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The Charity Awards 2005 winner interview

Emma-Jane Cross

Chief executive of Beat Bullying
 

As I sit down to interview Emma-Jane Cross at Beatbullying's offices in Crystal Palace, the TV is on in the corner of the office with the deciding Ashes test underway. It is hard not to be distracted by the unfolding drama but keeping her eye on the ball, or not as the case may be, is something she has demonstrated with great success during her career.

Beatbullying was a popular and deserved winner of the overall award for charity excellence at the Charity Awards 2005. How this new charity took on the challenge of being the only organisation completely dedicated to tackling bullying, achieving some impressive results in just five years, is due in no small part to the vision and energy of its founder and chief executive.

She describes herself as a failed social policy academic who was crushingly bored, although her research on interpersonal violence and the correlation between bullying adults and children was the seed to what she has subsequently grown at Beatbullying. She became a political researcher to an unnamed shadow minister before Labour's 1997 election victory but quickly found that she wasn't comfortable with hothouse nature of New Labour.

She then undertook management consultancy for charities to aid them in recovery or get them onto their feet. This involved working with charities dealing with domestic violence and hate crimes. She says: I really enjoyed the challenge. It was a learning curve in the issues and needs of small and young charities. It demanded an understanding of the sector.

Having already conceived the idea of Beatbullying, Cross used her consultancy experience to build a new charity to plug what she identified as a gap in market. Although a number of children's charities were tackling bullying as part of their work, none were solely dedicated to it. She also realised that a child centred approach was vital to address the problem. She undertook a voluntary research project at four inner city schools, which surveyed around 600 young people.

Key results included that 36 per cent of children reported being bullied at least once a week, over half of children had been bullied during the past month and 59 per cent had been bullied in the last six months. Nearly 60 per cent admitted they had bullied other children. Most bullying went on in the play ground, on the way home, out on the street when they were playing or hanging out or the bus. Many children also reported being bullied by kids from other schools, during sports activities, by text message and increasingly over the internet.

Nearly three quarter of children said they would use a website for help and information. An incredible 93 per cent said they would listen to their friends, pop stars, sports people, and celebrities about how to cope with bullying rather than their teachers, parents or youth leaders. A similar number felt that published information concerning bullying was hopeless, patronising and rubbish, and 87 per cent felt they were not listened to about the issue.

These findings informed a pilot project in 2000-01 at six London boroughs. During the pilot Beatbullying volunteers visited the schools and created mini panels of volunteer young people. It deliberately chose to work with young people who weren't doing too well, many had been violent towards friends and teachers, most were not performing academically, and many had been suspended at some point.

The Association of London Government seed funded the project based on a nine page business plan. Additionally, Cross says that an early funding of around £200,000 from what is now the Big Lottery Fund was very important for credibility. We have had an excellent relationship with the Big Lottery Fund over five years.

Today, Beatbullying is responsible for a standardised response to bullying, rolled out to 21 local authority boroughs, affecting 500,000 children. Children, both potential bullies, and the bullied, or otherwise at risk, often considered vulnerable or socially excluded, sit on Beatbullying panels, becoming BB ambassadors.

They take part in an eight month programme of creative and intellectual workshops, formulating anti-bullying policy, practice, responses, toolkits and solutions. The children also take part in creative activities including art, drama and writing to develop a borough wide anti bullying campaign.

The charity has designed a website for use by children and young people www.bbclic.com which received 1,200,000 hits in its first six months, and launched a wristband campaign urging children to wear the band, make a stand, distributing 1,000,000 bands. Agencies taking part in the scheme are reporting a 45-60 per cent increase in the reporting of bullying and a 25-35 per cent reduction in bullying.

Cross is still amazed at receiving the Charity Awards accolade. It is stunning and insane, but was sensational for profile in communication and financial terms. She attributes £100,000 recent funding to the award and says it can press ahead with plans to expand out of London and the South East, into Wales and metropolitan areas It can also afford the luxury of employing a fundraiser. We are looking for someone with entrepreneurial flair. We look to hire people who come to us with unexpected skills that can then be developed, says Cross. The awards has also had a material effect on website traffic, with a 100 per cent increase in vistors to its .org site.

Looking at the wider sector, she is understandably for the role of charities in statutory service provision but has some very strong views on the role that young and small charities can and need to play. She thinks that the government is only interested in the top 10 per cent and more transparency from the bigger charities is needed.

Smaller charities need to form alliances to affect what goes on rather than having the big brand charities speak on behalf of the whole sector. Emerging charities have totally different value systems and expectations. As evidence, she points to the fact that the bigger children's charities have not grasped the by children for children approach that Beatbullying has employed with great success.

Smaller charities need to circumvent big charities and seek out a relationship with government. They currently cannot influence decision makers as they want to. If small charities downed tools tomorrow, the social fabric of this country would collapse, whereas if the big ones did it wouldn't. We are the backbone and should be listened to.

However, she concedes that there is more to it than moaning and concludes with a positive call to action. Young charities have to be solutions orientated if they want to influence government.