I thought it would be useful to bring a real situation from my own community into The Safer Skool Blueprint for us to explore together. I've already handled this situation, but I'm deliberately not going to tell you what I did yet. 😉 I want to hear how you would approach it first. Here's the situation: A new member joins a community centred around trauma healing and support. The community includes trauma impacted people, trauma informed parents and trauma professionals. Importantly, those aren't always separate groups. Many members, myself included, can sit within more than one of those identities. The new member clearly carries a great deal of hurt from previous negative experiences with trauma professionals. That history appears to influence how they interact with me. Because I'm both a trauma professional and the community leader, their communication towards me quickly feels confrontational and aggressive. They attend a live event advertised specifically as a social drop in space, rather than therapy, clinical support or a healing session. During the event, they repeatedly attempt to dominate the conversation and bring their anger and mistrust of trauma professionals into the space. Afterwards, the same pattern continues through comments within the community. Now put yourself in the community owner's chair. 🤔 How would you handle this? What would you be thinking about? Would you intervene during the live event? Would you speak to the member privately afterwards? How would you acknowledge the hurt behind their behaviour without making the wider community responsible for holding it? At what point does understanding why someone behaves a certain way stop being enough to justify allowing the behaviour to continue? How would you consider the needs of the other trauma impacted members and the trauma professionals who also need to feel able to participate safely? And where would your boundary ultimately sit? There isn't one perfect answer. I'd particularly like you to think about this through our four SAFE lenses:

@Andy Byrne is here! 🎉 A warm welcome to the start of something very special! We're creating safer Skools together 🌞 Please start with our welcome post which is pinned at the very top of our community feed. This will explain where we are in our build, your benefits as a Founding Member, and how to introduce yourself and your community. We look forward to getting to know you 💙

Hi everyone 👋💙 I’m 𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐚, founder of DAfree. 🏠 My community is DAfree Awareness Movement a supportive space centred around domestic abuse awareness, prevention and education. 🎯 𝐖𝐡𝐨 𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫? DAfree brings together professionals, learners, advocates and anyone who wants to better understand domestic abuse, coercive control and healthier relationships. 🌱 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐦 𝐈 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐝 𝐨𝐟? The culture we’ve created. We can have difficult and sometimes deeply personal conversations with kindness, respect and without judgement. I’m particularly proud that lived experience and professional learning sit alongside each other; everyone has something valuable to bring, regardless of sex, culture or ethnicity. 🤔 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐦 𝐈 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐨𝐮𝐭? How to grow the community in order to raise awareness and break the cycle of abuse while protecting the trust and safety that make it special. Growth is wonderful, but I never want numbers to become more important than people. At the heart of DAfree is a very simple belief: 𝑨𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑨𝒏𝒔𝒘𝒆𝒓 💚 And @Christopher Whitehead-Baines thank you for creating another space where communities like ours can connect, learn from one another and grow together. 🙏

@Lisa Adams is here! 🎉 A warm welcome to the start of something very special! We're creating safer Skools together 🌞 Please start with our welcome post which is pinned at the very top of our community feed. This will explain where we are in our build, your benefits as a Founding Member, and how to introduce yourself and your community. We look forward to getting to know you 💙

The wonderful @Matthew Landers is here! 🎉 A warm welcome to the start of something very special! We're creating safer Skools together 🌞 Please start with our welcome post which is pinned at the very top of our community feed. This will explain where we are in our build, your benefits as a Founding Member, and how to introduce yourself and your community. We look forward to getting to know you 💙