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Communication is a key social skill that can avert the bullying experience, and Wesley Mission staff encounter children who are so disadvantaged by their family background they would have little chance in school. Wesley Mission’s Breakfast Clubs for primary schoolchildren aim to build social skills and create a sense of belonging.
At the Creative Learning Circle for Kids in Riverstone, children meet and socialise in a safe space, learning relationship arts they might not receive at home while absorbing some education. The program is particularly helpful for children from the area’s large Aboriginal community which is both marginalised and driven by internal differences, fault-lines that show even in these children’s dealings with each other.
Wesley Mission foster-care workers have to deal with the sadness of children whose troubled background makes them victims of bullying. It is common that when these children finally lash out after prolonged mental torture, they are the ones suspended from school for their one violent outburst while the perpetrators of emotional bullying get off scot-free because the harm they cause is insidious, unseen by the schoolteachers.
Wesley Mission’s Youth Services works with troubled school-aged young people and encourages schools to accept and fully enact anti-bullying programs – not an easy task with schools reluctant to admit to problems that might scare off parents.
Wesley Mission’s Brighter Futures is a large-scale and well resourced Department of Community Services-led early intervention project. Wesley Mission is the lead Brighter Futures agency across Blacktown-Baulkham Hills, and the Cumberland and Nepean areas. Staff work with little children whose troubled backgrounds have hindered their development which has often led to bullying. Early skills-building programs are vital.
A Wesley Mission-developed group program for children whose social skills have been damaged by domestic violence, Stretching Your Wings, shows great promise along with other programs such as Me and My Friend and Seasons for Growth. Bullying is a learned behaviour, and given time and resources, it can be unlearned. Understanding and support is coming, but the need is far greater than current resources can support.
Literacy programs recognise that children who are stranded in class because they cannot speak, read or write, as well as others can become social misfits who turn to bullying to cover up their deficiencies or become classroom rejects, picked on or excluded at will by the group. Here is one parent’s view of a literacy program run by Wesley Mission’s Riverstone Family Centre for pre-school kids:
I am writing to inform you about the impact the “Reading Bug” program has had on my son Matthew*. At the beginning of the year Matt was showing behavioural problems due to frustration. The frustration and aggression was because he was having difficulties with his speech.
Matt began speech therapy in June 2009 and this combined with the Reading Bug program has seen Matt go from a very angry little boy to a very happy, confident little boy. He dances and sings nursery rhymes without prompting and is very confident to perform actions to the nursery rhymes. But best of all Matt speaks clearly and can now communicate with teachers and fellow friends.
- Find out more about Wesley Family Services
- Download the brochure: Bullying. No way!
(Brochure courtesy of www.bullyingnoway.com.au)
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