✅ Helping Hands =
Bí Cineálta in Action
Creating safe, inclusive schools where all students:
- Feel seen
- Are supported
- Can thrive
Why it works
Helping Hands is grounded in research and aligned with the latest government guidance (Bí Cineálta 2024). Our whole-school approach goes beyond awareness and reaction—it identifies, prevents, and resolves bullying before it harms.
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🔍 1. Prevention
- Sociometric Tool: HH uses a diagnostic sociogram to identify vulnerable, isolated, or rejected students as well as influential peer leaders. This proactive mapping enables schools to anticipate and prevent bullying before it escalates.
- Psychologically Safe Teams: Students are placed into carefully curated classroom teams to ensure inclusion and peer support. This promotes belonging and reduces the likelihood of exclusion-based bullying.
- Whole-School Ethos: HH fosters a culture of respect, kindness, and cooperation through SPHE-linked activities like "e;Internet Safety Day"e;, "e;Friendship Week"e; and all-inclusive school events.
🛠️ 2. Intervention
- Empathic Interviews: Trained Core Team members conduct welfare checks and interviews with students to uncover and address hidden bullying dynamics.
- Targeted & Universal Support: Vulnerable students receive specific interventions, while all students benefit from classroom strategies that build social and emotional skills.
- Kindness Report: Used to reflect on and address unkind behaviours, helping students learn and change without relying on punitive approaches.
🧭 3. Oversight
- Core Team: A trained anti-bullying Core Team works alongside teaching staff and senior management to implement and review strategies, maintain records, and report regularly to the Board of Management.
- Data-Driven Monitoring: HH's sociograms are completed termly to monitor class dynamics and identify students at risk of marginalisation.
👨👩👧👦 4. Community Engagement
- Parent Involvement: Parents are empowered to partner with schools proactively, moving beyond a reactive or complaint-based role.
- Inclusive School Culture: HH supports initiatives that celebrate cultural diversity and ensure equitable treatment of all students, aligned with equality legislation.