Starting anti-bullying coaching business...advice?

[Shamozel]

Hi,
I’m guessing many of you have experienced or know a child who’s been bullied outrageously and beyond the limits of what schools can do or stop.

I’m interested in working to help empower with these victims whose parents don’t know what else to do and who are turning to self-harm and becoming depressed and helpless.

There are specific (often non-verbal) ways of identifying and preventing those types of behaviours in other through using body language, tone of voice and recognising and stopping microaggressions in others before it escalates and so on.

I’m qualified to a certain extent: I have a PhD in body language and patterns of social reward/punishment as well as a background coaching. I’m also new to this area (I’ve worked with adults, not kids) but I’ve done my research and there’s a definite gap in this area and also a huge need. So, guess would need to start slow and adapt to kids more specifically. I’ve done a lot of research and work in trauma and PTSD recovery so think this could be effective.

Anyway, was wondering if you had advice on how and where and who might need this most? How to contact them? And how to explain exactly how this could help? Etc?

Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

Just reading that, here's a few thoughts that went through my head, in no particular order.

Would this be something you are looking at parents contacting you individually for it- so a bit like a counsellor? Or would you be aiming it at a local authority where schools could contact you, and you would be brought in?

The only problem I would see with it, is sometimes the kids that are bullied because they don't live in the right area, don't have the right clothes, parents are disabled, parents don't work, parents have mental health problems, the kids who's family can't afford all the gadgets and holidays etc- would they be the kids that would miss out? So it would only be those who are able to pay top dollar who could access the service? When sometimes it's these kids that really need the help, if they don't have the support at home (and sometimes kids won't say about the bullying because of parents already have 'stress' they don't want to burden them more).

However, I do believe that you are on to something. I would say providing you have all of your boxes ticked with regards to qualifications, what about writing a detailed programme. Of how it would work in theory. Start small- any childrens organisations near you, you could take it too, get their opinions. They will be able to tell you what is already available, what has or hadn't worked. Possibly the local authority, their children's department- that would link you in with schools, outreach work, youth work etc.

But again I know the first thing everyone will ask is how will this be funded and by who.

Also if you start just privately, I would offer x amount of people it free, so that you can see if it works and what needs to be changed. It wouldn't be right to go straight in charging for something that isn't tried and tested. In my opinion that wouldn't be fair on the individuals.

Like the first reply - I'm curious as to your business model, as I feel the most under privileged and in need of your support will be sadly unable to access it unless you're working direct with local authorities.

I also wonder if 'train the trainer' type stuff with learning practitioners would actually yield the same results ina wider scale?

Did you post on this a while back, on the ‘freelancers’ section?

If that wasn’t you, there were some useful responses on that thread.

Hello,
First, thank you for all you responses and thoughts. They are very helpful (I haven’t looked at that freelancer thread either so will check it).

I’m particularly interested in emotional/social bullying among girls because I think that’s partially behind the extremely high rates of depression and self-harm in middle class pre/adolescent girls so that’s who I’m most interested in working with. Part of my background is in training trainers and teachers but want to work with girls initially any way to get a solid base before moving wider.

Re: money. Absolutely right. I think this does need to be a model that allows those in need to access it and balance that with making it feasible to give my time to. I was thinking of some pro bono combined with a sliding scale and corporate work to balance it out. I’ve also heard some do this sort of thing by donation so people pay what they can and what they think it is worth which interests me as well. Still to be decided based on where and who I decide to focus on.

My concern about working directly with schools or organisations is that this also then involves a lot of bureaucracy that as an obstacle to those who need it. So, was thinking that it would be best to have parents contact me. I did think about how and if it would be possible to have kids contact me directly which would make it more of a kids helpline kind of thing I suppose with funding from elsewhere and not the clients at all. Getting advice from local children’s organisations is a great idea, thank you.

When it’s needed, it is usually urgent and after a long period of being failed (or at least perceiving it this way) by schools
etc. to help in meaningful ways that enable bullied girls to regain self-esteem and effective ways to stop microaggressions. This is important because research shows that even if victims are completely taken out of a problematic situation, if their experiences have been severe and prolonged enough, their social skills and ways of interacting often allow bullying to reoccur (not that it’s their fault, but that they’ve become used to being treated poorly and no longer give off the social cues that say “I’m not a good target.”). This creates all sorts of longer term cycles too - most notably things like eating disorders or making poor relationship choices etc. - so that’s what I want to help to prevent.

So your thoughts re: individuals/families vs organisations vs train the trainer is definitely something that prompted this post. And you all given me food for thought.

A bit more background: what I’m looking at isn’t really class-related (although not having the right clothes etc. is often used as an excuse for bullying, however, even well-dressed, rich kids get bullied). It is often most ignored and many worst cases are for girls from middle and upper middle class backgrounds. Rachel Simmons and a number of others have researched and written excellent books on the subject of “good” girl bullying so that’s the kind of research that has inspired me to consider shifting my work into this area.

I’ve found this helpful. Any other thoughts or replies welcome.