Membership Spotlight highlights the work of our member organisations and outline how other individuals and NGOs can support them. We are shining the light on respectme, for #AntiBullyingWeek, find out below what they are currently working on and how you can get involved!

respectme is Scotland’s Anti-Bullying Service, wholly funded by the Scottish Government and jointly managed by the Scottish Association for Mental Health (SAMH) and LGBT Youth Scotland.  respectme has been a member of Together for over a decade, enjoying a solid relationship with the superb Together team, and benefiting enormously from their knowledge base and ever-willingness to help us!

respectme is an inclusive children’s rights-based service, created to build the skills of all adults who play a role in the lives of children and young people, by improving their capacity, competence and confidence to prevent and respond to bullying behaviour and to create inclusive environments where bullying cannot thrive.  

The values of respect, fairness, equality and inclusion underpin every aspect of our work.  All of our services are provided free of cost, and through a combination of policy review and development, delivery of training programmes and national campaigning we aim to influence behaviour, culture and attitude change towards bullying, ultimately improving the safety, happiness and life experiences of children and young people across Scotland.   We engage at national level across a range of related policy areas and support the Scottish Government in reviewing the national anti-bullying guidance, ‘Respect for All’  https://www.gov.scot/publications/respect-national-approach-anti-bullying-scotlands-children-young-people/

Every year we lead on Anti-Bullying Week in Scotland, and this year it falls on 13 – 17  November  – mark it in the diary!

In 2022, we formed our first ever Youth Action Group (YAG) to ensure young people’s voices continue to shape and inform our anti-bullying work.  We recruited an amazing group of young people, aged 11-17, to create, co-design and help deliver our high profile, 2-year anti-bullying campaign titled ‘Listen Up! (Respect Our Rights)’.  This work was recognised at the Scottish Parliament during Anti-Bullying Week 2022, setting great foundations for the strengthening of the message and the refreshing of resources for ABW23!  

Unsurprisingly, the young people wanted more than just words from the campaign – they told us of how they felt unheard when they reported bullying, and how adult responses needed to be more effective.  To that end, the YAG devised a 5-step Action Plan to encourage adults to pledge their support and commitment to bring about change.

The Action Plan, pledge cards and a suite of other resources are openly available to download by educators, youth workers, parents/carers and young people, who are invited to visit our campaign website page at: https://respectme.org.uk/campaigns/listen-up-respect-our-rights/

We hope you will join with us in making this the biggest and best Anti-Bullying Week ever and you can help even more by sharing the link and following us on social media!

In addition to leading Scotland’s Anti-Bullying Week campaign every year, schools, youth organisations and children’s services can benefit from other respectme programmes throughout the year.

For any adults seeking free anti-bullying training, we created an Anti-Bullying Learning Academy, including e-learning modules, which has attracted over 1000 learners since launch.  We hold regular “Let’s Talk About Bullying” webinars, and delivered a Change Maker Seminar Series for lead professionals and practitioners.   The Change Maker initiative focussed on two key themes, looking separately at ‘Bullying and Disability’ and ‘Body image/appearance related bullying’, all delivered in partnership with specialist organisations: https://respectme.org.uk/training/changemaker-series/

Measuring the impact of anti-bullying work is notoriously difficult; however, the innovative design and launch of Scotland’s first validated self-assessment programme for anti-bullying policy into practice, the ‘respectme reward’, sets out to make it easier.  This easy-to-navigate digital platform allows users to narrate and measure the impact of their anti-bullying work and to share their best practice at national level through case studies held on an interactive map.  You can read more about it and apply here: https://respectme.org.uk/anti-bullying-practice/new-self-assessment-toolkit/

As a small team – only six of us – we aim to reach every corner of Scotland and to do that we rely heavily upon our incredible partners in local authorities, children’s services, youth organisations and, of course, Together, to share our work across platforms and networks.  A heartfelt thank you goes to everyone who supports what we do, and who work hard in their own settings to ensure that children’s human rights are upheld consistently when it comes to bullying.  

For a bit of fun, we were asked to think ‘If respectme were an animal, what would it be?’!   After some strong competition from team suggestions, we concluded that we are mammals, most like a pod of dolphins! We are sociable, friendly, VERY smiley and entertainingly intelligent! Through synchronisation and communicating well as a strong team, we move as one to improve children’s lives. Real dolphins would approve!

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Are you a Together organisational member and would like to collaborate for a Membership Spotlight? Email: caitlin@togetherscotland.org.uk