Trust, responding to disclosure and barriers to talking: children’s lived experiences of bullying in UK primary schools

The experience of being bullied in primary school is one of the most modifiable risk factors for poor mental health in children and young people, with the potential to prevent both short- and long-term negative mental and physical health, as well as social outcomes. Understanding and acting to reduce the occurrence of bullying and supporting students and their parents in seeking help when it does occur should be a public health priority. To support this, the current study captures children’s voices regarding their bullying experiences to better understand how sociodemographic considerations might be used to inform anti-bullying programmes. Trustworthiness, responding to disclosure, and barriers to talking were identified as the three dominant themes from interviews with 21 primary school children (aged 8–11 years) in a socioeconomically underprivileged and super-diverse city in the UK. These qualitative findings identify important considerations that future anti-bullying interventions may benefit from and are discussed in relation to the growing mental health concerns of children and young people. Findings, viewed through the lens of Social Safety Theory, offer an enriched understanding concerning how adults can establish trusting relationships with children and barriers that may prevent this.