Bullying Prevention as a Trauma-Informed Approach

Article #4 of the IBPA Trauma Series

First posted July 12, 2019

In using the lens of trauma, the effects of bullying are better understood for their widespread impact on all involved in a bullying situation. This lens then allows for a systems-level approach to bullying prevention through trauma-informed practices.

The foundation of trauma-informed practices is a safe and supportive school community where students have a strong sense of belonging. Dr. Caelan Soma and Derrick Allen of Starr Commonwealth have developed 10 steps for creating trauma-informed schools. 

1. Provide school-wide childhood trauma awareness and understanding of how trauma impacts children’s learning and behavior. Any person can help students thrive when they understand the impact of stress and trauma on learning.
2. View trauma as an experience rather than an incident or a diagnostic category. When bullying or any traumatic event occurs, it marks the beginning of an experience that may last for months or even years.
3. Believe the link between private logic and behavior. Private logic is described as the way individuals view themselves, others, and the world around them. Based on this logic, they act according to that perception.
4. Establish the experience of physical and emotional safety. We must ensure that students experience hope, empowerment, choice, security, structure, and consistency to build resilience.
5. Foster connections. Students who feel connected to their school are more likely to stay in school, have strong attendance, and achieve at higher levels.
6. Prioritize social and emotional skills. Among the most important of these skills is self-regulation: it provides the foundation for self-development, relationships, and learning.
7. Promote play. Research confirms that unstructured play improves concentration, problem-solving capabilities, and more.
8. Collaborate with families and community. Bullying, like all traumatic experiences, tends to isolate the individuals who need connection more than most. Family and community partnerships are essential components of safe, supportive, and effective schools.
9. Support staff. Whether it is a bullying situation or another type of trauma, school professionals hearing details about or witnessing a traumatic event are susceptible to vicarious trauma. Self-care is an essential practice for trauma-informed practitioners.
10. Collect and share outcome data. By collecting baseline and outcome data on culture, behavior, attendance, and more, schools are able to show the impact of trauma-informed practices.

A traumatic experience such as bullying is experienced at the most instinctual and sensory part of the brain. Trauma interventions, then, happen at both the systems level and with the individual. While trauma interventions must be conducted by trained professionals, there are activities and strategies that any adult can do with children and young adults to help heal trauma effects while also building resilience. Sensory-based, mind-body activities have proven their effectiveness, like those found here: https://www.weareteachers.com/mind-body-skills/.

The Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) reminds us that all trauma-informed practices must adhere to the following principles, rather than to a prescribed program:

• Safety
• Trustworthiness and transparency
• Peer support
• Collaboration and mutuality
• Empowerment, voice, and choice
• Cultural, historical, and gender issues

Julie E. McDaniel-Muldoon, PhD

Social Media Director, International Bullying Prevention Association (IBPA)

Student Safety and Well-Being Consultant, Oakland Schools (Waterford, Michigan)

Advanced Trauma Practitioner and Trainer, Starr Commonweath

Email: julie.mcdaniel@oakland.k12.mi.us

Twitter: @jemmuldoon

Blog: https://jemmuldoon.blogspot.com/

For more information:

The National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN)

https://www.nctsn.org/resources/what-trauma-informed-child-and-family-service-system

The Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative’s (TLPI) 

https://traumasensitiveschools.org/about-tlpi/

Starr Commonwealth

www.starr.org

Viewing Bullying through the Lens of Trauma

Article 1 of the IBPA Trauma Series

Originally posted June 27, 2019

In August 2017, the US Department of Health and Human Services released Bullying as an Adverse Childhood Experience on its StopBullying.gov site. This fact sheet calls for all involved in bullying prevention efforts to have a strong understanding of trauma, to see the relationship between trauma and bullying, and to develop a shared vision of how bullying prevention might become a part of trauma-informed practices. 

What is trauma?

Trauma is an experience that leaves a person feeling hopeless or helpless, perceiving a tremendous loss of safety and fear for survival. The details of a traumatic event itself are not important; instead, the focus must be on the way people experience the event.  When the brain perceives threat to safety, whether that threat is real or imagined, the most instinctual part of the brain (often called the reptilian brain) goes into survival mode. This powerful automatic response is often categorized as “fight”, “flight”, or “freeze”. Survival mode reduces cognitive and emotional capacity. 

In this survival mode, the body is in a state of hyper-arousal: where heart-rate is accelerated and emotions are unregulated. Additionally, stress hormones (such as cortisol and adrenalin) are released. What makes this most concerning in children is that the surge in these hormones over an extended period of time may cause damage to a still-developing brain.

The effects of childhood trauma on adulthood is a relatively new area for research; however, studies confirm that the trauma experienced by children/young people has long-lasting social, emotional, cognitive, and physical effects into adulthood. This impact is no less than the Post-Traumatic Stress diagnosed in veterans of war or first responders in devastating natural disasters.

What is the relationship between trauma and bullying?

A traumatic experience brings feelings of hopelessness and helplessness; the same feelings as those targeted by bullying behavior. The important distinction between bullying and other acts of aggression, the perceived or real imbalance of power, is at the heart of what constitutes bullying as a traumatic experience. 

Exposure to a childhood traumatic event can cause some children to exhibit harmful behavior that can last into adulthood. For example, the original ACE's Study documented 10% of females and 15% of males with high incidents of childhood trauma that became perpetrators of domestic violence in adulthood. The trajectory for those engaged in bullying behavior into adulthood is equally concerning. Bullying researchers Dan Olweus and colleagues found that males who engaged in aggressive behavior and are identified by age 8 are more likely to be convicted of a crime and have a serious criminal record in adulthood. We know that hurt people hurt people, therefore, childhood trauma intervention may be the key to ending this cycle of violence.

No matter if directly or indirectly involved, the impact of a traumatic event can be found in anyone. A bullying situation similarly affects everyone involved: the perpetrators, the victims, and the witnesses. Looking through the lens of trauma, bullying is viewed as the complex experience that it is.

Julie E. McDaniel-Muldoon, PhD

Social Media Director, International Bullying Prevention Association (IBPA)

Student Safety and Well-Being Consultant, Oakland Schools (Waterford, Michigan)

Advanced Practitioner and Trainer, Starr Global Learning Network

Email: julie.mcdaniel@oakland.k12.mi.us

For more information:

SAMHSA’s Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach

https://store.samhsa.gov/product/SAMHSA-s-Concept-of-Trauma-and-Guidance-for-a-Trauma-Informed-Approach/SMA14-4884.html

The National Child Traumatic Stress Network

https://www.nctsn.org

Starr Global Learning Network and the National Institute for Trauma and Loss in Children (TLC):

https://starr.org/training/tlc

The Effects of Childhood Bullying into Adulthood

When the Center for Disease Control named bullying an "Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE)" in 2017, it validated the 30-year effort examining the long-lasting effects of childhood bullying into adulthood. The research efforts have suggested these principles: bullying is prevalent, being a target of bullying has a multi-symptom, negative impact, and the impact of being a target is long-lasting. Professors Patricia McDougall and Tracy Vaillancourt reviewed the literature in order to determine how far the negative impact can reach and which effects have the deepest impact.

The researchers selected 17 prospective studies to review. Prospective studies take a population and look at effects of over a long period of time, and so these studies looked at the effects of painful childhood experiences, including bullying, into adulthood.  The following are some of the findings:

• Mental Health. McDougall and Vaillancourt found a "direct" pathway between childhood bullying and mental health issues, including depression and anxiety, that extend into early adulthood, with one study showing effects into mid life. The researchers also found "indirect" pathways, youth who had experienced bullying and who had described themselves as depressed or having low self-esteem were likely to be much more depressed in late adolescence and early adulthood.
• Peer Support. Children who have a strong network of friends are less likely to feel the long-lasting effects of bullying. For children who had few friends during the bullying but more friends later, the impact of the bullying was shorter lived. 
• Adult Support. When children were bullied and also reported high support from parents, they were less likely to report depression, behavior problems, and emotional problems later. The support of the teacher is critical, especially when children report low parental support. When children who are being bullied also report high levels of emotional support from teachers, the potential for emotional and behavioral problems is reduced later on.
• Self-Evaluation. When children perceive themselves as victims and report high levels of threat, they are likely to experience more bullying victimization and increasing depression into adolescence. Several studies have shown that poor self-worth in children who experience bullying leads to self-blaming that can last into adulthood, opening the door to adult victimization.

The researchers concluded that "the strongest candidate" to interrupt the pathway between childhood bullying and long-lasting effects into adulthood was a strong support network of peers and adults. Parental support may have a bigger impact on younger children, and older children need a strong network of peers and a trusted teacher at school. They also suggest adults can buffer the effects of bullying by helping children and adolescents build coping skills and by supporting them in developing positive self-worth and healthy peer relationships. 

Bullying is not a rite of passage and does not have to be a life sentence. Parents and teachers have the ability to stop an undesirable pathway for children and adolescence.

"Every child deserves a champion 

- an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection 

and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be." 

~Rita Pierson

Looking at School Discipline from a Community Lens: More on Restorative Practices

The International Institute for Restorative Practices defines Restorative Practices as "an emerging social science that studies how to strengthen relationships between individuals as well as social connections within communities." This focus on communities shifts how we look at behavior and discipline at school, zooming out to see the impact of actions and words on the community as a whole. 

Looking specifically at discipline, Restorative Practices remains focused on the community. The goals of Restorative Discipline, articulated by Lorrainne Stuzman Amstuz and Judy Mullet, are marked shift from focusing on the individual alone. They have been adapted here:

1. To understand the harm and develop empathy for both those who have been harmed and those who have engaged in harmful behavior. This is a shift from a punitive stance where the focus is on the student and his/her behavior. Restorative discipline also takes into account the harm to people and relationships and seeks to understand why the student engages in hurtful behavior.
2. To listen and respond to the needs of both those who have been harmed and those who have engaged in harmful behavior. Restorative discipline recognizes that behavior is a means of communication and seeks to identify the need being expressed. It also looks at the needs of those harmed and the impact on the community.
3. To encourage responsibility and accountability through personal reflection within a collaborative planning process. Those harmed and those engaging in harmful behavior are involved in the resolution process.
4. To reintegrate those who have harmed others (and sometimes those who have been harmed) into the community as valuable, contributing members. Traditional methods included a consequence such as suspension, without taking into account what would happen to the community when the student returned to school.
5. To create caring climates to support healthy communities. Especially in an incident where someone has engaged in behavior that hurts another, the community remains the focus. Caring climates and healthy communities separate the deed from the doer, focusing instead on building and maintaining the strong relationships at the heart of those communities.
6. To change the system when it contributes to the harm. This is perhaps the biggest shift from traditional discipline. Restorative practices are also reflective, encouraging schools to examine how policies and practices may worsen the negative impact. In the United States, students of color are suspended and expelled at a much higher rates than white students. States that have acknowledged this disproportionality are using restorative practices and alternatives to suspension as a way to make changes in the system. 

With this community focus, misbehavior is not the violation of school rules, it is the harming of people and relationships.  Instead of cultivating shame and guilt, restorative discipline breeds accountability and responsibility. Traditionally, justice focused on the one engaging in misbehavior and ignored the people and relationships harmed. Restorative discipline includes those who harm, those who are harmed and the entire community in the justice process.

The Social Capital Window of Restorative Practices

The goal of Restorative Practices is to build and strengthen strong school communities. Eighty percent of the efforts is for building the relationships that provide the backbone of strong school communities; 20% of the efforts aims to restore and heal those relationships that are harmed.

At the basis of Restorative Practices is the Social Capital Window, a broad categorization of school or classroom environments. The University of Michigan's Professor Wayne Baker defines social capital as the resources available within networks. including information, ideas, cooperation, support, and power. The Social Capital Window, also called the Social Discipline Window, categorizes social norms and behavioral expectations into four types of environment, based on degrees of support and control and reflecting the impact of different types of leadership. The Social Capital Window is an adaptation of Diane Baumrind's Parenting Styles from the 1960s. 

The degree of Support is indicated by the horizontal x-axis. Support connotes encouragement, growth, nurturing, warmth, and acceptance and goes from low to high.

The degree of Control is found on the vertical y-axis. Control indicates a range of limit-setting, discipline, expectations, boundaries, intentionality, and structure from low to high.

In the illustration above, the green panes are categories at the extremes with a high degree of control or support and a low degree of the other. At the top left is the Authoritarian environment with high control and low support. In this school or classroom, academic and/or behavioral expectations are high, but emotional support is low. Strict rule adherence is expected, and emotional needs are not considered. This environment is "doing to" students and staff; at its worst, it is a breeding ground for unhealthy behaviors such as stigmatizing, blaming, and being punitive. The Permissive environment is "doing for" students, with a high degree of support and a low degree of control. While warm and responsive, this environment is lenient and indulgent. It can affect impulse control, prevent adequate social awareness, and promote egocentricity. in students and staff.

The orange pane represents an environment with low support and low control. It is labeled as Neglectful, "doing nothing" for students and staff. With uninvolved and indifferent leaders, staff and students are in survival mode with no warmth and no consistent rules and expectations. The impact of the neglectful environment are behavioral issues with inconsistent consequences and little to no accountability.

Restorative Practices lives in the Restorative pane, "doing with" staff and students. In this environment, high degrees of both control and support from leaders create cultures defined by collaboration, cooperation, shared responsibility and accountability. High expectations are set for staff and students within an accepting and responsive environment. Boundaries are set and enforced through shared decision making.

As schools see the power of Restorative Practices as a way to build the school communities where everyone thrives, it is important to understand the foundation of these practices. The Social Capital Window is an important first step to implementing RP with fidelity. It is especially important for all trusted adults in a child's life to understand, from parents and law enforcement officers to educators and social workers.

Integrating Restorative Practices and Bullying Prevention

We have reached an understanding that effective schools have one common and critical characteristic: a safe and supportive school community. We also know that a safe and supportive school community is the heart of restorative practices and that bullying cannot flourish in these environments. Despite this common understanding, we remain unsure how to integrate restorative practices and bullying prevention within a comprehensive school-wide initiative.

Restorative practitioners, bullying prevention experts, mental health practioners, and policymakers came together to provide this direction. The result of their two-year effort is the white paper entitled Integrating Bullying Prevention and Restorative Practices in Schools: Considerations for Practitioners and Policymakers. With the goal of connecting research- and evidence-based bullying prevention programs with restorative practices, the workgroup first described the problem of bullying, shared best practices in bullying prevention, and laid the foundation for restorative practices. The remainder of this white paper provides opportunities and cautions in integrating bullying prevention and restorative practices.

Some Examples of Appropriate Integration

• School staff work with trained professionals to identify specific research- and evidence-based bullying prevention and restorative practices initiatives.
• The implementation process includes wide-spread training of school personnel and a systematic plan, among other considerations, to ensure fidelity of the process.
• The bullying prevention and restorative practices integrated efforts are preventative efforts, leading to changes in the overall school culture.
• Parents are engaged in solutions to bullying incidents.
• Data is collected and analyzed throughout the process to monitor and adjust implementation for greatest impact.

Some Examples of Inappropriate Integration

• Schools do not choose high quality and proven bullying prevention programs.
• The implementation process does not provide adequate training for staff and does not tend to the fidelity of the implementation process.
• Restorative practices are used in bullying situations, rather than in day-to-day activities.
• Inadequate time and resources for staff prevent the success of the integration.
• Adults do not play a prominent facilitator role in mediating bullying situations and instead use coercion and other unhealthy strategies to engage students.
• No systematic evaluation of the integration prevents reflection and improvement.

Integrating restorative practices and bullying prevention should be part of a systemic and comprehensive plan to build and strengthen the school community. This white paper provides clear guidance on how to proceed. However, the impact of this integration remains unknown, and research in this area is still needed.

Restorative Practices as a Promising Approach to Bullying Prevention

In October 2016 the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released Preventing Bullying through Science, Policy, and Practice, the results of a study commissioned by the NAS to determine what we know and what more we need to know about bullying behavior and its impact. Restorative practices is mentioned in the chapter focusing on the research on preventative interventions. In short, despite the growing interest in implementing restorative practices as a way to prevent bullying, little research supports its effectiveness. The panel calls for research in this area in order to support this claim.

That call is being answered. RAND, in partnership with the National Institutes of Health, is currently engaged in the first randomized control study of the effectiveness of restorative practices on improving school culture and in addressing behavioral issues. The study will also examine changes in suspension rates, staff and student attendance, student achievement, and more. The study goes beyond the existing and smaller scale studies on restorative practices and looks more broadly at effectiveness at the system level, the peer group level and the individual student level.

The results of this study hold great promise in informing the bullying prevention community for several reasons:

1. The International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP) is providing the training for the control schools at first, and then once comparison data has been collected, will also train the comparison schools. IIRP has trained over 75,000 people from over 80 countries in their research-based approach to restorative practices. The IIRP Graduate School is the first "world's first graduate school wholly devoted to restorative practices." Highly trained facilitators are inside the schools, training staff and students.
2. This study is also evaluating the fidelity of implementation of restorative practices at each of the control schools. The implementation of research- and evidence-based bullying prevention programs is very difficult to track, probably contributing to the varying degrees of effectiveness shown in fully implemented bullying prevention programs. 
3. By tracking high-risk behaviors, including bullying, this study aims to show that problem behaviors will be reduced as restorative practices becomes a part of the school. Prior research has suggested effective bullying prevention efforts are comprehensive and school-wide initiatives. 
4. IIRP has previously shown how restorative practices and bullying prevention programs such as Olweus Bullying Prevention and Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) work together.
5. Most importantly, this study is focused on middle schools, where bullying behavior peaks. 

Some preliminary results of this study will be presented later in October at the 2018 IIRP World Conference, held this year in Detroit, Michigan. 

"The fundamental premise of restorative practices is that people are happier, more cooperative, more productive and more likely to make positive changes when those in authority do things with them, rather than to them or for them.” 

~Ted Wachtel, International Institute for Restorative Practices