
I think on the Kidscape website, yeah, as Paula says, there's the reports that also links if you're interested in the sort of research background that links to our research pages, which goes into sort of some of the more research elements a little bit more. But I think in terms of of finding out more, Paula is exactly right. Reaching out to to Kidscape, looking at AntiBullying Alliance website for other resources that I know many schools are familiar with, and just reach out to us.
[00:34:51 - 00:35:22] Simon Currigan
And to help people, I'll put some direct links to sort of the pages and the resources you've been talking about. So if you're listening to the podcast, the audio version, all you need to do is tap and have a look in the episode description, you'll see the link there. And if you're watching this on YouTube, I'll put the I'll put the link in the comments underneath the video. Finally, and we asked this of all our guests. We've got 2 guests today, so we've got we've got 2 sets of answers. I'd be really interested to hear what you say. Who's the key figure that's influenced you, or what's the key book that's had the biggest impact on your approach to working with children?
[00:35:23 - 00:37:14] Paula Timms
Very early on in my career, I worked with a I was on training with a a pupil referral unit head teacher, and it was very beginning of pupil referral units being developed and run. And he said something, he's passed away now. I don't even know his name, but he he said, no child is born evil. It's it's the behaviours and the environment that we we teach them, you know, the behaviours that they adopt. And I thought, well, if he can run a PRU based on that principle and belief that actually these children are behaving wrongly or badly have learned the behaviour, the environment's caused it, something's triggered it. And then more recently looking at trauma work, to think that that has really influenced me, my approach to That that kind of that always comes back to me. But more recently sorry.
I it's not one person. More recently, there was a a a an adult that's fundraised for us, a great guy called Josh Braid. He went to the Antarctic. He did an, expedition to the South Pole for 3 weeks last Christmas to raise funding and awareness of bullying KidScape. He was bullied during his teenage years throughout his secondary school life. He has only now in his adult life with a young family started talking about what happened to him. And that sits in this particular role that I'm carrying out now.
That sits really close to why I do what I do because you've just fast forward and you've got this adult who's now got a family who's never told people about his experience because he is one of those people that thought I just gotta get through the next few years. I very nearly didn't.
[00:37:15 - 00:37:18] Simon Currigan
Nathalie, what's what's gonna be your choice?
[00:37:19 - 00:38:24] Nathalie Noret
When I was doing my undergraduate dissertation, which strangely enough was actually on trauma, and it was on victimization in adults and post traumatic stress disorder. And then for quite some time, I moved away from trauma and then have revisited it through this project. And there is a book by Bessel van der Kolk, which is called the Body Keeps The Scar, and it's about the way that trauma impacts on people. It talks about the history of trauma, it talks about different treatments and support for trauma and it's beautifully written, it's accessible, it's not your typical academic book, it is just a really really interesting read on how trauma can affect us and how trauma can affect children and young people. So his work has been pivotal in helping us understand in particular developmental trauma disorder and how trauma can impact on children and young people. So if you're interested in the type of work that we're doing, I would strongly recommend that book.
[00:38:24 - 00:38:33] Simon Currigan
Paula and Nathalie, thank you for sharing your time with us today to to share the results of your research. You're doing some really, really important work. Thank you for joining us.
[00:38:33 - 00:38:34] Paula Timms
It's a happy
[00:38:35 - 00:38:36] Nathalie Noret
thank you very much.
[00:38:37 - 00:39:19] Simon Currigan
And that was Paula Timms and Nathalie Noret from Kidscape talking about the impact of their research into looking at bullying through the prism of trauma informed practice. Some interesting food for thought in that interview, not least that in this day and age, we're you know, still 1 in 4 kids are experiencing bullying, and many, many kids are going to adults in schools and not being believed. So if you found that interview useful or interesting, or you think that it might have an impact, not just in your school, but other schools too, please remember to share it with other colleagues so that this information can do as much good as possible. I hope you have an excellent week. I'll see you next time on School Behaviour Secrets.
(This automated transcript may not be 100% accurate.)
