Review on the effects of an antibullying free number issued by the ministry of education, university and research

Volpini L.

legalità, responsabilità e cittadinanza

Italian

English

Free number – counselling – listening - peer education – equal responsabilities between school and family

Report

Parents, Teachers, School Directors.

1 - 20 pages

The Ministry of Education, University and Research issued a free number (800-66-96-96) for the listening, the prevention and the counselling on the bullying phenomenon. If you dial this number, experts and psychologies - as for example Ms Laura Volpini, a teacher of Juridical psychology at the University “La Sapienza” in Rome - will answer your questions and give you some advice. In the article she considers the whole work that she can carry out thanks to this free number: she must cope with thousands of phone calls coming from the school staff such as teachers, students, headmasters, families and school caretakers. Trying to divide the phone calls into groups, the most frequent ones come from boys and girls of all ages, even if the most serious events occur in the lower secondary school. This represents the worrying situation in other European Countries. The free number sometimes becomes the first approach to the problem for some students that in that occasion manage to speak about the violent actions they suffered after a long period of abuse caused by classmates. Bullying acts happen most of the times at the beginning or at the end of the school hours or during the break, that is when the presence of adults is less frequent. Thanks to the counseling service, students can be followed and helped to cope with difficult relationship with other classmates, with elder brothers or sisters, with parents and with the wholw school system. Another important objective is linked to the empowerment strategy of the victim that aims to awake in the bully some cognitive skills, to focus on relationship and emotional control to face and avoid being victimized again. Counselling requests that come from headmasters and teachers concern the possibility to include intervention strategies into the school year plan (POF), to solve situations previously occurred or to prevent the phenomenon. If the bully can be detected, a profitable interaction between the school representative (the headmaster) and the experts can be carried out to make bullies feel responsible for what they did, and to make them think about the consequences of their actions. All instruments used are profitable to make students aware of the problem and to let them speak about violent actions and to reinforce the interaction and the peer-education method. Finally there is a paragraph about the regional Observatories created to inform people about the intervention and prevention strategies against the phenomenon, together with details about projects and good practices carried out locally. These can be found in the web site: www.smontailbullo.it.

From the analysis of the effects of the free number we can say that there are conflicts among students, families and school. The aim of the experts is to reinforce the monitoring skills of parents who must listen to their children’s experiences. The experts’ competence helps people cope with the problem consciously, without being too worried about the matter; experts should encourage effective communication among people. It is also important to inform people about the instruments that can be used on a national or international scale - as described in the article. The writer stresses the importance of the Equal Responsibilities between school and families and of the need to have shared values.

Don Milani