Everybody Here Will Be Bullied: Perspectives on the bullying of children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities in schools

Colleen McLaughlin, Richard Byers and Caroline Oliver

'Everybody Here Will Be Bullied' is a new book on the prevalence of bullying directed at children and young people with special educational needs and/or disability (SEN/D). The book will be published in March 2012 - but you can preview a chapter from the book by clicking on the link below.

Children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities find it harder to report bullying, or to ‘articulate experiences’ as ‘Don’t Suffer in Silence’ would have it. Secondly, ‘they are at greater risk of being bullied, both directly and indirectly, and usually about their specific difficulties or disability’.

The Anti-Bullying Alliance project, in partnership with Cambridge University, the Council for Disabled Children and Contact a family, set out to investigate ‘what works’ in tackling the bullying of children with SEN/D. Its findings are stark but clear. Children with SEN/D are at significant risk of being bullied.

There is very little in the way of validated practice to substantiate the efforts that many schools say they make to protect these pupils, and both children and parents are angry and frustrated that this situation persists. Evidence shows that teachers underestimate the scale of the problem, and that some of the ways in which schools organise their support for children with SEN/D places them at greater risk of being bullied.

For too long, the bullying of children and young people with SEN/D has been ignored. We’ve had the evidence in front of us before, and we have still failed to act. The perspectives set out in this book are a reminder of the scale of the challenge – this is a lived experience for too many children and young people.

Everyone Here Will Be Bullied will show there is a great deal that can be done in schools right now to reduce both the levels of bullying that these children and young people are experiencing. The evidence it sets out should also reassure us that solutions are closer to hand than we may think, and over time, concerted efforts to develop and validate responses to the bullying of children with SEN/D based on ‘what works’ could dramatically change the anti-bullying landscape in schools.

Chapters include:

- The research perspective: What does the research tell us about prevalence and intervention ?

- Young people’s perspectives: What young people have to say

- The families’ and carers’ perspective: What families and carers have to say

- The practitioners’ and the schools’ perspectives: What do we know about practice in schools?

- The agenda for the future

Chapter 1 now available to download for free

Everyone Here Will Be Bullied
Perspectives on the bullying of children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities in schools
Colleen McLaughlin, Richard Byers and Caroline Oliver