How an organisation started SCm (ÜMm) training

In every country within the Western culture there are organisations with the purpose of taking care of children’s interest and protecting  them from all kinds of abuse and evil. Fighting bullying always takes an important place on their agenda.  Methods reflect the same basic design everywhere: the victim has to be supported and the bullies have to be dealt with decisively.

In English speaking countries there exist Child-Protection foundations established by some philanthropic billionaires. One of these organisations invited me to speak at a conference in Australia in October 2003.  My message had a potential interest: the bullies are, in the violent group atmosphere, carrying the fear of becoming themselves a target of the group. This autonomous interest can be brought forward by SCm and transferred to a shared solution.

However, the demonstration of how this can be elicited needs to be repeated with simple metaphors and demonstrated in field experience by pioneers who themselves have been working after these  lines. Four years later, in November, 2-4, 2004, two distinguished SCm users were invited to present how they had incorporated SCm in their daily work. A report of their performance will probably be published later at this home-site.

A breakthrough occurred from this trend in one child protection organisation.   The Estonian Union for Child Welfare, here abbreviated EUCW, had found a description of my method in a book of Sharp and Smith who had invited me to lecture and lead workshops in the 1990’s (where they themselves had participated). The Estonian organisation became interested of the idea of Shared Concern, arranged a translation of English textbook, as it was in manuscript, – and invited me (in November 2003) to give a course for about 20 persons from different school personnel categories.  Some of the participants told me later in letters about their success when using SCm (the Estonian term is ÜMm). However, ÜMm/SCm needed more instructors.

Anniki Tikerpuu, an energetic project leader at EUCW, organised a new seminar in the summer of 2005 for 8 school psychologists at my country house in Sweden. After that several of them reported about their work with ÜMm/SCm. One of them, Auli Andersalu-Targo,  gave a full and detailed account of the SCm procedure that she used resulting in my awarding her a certificate as a fully fledged ÜMm/SCm user.

But the real activity started in Estonia after the of Spring 2006 when I in work in Swedish schools had discovered the so-called two-factor model that states that without the head teacher’s participation in the anti-bullying team no real activity will occur in handling of bullying. I introduced the idea to the new project manager at EUCW, Merit Lage.  She invited me to present SCm/ÜMm at a conference in  Tallinn in October 2006 and workshops in 2007 in various cities. he project leader at EUCW, Merit Lage, made an elegant performance of SCm that I could follow on the spot. Probably she will write a report for me that qualifies her to certified user of SCm. We have plans of introducing the programme All in the Class Become Mediators, ACBM which makes the final stage of the anti-bullying programme. And make a film of Merit Lage using SCm. She plans to give own SCm/ÜMm courses at EUCW.