The Mutua Madrileña Foundation and the National Police have launched today a new initiative to raise awareness about bullying among the parents of children who suffer, cause or witness aggression in their classes or through digital devices. The alliance was presented today by the general director of the Police, Francisco Pardo Piqueras, and the president of Grupo Mutua and its Foundation, Ignacio Garralda.
Both have been accompanied by the General Commissioner for Citizen Security of the National Police, Juan Carlos Castro, and by the Director General of the Mutua Madrileña Foundation, Lorenzo Cooklin.
‘Bullying can affect anyone. Talk to your children’ is the guiding thread of three creative audiovisual pieces that place the accent, respectively, on the parents of the witnesses, the harasser and the victim.
These videos will be broadcast on the channels of both entities. In the case of the National Police, its social networks reach more than 7.5 million people. For its part, the Mutua Madrileña Foundation reaches 1.5 million households of its insured families on a monthly basis.
Fathers and mothers are the target audience of the initiative that aims to present a reality, that of bullying, which with cyberbullying has transcended the school space, and which is a problem for which no family is prepared. and that it can affect any child or adolescent. The creative work wants to show that we are all part of the problem and the solution, not just the mothers and fathers of the harassed, and tries to mobilize adults and make them aware of the problem so that they act when they are aware of it and talk with their children to educate, prevent and stop bullying.
The three audiovisual pieces that make up the initiative have their own narrative thread, being independent of each other and addressing three issues on which to warn parents.
The importance of raising public awareness on the problem of bullying is reflected in the State Study on School Coexistence in Primary Education Centers, published on May 3, 2023 by the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, which concludes that 9.5% of the Primary Education students included in this study indicate having suffered bullying and 9.2%, cyberbullying.
The activity of the Citizen Participation Units is a source of information for the rest of the police units and their actions are recorded as statistical facts of police interest. The data related to bullying between January 2022 and May 2023 reflect that the age group in which the greatest number of victims is found is between eight and 13 years.
According to data extracted from studies on bullying in Spain carried out by Fundación Mutua Madrileña and Fundación ANAR, based on the statements of those affected and on surveys carried out on all students who are part of the prevention program of both entities, It takes 13 months for a child or adolescent who is bullied to tell someone and ask for help, 36 percent hide it from their parents (and 25 percent of those who are cyberbullied), and 90 percent of children and adolescents who suffer bullying develop psychological problems (anxiety, depression and permanent fear).
The College of Psychology of Madrid highlights the five signs, or most frequent symptoms, that can warn us that our son or daughter is being bullied, such as low mood, lack of interest in activities that were previously carried out, psychosomatic disorders such as pain head or stomach that make you not want to go to school and anxiety symptoms, such as lack of sleep or loss of appetite.
These videos complement the other prevention initiatives aimed at students and the entire school community by the National Police and the Mutua Madrileña Foundation.
“The commitment of the Mutua Madrileña Foundation to the fight against bullying began in 2015 and, little by little, we have managed to make things change, giving more visibility to the problem and contributing to change behaviors and sensitivities about this scourge, although we have to continue working because we still have a lot to do”, said Ignacio Garralda, president of Grupo Mutua and its foundation.
Garralda recalled the firm commitment of the foundation “to help eradicate violence against the most vulnerable in society, whether they are women victims of abuse or children.”
In relation to the commitment of the National Police and the Mutua Madrileña Foundation, Francisco Pardo stressed that “the campaign we are presenting today is an example of what public and private institutions have to do: unite capacities to protect the most vulnerable” .
During the presentation, the Director General of the Police also wanted to highlight that “the protection of the most vulnerable is a priority for the National Police and it will never cease to be, since it is as high a priority as fighting terrorism or cybercrime. More which is a priority, it is a strategic objective”.
The Mutua Madrileña Foundation has been committed to the fight to end bullying since 2015. Within its line of social action -one of the four areas of action in which it works-, the foundation carries out initiatives on four fronts to raise awareness of the problem. Together with the ANAR Foundation, it annually prepares sociological studies on bullying, both according to the opinion of those affected and of the school population in general. Likewise, together with them, it acts every year in 200 schools giving awareness and prevention talks.
Since this year, and together with the Community of Madrid and the Madrid College of Psychology, the Mutua Madrileña Foundation has launched a program to facilitate psychological care for boys and girls who are victims of this scourge. Lastly, for eight years the foundation has been developing different impact initiatives to raise awareness, through social networks, about the importance of witness action in a situation of bullying.
On the part of the National Police, since the implementation of the Master Plan, both the Central Unit and the Territorial Delegations of Citizen Participation have given a total of 48,015 training and information activities on school bullying, which have been strengthened in recent years leading to carried out during 2022 almost 6,000 activities.
Within the training of the educational community in Internet risks, cyberbullying is comprehensively covered, as it is one of the behaviors that most seriously affect the well-being of young people, since it is not only limited to the school environment but also, through digital devices, they can last 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In this sense, a total of 126,881 informative activities have been given around this topic, and only during 2022, more than 14,160 have been counted for students, teaching teams, managers and AMPAS, among others.
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