Thursday, February 19, 2004

Contact: Bob Warick
Executive Director
University College of the Fraser Valley
Community Relations and Development
Phone: 604-864-4611
Email: warick@ucfv.ca

Burnaby school district awarded funding to try new approach to help keep kids safe from conflict, bullying and harassment

Burnaby bullies beware.  

The Burnaby School District is tackling bullies head-on. School District 41, along with the Burnaby Restorative Action Group, has received $67,000 from the University College of the Fraser Valley’s Fraser Children and Family Development Fund to address issues of school conflict using principles of restorative action. The fund was created by UCFV with funding from B.C.’s Ministry of Children and Family Development.

The project, called Towards Safe and Caring Schools: Building Capacity for Restorative Action, is a response to the new federal Youth Criminal Justice Act, which draws extensively on restorative process. Under the new legislation, the onus is on schools to find ways to make restorative processes work.  

About 25 students from four Burnaby schools, including Burnaby North, Burnaby Central and Moscrop Secondary, will take part in the project. Community partners include Burnaby RCMP, the John Howard Society, the Salvation Army, the Ministry for Children and Family Development and the City of Burnaby Parks and Recreation.

Despite many initiatives and programs developed to foster safe and caring school communities, surveys show that on average 29 per cent of Burnaby secondary school students do not feel safe at school. At the beginning and end of the Towards Safe and Caring Schools project, a survey instrument developed in collaboration with faculty in UCFV’s Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, will be adapted to gain a more complete picture of people’s perceptions and feelings about Burnaby secondary school environments.

“Schools have been working for many years to find and use effective approaches to these problems,” says Terry Waterhouse, Manager of Youth Services with the Burnaby School District. “We’re attempting a new approach drawing on work that has been done elsewhere with restorative justice.”

Principles of restorative justice derive from a number of sources including traditional practices of aboriginal cultures in Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

“The approach shifts the focus from a concern with the laws or the rules that have been broken, to determining what needs to happen to make things better for everyone in the community. It’s very much aligned with notions of healing, restoration and an obligation to make things better when you’ve done harm to people, property or community,” explains Waterhouse.

Each of the school communities will develop their own ways of using principles of restorative action to create a safe and caring school environment. The project will provide training for school leaders as well as opportunities for community members to learn about restorative action. It will also develop a resource guide and a workshop to assist other B.C. school communities looking at these approaches.

The restorative approaches being developed by the project are intended to complement and broaden current responses to school conflict, not replace them, explains Waterhouse.

 “There absolutely are times when punishment is the appropriate response,” he says. “We want each school community to develop processes and come to understand when restorative action is the appropriate response.”

Towards Safe and Caring Schools is one of many community and family-based, collaborative projects in the Fraser Region that will receive funding through UCFV’s Fraser Children and Family Development Fund. A total of $1 million has been awarded for projects throughout the region, which spans from Burnaby to Hope.

The successful projects will pilot effective approaches to a range of services for children, youth and families, with goals such as reducing the number of children in care, preventing teens from entering the justice system and supporting children and families at risk.  

In partnering with UCFV, the Ministry of Children and Family Development’s goal is to create an investment fund for evidence-based programs that promote the capacity of families and communities to protect children.

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