Calling for change, a mother's plea "for all the little Tilly's"

After years of online and school yard bullying, she was exhausted and broken.

Despite their own devastating loss, Tilly's parents Emma Mason and Murray Rosewarne continue their pledge to do what they can to prevent other families from suffering the same fate.

Tilly's Mum has already met with the Education Minister Sarah Mitchell and has devised a plan she desperately hopes will spare other children the torment Tilly experienced during her short life.

Among her suggestions to key stakeholders include bullying consultants tied to each regional area to support principals and schools and the compulsory inclusion of the eSafety Commissioner's logo, link and appropriate tagline on every email signature with every educational institution in NSW.

She is also calling on changes to the health system to provide better services to paediatric patients living with mental health issues in regional NSW.

For Tilly the culmination of years of harassment, exclusion and online bullying which included fake nudes being spread around her school cut into soul and destroyed who she believed herself to be.

The bullying started in primary school and continued into high school. Tilly attended both government and non-government schools, and her parents believe the failures of multiple schools to appropriately manage bullying on their school grounds, and by their students, reveals a systemic problem in our education system.

"Too often, individual teachers and principals are trying to wrangle with bullying but with all the good will in the world they simply do not have the tools or the power or the capacity to manage these issues," Ms Mason said.

Among the failures experienced by the family was the circulation of fake nudes spread around to other children in Bathurst.

Ms Mason said the school's attempts at investigation fell flat when the parents refused to allow the phone to be handed over to the principal, who had no power of demand.

Shockingly neither the school nor the police made any referral to the eSafety Commissioner, with Ms Mason saying she isn't actually clear that they even knew of her existence.

Ms Mason said she concedes bullying is a complex issue, but said the time has come to instigate change.

"Since Tilly's death I have been contacted by well over 1000 parents who have shared their stories about the bullying of their children, and their frustrations at the 'victory' that bullies seemed to have in the school space, until their child, like Tilly, also developed mental health issues and they disengaged in school," she said.

She said if anything is to come from the loss of her daughter, it is the opportunity for action.

"Many of the teachers who have reached out to me have talked about not having 'a practical toolkit' to deal with the issues and that success is very much Principal and school culture dependent," she said.

There are many good resources available about bullying but there is no mandatory professional development for staff, nor education for students and parents, and it is approached on an ad-hoc and piece meal basis, and often just sits unused on website or in resource drawer.

"It is very clear to me that every school has a bullying policy. It is also crystal clear to me that those policies are not working and our most vulnerable children are being seriously harmed or dying as a result."

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Ms Mason said her suggestions for change are a starting point from their experience with Tilly across education, health and legal spheres.

Starting with education she said there needs to be specific real-life procedures in every school, across every system in NSW, with real consequences for bullying;

Bullying consultants tied to each regional area to support principals and schools;

Annual mandatory professional development for teachers about how to recognise and respond to bullying in their school.

Mandatory lessons embedded into the curriculum for students on:

bullying and its effects; community core values

Teachers and students being made aware (and reminded regularly) of the eSafety Commissioner's role and powers

Compulsory inclusion of the eSafety Commissioner's logo, link and appropriate tagline on every email signature with every educational institution in NSW

She is also calling on far better services for children aged 12 to 16 with mental health issues.

"That does not simply rely upon increasing funding to any one individual organisation."

She said there also needs to be non-judgemental support for parents from health professionals that is not linked to mandatory reporting and investment towards preventative mental health outcomes in rural areas (e.g. more beds, pediatric trained staff).

Further more, she is calling on government incentives for university graduates to commit to rural areas as bonded graduates.

"So that young people are not constantly retelling their trauma to new staff every few months."

She also wants to see properly funding and incentivising paediatric psychologists and psychiatrists to close the gap between Medicare and their professional fees.

When it comes to law enforcement and legislation, she said simply more needs to be done for victims.

"If that young man who spread the fake Snapchat images of Tilly had been investigated and been found guilty, then a public punishment such as community service would have stood as a public deterrent to the other children," she said.

She also stressed police need to be aware of and actively referring matters to the eSafety Commissioner.

Among her other suggestions are principals and police having the power to demand access to mobile phones and social media accounts upon a complaint being lodged and mandatory provision of a student's email, phone number and all social media accounts 'handles' as a condition of enrolment, and a requirement to keep the details up to date.

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