Community tension, protests, racism and violence can be anxiety-provoking for children and young people. For some pupils, particularly those from minority ethnic and newcomer communities, these events may have had a direct impact on their sense of safety and belonging.
Social media, playground chatter and early school closures can exacerbate feelings of uncertainty, worry and vulnerability.
In Northern Ireland, we also sadly have a history of children and young people being manipulated by malevolent adults into engaging in riots and destruction. These young people are put at risk of personal harm, interrupted education, and criminal records.
Schools can be an important source of stability and relational sanctuary during periods of community unrest. They can provide predictable routines, trusted relationships, opportunities for belonging and a sense of normality when wider events feel uncertain. Schools can also be sources of connection for families, often having knowledge of the community supports that are positive influences.
However, it is hugely challenging for schools to manage the educational repercussions of community unrest. In the same school, they might greet both sides of those involved in the previous night’s tensions, protests, racism, or violence, they may share the same playgrounds, classrooms, and even desks with each other. It is understandably difficult to know what to say and how to say it.
Most schools will already be doing much of this work, and more. These suggestions are therefore offered as reminders, reassurance, and recognition of the care and commitment that staff bring to supporting pupils during challenging times.
This guidance
This guidance is organised around five evidence-based principles identified by a worldwide panel of experts (Hobfoll et al., 2007). These are promoting:
1. Promote a sense of safety
A sense of safety is the foundation of wellbeing and recovery. When children perceive threat or uncertainty, their ability to concentrate, learn, and regulate their emotions can be affected.
Children may express worries directly, but distress can also appear through changes in behaviour. Staff should remain alert to signs such as withdrawal or numbness, increased clinginess, irritability, difficulty concentrating, poor sleep or appetite, avoidance, or complaints of headaches or stomach pains.
Schools can promote safety by:
- Maintaining predictable routines, clear expectations and consistent boundaries.
- Communicating calmly, clearly and accurately about what might be different.
- Providing age-appropriate opportunities for discussion and questions.
- Challenging misinformation, stereotypes and prejudice.
- Responding promptly and consistently to incidents of racism, discrimination or bullying.
- Ensuring pupils know how to seek support and report concerns.
- Using safe spaces – familiar, accessible, and regulating environments where young people can play, relax, work, and/or connect with others.
- Reinforcing messages that all members of the school community are valued, respected and welcome.
An important consideration that schools will likely face is whether to seek specialist support for pupils presenting as distressed. While some children and young people may experience heightened distress, it is important to remember that most will recover well when supported by caring adults and peers within safe environments, such as family, social, and community networks. Some may need specialist support and onward referrals to appropriate services when the time is right.
Supporting families who may be targeted
Particular sensitivity should be shown towards pupils and families who may feel targeted or unsafe because of their ethnicity, nationality, culture or migration history. Pupils with refugee or asylum-seeking experience may already have experienced significant adversity, including trauma, displacement and loss. Traumatic experiences can increase the risk of psychological distress and contribute to social, emotional, behavioural and learning difficulties. School staff should remain alert to signs that a pupil may be struggling. These can include flashbacks, nightmares, re-enactment of traumatic experiences through play or behaviour, hypervigilance, avoidance, social withdrawal, aggressive behaviour, and emotional numbing.
It is important to remember that many displaced pupils also display resilience, resourcefulness and high functioning despite the adversities they have encountered. Post-migration experiences related to family, community, school and service provision, can play a significant role in either mitigating or exacerbating difficulties.
School leaders could consider:
- How effectively the school responds to reports of bullying or racist incidents.
- Whether pupils know how to access support.
- Sharing reminders, in an accessible and developmentally appropriate way, to pupils and families about the school ethos, and policies around anti-bullying, dignity and respect.
2. Promoting calm
Children and young people often look to adults for cues about how safe a situation is and how they should respond. Calm, emotionally available adults help children regulate difficult emotions and tolerate uncertainty.
Schools can promote calm by:
- Listening carefully to concerns and acknowledging and validating feelings.
- Avoiding reassurance that cannot be guaranteed.
- Focusing on what is known rather than speculation.
- Supporting pupils to identify coping strategies that work for them.
- Encouraging participation in ordinary school routines and activities.
- Providing more flexibility around academic, social, and sensory demands.
- Offering more structure, predictability, time, space, and choice.
- Staff continuing to model compassion, and treating people with dignity and respect while having discussions about what has been happening.
Active listening is often more important than having the right answer.
Asking open questions and repeating back what they have said to ensure we understand their point of view can be helpful. How we respond will depend on their age and emotional maturity. Younger kids require safety messages, while older children and adolescents tend to need facts and context.
Periods of community tension can generate rumours and misinformation. Schools can support calm by communicating clearly, correcting inaccurate information and helping pupils think critically about information encountered through social media.
Supporting others can be emotionally demanding.
While it can be challenging, adults are often able to co-regulate and support children and young people who are distressed or dysregulated. However, this can become significantly more difficult when adults are experiencing dysregulation themselves.
Prioritising staff wellbeing and ensuring access to appropriate support are therefore essential in enabling adults to effectively support pupils. It is important for staff to draw on supportive networks within school and the wider support available through the local education authority.
School leaders could consider:
- How staff are being supported.
- How consistent messages are being communicated across the school community.
- Signposting – a reminder for all staff of the supports available within school, as well as the supports available through the local education authority, and other local health and wellbeing services.
3. Promoting a sense of self and collective efficacy
Children and young people often cope better when they feel able to influence their own circumstances and make a positive contribution to the lives of others. They can experience improved wellbeing when they move from feeling powerless to taking constructive action. Even small acts of friendship, inclusion and support can help restore a sense of agency and belonging.
It is important that schools acknowledge the reality of the events, and that certain behaviours are unacceptable and have no place in our communities. It is also important that schools continue to take a trauma-informed approach and are mindful of their use of language, for instance, to avoid using polarising language such as ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’. Those seen as ‘perpetrators’ may have been coerced into violence, and themselves have been ‘victims’ of other offending and/or exploitation, albeit in different contexts or circumstances.
Schools can strengthen self and collective efficacy by:
- Creating opportunities for pupil voice and participation.
- Helping pupils identify personal strengths and coping skills.
- Recognising previous examples of resilience and perseverance.
- Offering autonomy, encouraging problem-solving, and enabling participation in decision-making where appropriate.
- Providing opportunities for pupils to contribute positively to school life.
- Supporting acts of inclusion, kindness and peer support.
- Promoting activities and routines which help them feel valued and competent.
Schools may wish to encourage activities that strengthen community, foster inclusion and promote positive relationships across the school population.
School leaders could consider:
- How pupil voice is being heard.
- Whether pupils have opportunities to contribute positively.
- How the school is supporting inclusion and participation.
4. Facilitating connectedness
A sense of belonging and connection is one of the strongest protective factors during times of stress.
Schools can facilitate connectedness through:
- Warm and trusting relationships between staff and pupils.
- ‘Check ins’ with individual pupils.
- Accepting and adapting to individual strengths, interests, and preferences.
- Opportunities for friendship and peer support.
- Inclusive classroom and school environments.
- Positive partnerships with families.
- Activities that strengthen belonging and participation.
- Creating opportunities for connection across differences.
At times of heightened community tension, schools play an important role in ensuring that no child or young person feels isolated or excluded because of their background, irrespective of their involvement in the situation. This needs to be managed with a great deal of sensitivity and attunement to the local situation.
Particular attention may be required for pupils and families who feel fearful, vulnerable or disconnected within the community. Strong, positive connections to a class or school can convey a sense of belonging and membership, hence providing a model for positive interactions and offering an alternative to what may be happening in the community.
When pupils have missed school early due to safety concerns, reassuring language upon return is important. Letting them know that staff have been thinking about them, are glad to see them back, and that they are safe in school, will support recovery and connection.
Home-school connectedness
Collaboration between home and school, and the relationships involved are important to nurture. Using schools’ well established communication links to interact with families is important. A check-in phone call, online communication apps such as SeeSaw, or an interpreted in-person or telephone conversation can be vital.
School leaders could consider:
- How the school promotes belonging for all pupils.
- How schools and families communicate with each other, and how accessible the communication approach is at a time of stress and distress.
- Whether any groups may feel marginalised or excluded.
5. Providing hope
Hope is not about denying difficulties. Rather, it involves helping children recognise that challenges can be overcome and that positive change remains possible. Hope is strengthened when children experience supportive relationships and confidence that adults are working together to keep them safe.
Schools can promote hope by:
- Highlighting examples of kindness, solidarity and support.
- Noticing and sharing clear and practical examples of what is going well each day.
- Celebrating strengths and achievements.
- Supporting aspirations and future goals.
- Reinforcing messages that difficult emotions are understandable and manageable.
- Modelling how staff have experienced and coped with stress.
- Discussing times when pupils have overcome worry in their own lives.
Pupils may benefit from hearing stories of compassion, cooperation and reconciliation. Recognising examples of courage, kindness and recovery helps foster optimism and motivation. There are positive influences, people, and services in our communities that are helping and supporting one another despite the unrest. It is important that we draw attention to the big and small positive acts that events might overshadow. In the words of Howard Zinn:
‘If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places – and there are so many – where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.’
School leaders could consider:
- How strengths and successes are being recognised.
- Whether examples of kindness and inclusion are being highlighted.
- How the school communicates confidence in pupils’ capacity to cope and recover.
Schools cannot solve community tension and violence, but they can provide what pupils need most during and after these events- safety, calm, belonging, agency and hope. By focusing on these evidence-informed principles, schools can help ensure that pupils feel supported, valued and connected within their school community.
Useful links and resources
Useful articles
Returning to school using the 5 principles of recovery
Talking to children and young people about war in Ukraine
National Educational Psychology Service Ireland
Guidance for using psychological first aid for students from Ukraine:
NI Community and wellbeing resources
Community wellbeing information
Supporting the wellbeing of infants, children and young people
Northern Ireland Education Authority resources
School information in an emergency
Intercultural education service
References
Hobfoll, S. E., Watson, P., Bell, C. C., Bryant, R. A., Brymer, M. J., Friedman, M. J., … Ursano, R. J. (2007). Five Essential Elements of Immediate and Mid–Term Mass Trauma Intervention: Empirical Evidence. Psychiatry, 70(4), 283–315. https://doi.org/10.1521/psyc.2007.70.4.283
