Everyone has a vested interest in children and young people developing positive and respectful behaviours that promote safety for themselves and others.
Kia Kaha consists of a comprehensive range of anti-bullying resources to help children and young people learn and apply a range of safe practices that they can use when interacting with others.
Police strongly recommend that any bullying prevention approaches in schools (including Kia Kaha) are implemented in accordance with the advice provided by the cross-sector Bullying Prevention Advisory Group on the Bullying-Free NZ website.
Principals and Boards of Trustees are strongly encouraged to support Kia Kaha by establishing and regularly reviewing a child protection policy with explicit prevention and response procedures.
Learning activities in Kia Kaha should operate within a whole-school approach, for example the model described in the roadmap on the Bullying-Free NZ website:
- Download Bullying-Free NZ's whole school approach roadmap3 [69 KB, PNG]
- See a full explanation of each step of the roadmap: www.bullyingfree.nz/preventing-bullying/planning-to-prevent-bullying-within-a-whole-school-approach/
- an implementation booklet (PDF, 1.4MB)
- a comprehensive range of curriculum-linked, age-appropriate and evaluated learning activities available in the Resources section of the Schools Education portal
- School Community Officers (formerly called Police Education Officers) to support a parent evening, staff workshops, the occasional classroom lesson, and describe the programme to the Board
- the pamphlet Kia Kaha: Your community must stand strong against bullying (PDF, 789KB) which describes the Kia Kaha programme
- additional audio-visual teaching resources that are available from the School Community Officers.