Friendly Schools and Families
An evidence-based whole-school approach to the reduction of bullying in Primary Schools
Bullying touches almost everyone's life, it is widespread and harmful, and as we learn more about its lasting effects it is becoming an issue of growing concern to practitioners, parents and researchers. Bullying can have a long term impact on a child's self esteem, social skills and academic capacity, and for these reasons there is a need for evidence-based programs to be implemented into the 7,700 primary schools across Australia.
Friendly Schools and Families (FSF) targets primary schools and provides 'small steps for success' from which schools can systematically implement and tailor strategies to reduce bullying. FSF is designed to help all members of the school community including teachers, school administrators and parents. Comprising a Whole School Pack FSF is designed to guide the program's effective implementation and provide strategies and actions for schools to improve social skills and to help reduce bullying; and a Classroom Pack made up of Teaching and Learning Handbooks targeted to children aged between 4 and 13 which provide information and a variety of interactive strategies to build childrens social skills and ultimately reduce bullying.
Developed by a team of researchers led by Professor Donna Cross from the Child Health Promotion Research Centre (CHPRC) the FSF program is based on 6 years of rigorous scientific research into bullying, involving over 6000 schools students. This included a four-year intervention research project to evaluate the best whole-school strategies to reducing bullying (2000-2003); and a second more targeted program which included a stronger focus on capacity building and involving families (2002-2004).
FSF is one of the few interventions empirically tested in schools. FSF has been shown to significantly reduce bullying behaviour, promote greater feelings of safety and happiness at school and increase social skills among children compared to those who did not receive the program. The material is reviewed and updated regularly with ongoing research and now forms the supporting framework for numerous other evidence based intervention programs that are being developed and evaluated by the CHPRC.
The FSF product suite is being distributed under licence by the Australian Council for Education Research. The program has been successfully disseminated to over 1,800 primary schools throughout Australia and ACER and ECU are now seeking to expand further into international markets to tackle the problem of bullying on a global level.