Mitigating the Impact of Bullying: The Protective Role of Family Strengths for Youth With Disabilities

This presentation explores how family strengths buffer the association between bullying victimization and internalizing problems among children with disabilities. Using national survey data and latent modeling, findings highlight heightened risks for children with multiple disabilities and underscore the protective role of strong family dynamics in mitigating adverse outcomes.Participants will be able to: 1. Describe the differential risk of bullying victimization and internalizing problems across disability subgroups based on findings from nationally representative data and advanced quantitative analyses. 2. Explain how specific family strengths—parenting competence and family cohesion—moderate the effects of bullying victimization on internalizing problems and identify which groups of individuals with disabilities benefit most from family-based protective factors. 3. Apply evidence-based strategies to strengthen family-school partnerships by integrating family strengths into individualized supports, IEP development, and tiered intervention frameworks (MTSS/PBIS), with the goal of mitigating bullying involvement’s negative impact on student emotional well-being and school performance.