Our work as regional coordinators for the Anti Bullying Alliance in the South West.

Barbara Maines and George Robinson

We started our coordination role in November 2004 after being interviewed and appointed by a representative of the National Children's Bureau and a civil servant from the Department of Education and Skills (DfES).

We had two main aims

• The first was to bring together the 16 local authorities in the SW. We wanted them to work together to find effective ways to highlight both the problems of bullying, and how schools could both reduce the amount of bullying and find effective ways to deal with incidents when they happened.
• Our second aim was to bring together other organisations that were involved in anti-bullying work but did not have a forum by which they could share ideas and collaborate..

How we achieved our aims

We have organised termly meetings that are well attended by local authority members. In the meetings we identified priorities and then coordinated ways to meet the needs of the group.

The first task identified by members was to have clear guidelines for schools on how they could produce rigorous polices on bullying. A working group produced a robust framework for the development, implementation and review of policy. This has been published in a booklet to all the authorities and is available in pdf format and CD-ROM as a free and copyright free resource. Please do contact us if you would like to receive a copy by emailing, publishing@luckyduck.co.uk

The members also decided that we should encourage schools to become actively involved in Anti Bullying Week. Together we produced and distributed a full colour poster to over 4000 schools. This highlighted the week and asked schools to do something. We actively promoted "Blue Friday" and provided help to schools to make it memorable and also to have a focus by raising funds for ChildLine.

The success of this promotion led to the suggestion that we give schools far more notice about Anti Bullying Week in 2006 so that they have more planning time.

We were planning two posters, one in April identifying the dates of the week and also information about a song competition to be held in each authority with the winners going forward to a regional final. The second poster was to appear in September encouraging schools to do something in Anti Bullying week and for Blue Friday.

The most ambitious project was to develop an accreditation scheme across the region to give schools a "kite mark" if they met various criteria on anti bullying work.

This was inspired by the regional coordinator from the North East who was invited to visit and talk about the scheme running in County Durham and then to return to run a training day. The idea has been actively supported by some authorities who would like to have a scheme in place as soon as possible.

Another idea we were considering was how to both deal with parental complaints, how to record them and then produce some guidelines of good practice.

We were also able to support various conferences by providing key note speeches on bullying and the work of the alliance. Another valuable function was to provide a unique forum for local authority representatives to meet others who shared the same task and interests and to network.

Building on the success of the local government group we then started a group for others in the region who were actively involved in anti bullying work.

This included schools, charities and individual projects. Again the focus was on listening to their needs and providing a cooperative atmosphere that allowed an interchange of ideas. This group wanted to share some meetings with the local authorities as they wanted to become involved with both anti bullying week and the accreditation scheme.

Other projects were successfully completed including working with Looked After children in Bristol. We carried out a survey of years 6 and 7 children to find out whether they perceived themselves to be more or less vulnerable to bullying than their peers who lived with their families.

In celebration of their participation a small group of Looked After boys produced a "rap" on CD on bullying. There was an accompanying booklet which provided ideas on how this type of creative project could be used with other groups. A copy of the CD and booklet was distributed to all local members and all other regional coordinators. A follow up video was planned for anti bullying week 2006.

Of course we were always available to answer queries from parents and teachers on various matters related to bullying.

We believe we provided an excellent service in the South West of England and have been delighted with the letters of support which confirm this. We are dismayed that political interference from the UK national government has stopped our work with our colleagues in the region.

The ones who will pay the price will be the young people across the South West

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