Objection: It would be wrong to mediate if the parties are of unequal strength. The group of bullies is stronger than their weak and innocent victim!
Clarification: If you witness an encroachment by the stronger party, your duty is to intervene immediately or fetch help! Then, there is no time for mediation. But if you have not seen the actual bullying, don’t start gathering more information! Use the advantage of not having seen it.

Astonishing objection: What are you saying?  How can it be an advantage of not having seen the actual bullying one has to handle?
Answer: Yes, because if you are ignorant you can ask with genuine curiosity  "What has happened?" As a therapeutic mediator you know how to diminish the inequity of the parties by qualified listening and get information useful for a shared solution.

New objection: That sounds too fantastic. The bullies lie about what has happened. They can also deliver promises they don’t keep.
Answer: Yes, the bullies do so if you are searching for guilt. But SCm concentrates on a shared solution.
(In Phase I of SCm, individual talks with the bully suspects, we get ideas that could be passed on to Phase II – the private meeting with the probable victim who is informed about the changed attitude the individual bully suspects have recently displayed. Next, (Phase III) group talks with the bully suspects take place. In this we reinforce suggestions that seem to lead to a shared solution. But we do not decide to start the final Phase (IV) – the summit meeting with the bully suspects and probable victim – before there exists a good possibility of a favourable outcome for all involved.)

Doubts: The victim does not dare to object the bullies at such a summit.
Answer: Please, note that in SCm we have only bully suspects and the victim is just probable.  (The basis of SCm is reported bullying). If you yourself have tried something similar to SCm you will probably study SCm thoroughly and try it in practice. But if you doubt from the beginning that SCm can lead to a good solution you will never succeed with it.

Scepticism: Do you have scientific evidence of success with SCm?
Answer: Nearly all methods of treatment of bullying get results at a meeting with bullies. But if you ask if bullying ceases behind the backs of teachers you will realise that nobody can arrange objective observations that can prove the absence of bullying. However we have two kinds of evidence of validity of our mediation-approach. The first is that in younger ages (11-12) the students who have experienced the therapeutic mediation spontaneously tell about their own attempts to mediate in conflicts. Ritha Mälström´s observations about generalisation of SCm- effects  (We call it "spontaneous transfer of behaviour from adult to child".) The second evidence is founded on older students’ indisputable approval of SCm. Competent SCm users achieve, in class discussion about methods of treatment of bullying, appreciation of SCm. It is so strong that the students give the names of "those who need  help". How to discover and treat clandestine bullying?

Doubt:  Evidence for “creating a good atmosphere in a school" seems too weak.
Answer:  I agree. If you are interested to become a pioneer, you may study our systematised mediation training in a learning-by-doing device Approaching youth violence with ACBM – All in the Class Become Mediators. If you wait adopting methods that many people already apply, you wait until the number of pioneers increases so we can speak about a mass movement.

Question: How can the school find time for ACBM?
Answer: The programme ACBM fits into all existing syllabi for vernacular language. It begins with essay writing and ends with appreciated role-plays 4 hours all together.

A reader suggests a simpler way: All this talk about SCm and ACBM sounds much too complicated. I know a simpler way. We have our football team. In sports students learn the rules of fair play. They build up a sense of community of good sport.
Modulating of the alleged "simpler way": Fair play is important. Once upon a time English sport education introduced this concept to the world. As you know, football hooligans do not follow this ideal although they have heard them verbalised in school. If the police meet them with "decisive measurers" in the stands they gather for attack outside. Do you see the similarity with  the school: "decisive treatment" reaches the thugs who are out of sight. All competition which is not controlled by internalised morals (laws accepted from within) transforms to violence. So we need to elicit and reinforce the students’ own ways to fair play.

Question: Do you mean that SCm is "students’ own way"?
Answer: Our method to elicit shared concern and derive a shared solution from it is initiated by us but the working incentive in it is their own motivation. I am inviting you to participate in an innovation in contemporary education: the system of SCm and its extension ACBM. 

A defender of a "simpler way": Are others who have been using SCm and ACBM?
Answer: If you make a Google search on five words Anatol Pikas Shared Concern method you can find some hundred articles that quite correctly are designating Anatol Pikas as the originator.  (Some call it the “Method of Shared Concern”) Mostly they use Persuasive Coercion in their practice. Still, we are on the same side against "zero tolerance" and "resolute treatment" approaches. My English home-site was not renewed between 2003 and 2007 and ACBM has not been presented to the public.
 
Question: Could all teachers use ACBM?
Answer: Yes, they could – if they are lecturing in vernacular language and well acquainted with the therapeutic mediation approach. For this, an up-to-date English version of my Swedish book on Shared Concern method is recommended. It explains SCm in dialogues taken from actual treatment. However, it has not begun yet seeking an English publisher. If the present home-site has awakened your interest, you can call +46+18 14 11 72 or write to Anatol@Pikas.se and we can discuss how I or my collaborators can come and give a workshop. If you apply SCm in your school, we could write about it. And so I dare to go to a publisher with evidence of application in the UK.