Two leading Barbadian behavioural and youth support specialists have issued a joint urgent appeal for a unified, countrywide bullying prevention strategy and more robust, enforceable youth rehabilitation schemes, as mounting parental frustration grows over inconsistent school responses to rising reported peer conflict incidents. The public call from Shawn Clarke, CEO of Supreme Counselling for Personal Development, and Professor Dwayne Devonish, a behavioural scientist and lecturer at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus, comes on the heels of a wave of widely shared viral videos capturing violent student altercations, targeted verbal harassment, and derogatory public remarks directed at peers across multiple secondary school campuses. Clarke noted that complaints from both caregivers and affected young people stretch back several years, rather than being a recent development, with consistent reports that families who follow official school reporting protocols rarely see outcomes that meet their expectations. He pointed to a widespread disconnect between administrative and parental perceptions of appropriate disciplinary action: while many school administrations deem a two-week suspension a sufficient penalty for severe bullying behaviour, a large share of affected families argue the consequence is far too lenient, with some reporting that schools have taken no meaningful action at all after they filed formal reports. Clarke advised parents who remain dissatisfied with school-level resolutions to escalate their concerns directly to the national Ministry of Education, and emphasized that existing legal frameworks already provide avenues for redress even in the absence of standalone anti-bullying legislation. He clarified that physical bullying qualifies as a statutory assault offence, while targeted rumour-mongering that harms a peer’s reputation falls under established defamation laws, both of which are codified in Barbadian legal statutes. Recent high-profile incidents have amplified public scrutiny of the issue: Parkinson Memorial School launched full disciplinary and administrative reviews over the weekend after a viral video showed uniformed students making hostile public comments about their classmates and the institution itself. Last week, 43-year-old Melissa Onita Griffith of Mason Hall Street, St Michael, was formally charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm in connection with a November 3 incident at Queen’s Park involving a minor female student, a confrontation that was captured on camera and widely shared online; Griffith has publicly stated the altercation stemmed from an unresolved bullying dispute involving her own child who attends the same school. A separate viral clip circulated over the weekend showing a student delivering a forceful open-handed slap to a peer’s head during regular class hours. Clarke stressed that the underlying prevalence of bullying in Barbadian schools has not necessarily increased in recent years, but the widespread penetration of social media platforms has pushed incidents that would have previously remained isolated and unreported into full public view. He warned that many young people now feel emboldened to engage in harmful behaviour due to a widespread perception that the consequences for their actions are negligible, making a standardized national anti-bullying protocol for all school staff and principals a critical unmet need. For his part, Professor Devonish argued that educational institutions must shift away from a purely reactive, incident-driven response model and embed long-term, sustained curriculum programmes that teach core life skills including emotional self-regulation, empathetic engagement, non-violent conflict resolution, and responsible digital citizenship. He emphasized that families have a non-negotiable role to play, urging parents to hold consistent, meaningful conversations with their children about both their offline social interactions and online activity, rather than treating bullying as a problem that falls exclusively under school jurisdiction. Devonish also highlighted the under-resourced state of existing youth support systems, pointing to the Royal Barbados Police Force’s Juvenile Liaison Scheme as an example of an initiative that delivers high-value support to at-risk young people, but remains entirely voluntary, allowing participants to disengage from interventions at any point with no accountability mechanisms. He called for expanded investment in targeted youth rehabilitation programmes, including mandating participation in these schemes as a formal requirement for young people who come before the courts for behavioural offences, alongside regular, structured evaluations of all existing youth support initiatives to measure their real-world impact and identify gaps in service delivery.