Interview - Chris Bale, Director of Partnership forChildren
Monday, May 19, 2014
Partnership for Children is an independent charity that promotes the mental health and emotional wellbeing of children around the world. Its Zippy's Friends programme helps young children cope with difficult situations.
How does Zippy's Friends work?
It is a story-based programme for children aged five to seven, designed to teach coping techniques. The stories are about Zippy the stick insect and his friends, a group of young children, and cover feelings, communication, friendship, bullying, change and loss and making a new start. We chose a stick insect as the main character as, unlike a panda or teddy bear, it is not emotionally charged and is about as neutral as you can get.
Children listen to the stories and learn through activities including games, role-play and drawing, as well as discussion.
The 24-session programme runs over one school year.
What impact does the programme have on children that take part?
We are fortunate in that we have had lots of evaluations carried out on the programme by universities and researchers across the world. They have consistently found that Zippy's Friends is beneficial to young children.
Other research carried out in Lithuania revealed that children's absenteeism fell on the days Zippy's Friends sessions took place.
Teachers have also reported seeing changes in the children as a result of the programme, such as being able to resolve arguments themselves.
The programme has reached one million children in 29 countries - what makes it so successful?
Zippy's Friends is different from any other mental health promotion programme. It isn't aimed at the individual child, but a whole class, which means children can learn from one another.
It is also unique in that children don't have to speak during the sessions if they don't want to. We've found that the programme is still effective for these children.
One example of this is in Norway. A boy's father had recently died and he stopped speaking. He wouldn't talk about his dad and bottled up his feelings. However, during the last session of Zippy's Friends, in which children make crowns and have a celebration, he drew two pictures on his crown, and one picture was a lot larger.
When asked who the pictures were of, he said one was him and the other, taller figure, was his dad looking down on him.
