School Bullying
PROTEGELES’ campaign against school bullying includes the opening of a helpline conceived to offer help and counselling to children and teenagers that may be bullied at their schools as well as to their relatives, if needed. Behind this helpline there is a team of psychologists, experienced in the field of online help to children and experts in child safety. In Spain, school bullying is a relatively new phenomenon that seems to spread really quickly.
The opening of an anti-bullying helpline is a pioneer initiative in Europe and it has been supported by the European Union. It highlights how the ICT can help to solve old and new problems. Moreover, our anti-bullying helpline counts on the support of some of the most important Spanish Parents-Teachers Associations and it will be promoted by web portals like MSN, through Hotmail and Messenger, two of the Internet tools that children most like using.
At www.acosoescolar.info, we supply personalised help to every children asking for help through the helpline. We find out which is best way we can help the child face the problem and we offer solutions, acting as mediator between the confronted parties (school-parents, school-governmental authorities, etc.) if the need arises. If the situation is very serious, then we informed the Child Ombudsperson and the corresponding Local Education Authority (Consejería de Educación). Our goal is to attend to the great majority of cases, with low or average intensity for which there is usually no back-up and much less psychological support. Serious cases are transferred out of PROTEGELES.
Our anti-bullying helpline doesn’t want to and cannot replace other entities and institutions involved and already working on this problem. Instead, we want to help all those victims that are involved in the majority of low-intensity cases. For the serious cases we will refer them to the relevant authorities, according to the child health condition and geographical situation.
Along 2006-2007 academic year, we have dealt with more than 100 real cases of school bullying, most of them successfully.
