Natural Helpers

Natural Helpers

Who are Natural Helpers?

Natural Helpers is a peer elected program based on the premise that when young people seek help, they usually do so from one source in particular their friends.

Friends may do the best they can to help, but sometimes they don’t recognize the seriousness of the problem or they have incorrect information. Sometimes they don’t know what to do to help and end up as involved in the problem as the person who asked for help.

Natural Helpers is a program which helps friends help friends.

Natural Helpers is based on the idea that within every school an informal “helping network” already exists. Students with problems naturally seek out other students – and also adults—whom they trust. Natural Helpers taps and uses this helping network and provides training to students and adults who are already serving as helpers. It gives them skills to help others more effectively; it gives them places to turn to when they’re not able to help. Natural Helpers are not professionally trained therapists or counselors; they are skilled helpers.

Natural Helpers are a cross section of students and school adults identified through an anonymous school wide survey. After representatives of all the subgroups in the school community are selected, they are invited to participate in the Natural Helpers program. If they accept, they soon begin their training as Natural Helpers. The training consists of Retreat Training and Ongoing Training, and the process continues indefinitely, with a different group of students each year.

What happens at the Retreat Training?

Students and adults selected to be Natural Helpers attend a 3-day training session in a retreat setting. There they get accurate information and learn a Helping Skill to use with their friends. Just as important, they begin to form a cohesive group from what was a collection of very diverse individuals. Among topics addressed during the Retreat Training:

• taking care of oneself
• working as a team
• knowing when friends need help
• expressing care and concern
• expressing limits for helping a friend
• recognizing situations which require professional helping resources
• contacting a resource

The training also begins to focus Natural Helpers’ attention on the problems that students in their school consider the most important.

What happens at the Ongoing Training?

The Retreat Training is followed by Ongoing Training – a series of lessons which provides more skills, topical information, and practical experience. Students involved in Ongoing Training also receive opportunities to discuss specific situations with adult leaders and to contribute something positive to their school and community. Among the topics addressed during the Ongoing Training:

• local helping resources
• labeling others
• stress
• depression and suicide
• relationships and friends
• loss
• chemical dependency

Why was Natural Helpers started?

The Natural Helpers program was first developed and pilot-tested in Washington State at Mercer Island High School in 1979 and at Sumner High School in 1980. School leaders were concerned about teenage suicides and other problems, and searched for a way to disseminate as much accurate information as possible to all the students. They recognized that students listened to their friends before anyone else, and fashioned a system by which students from all the different subgroups in the school could act as sources of accurate information. This was the forerunner of the Natural Helpers selection process. In 1982 the original Natural Helpers Leader’s Guide was written by Roberts, Fitzmahan & Associates, a health education consulting firm in Seattle, Washington. Between then and 1989, when the program underwent a major revision, over 900 schools throughout the United States and Canada implemented the Natural Helpers Program.

What distinguishes Natural Helpers from other peer-helping programs?

The Natural Helpers program can be tailored to meet the needs and budget of each school, as well as the strengths and interests of its Natural Helpers. Regardless of the individual character of the program, however, it maintains some characteristics that distinguish it from other peer-helping programs:

• The survey used to identify the Natural Helpers – students and adults – assures that those who are selected are already seen by their peers as trustworthy and helpful people.
• The selection process guarantees that all subgroups in the school will be represented by a Natural Helper.
• The Natural Helpers, those people most often used as sources for help, build upon their current abilities and increase their knowledge and skills.
• The Natural Helpers program addresses the areas of concern most often identified by the student population.
• Bringing together representatives from different subgroups in the school and helping them see their similarities contributes to a more positive school climate.
• All the materials needed to manage the Natural Helpers program contained in the Leader’s Kit.

What do Natural Helpers do?

Beyond participating in Retreat Training and Ongoing Training, students play a variety of roles as Natural Helpers. Among them:

• continuing to help their friends with their concerns
• recognizing when people have serious problems – like depression, chemical dependency, and abuse – and referring them to trained helping resources
• working with members of their helping team to discuss issues and specific problems
• providing accurate information
• becoming more involved with their school and community
• lending a sympathetic ear to loners and new students
• teaching skills to younger children

The program is sufficiently flexible to allow students to choose roles that are most comfortable for them. We suggest that, just as the title of the program indicates, students choose roles that are “natural.” For the most part, Natural Helpers continue to do what they always do – quietly help their friends.

How is the program designed?

The Natural Helpers program is designed to meet four basic goals:

• to help young people develop the capability to prevent some of the problems of adolescence
• to help young people develop the capability to intervene effectively with troubled friends
• to help young people develop the capability to choose positive ways of taking care of themselves
• to help young people develop the capability to improve their school and community

In order to accomplish the goals of the program, we’ve designed the activities to do at least one of the following:

• provide students with accurate and current information about the issues that concern them most
• teach students skills which will help them help their friends and themselves
• promote their involvement with their friends, their school, their family, and their community

This combination of information, skills, and involvement allows the Natural Helpers program to provide a comprehensive approach to helping young people grow up healthy.

Finally, we’ve explored the literature on adolescent health and development and on issues that affect adolescents. We’ve identified factors which we believe contribute to adolescents feeling troubled and actually getting into trouble; we designed the lessons in the Natural Helpers program to reduce these factors:

1. disregard of the consequences of one’s behavior
2. use of drugs, involvement in sexual intercourse, or low academic achievement
3. alienation from the positive influences of peers, family, school, or community
4. ignorance of information about adolescent concerns
5. susceptibility to peer pressure
6. participation in antisocial behaviors
7. inability to cope with stress
8. lack of a trusted helping resource

We believe that the more an adolescent can avoid or reduce these factors, the better chance that adolescent will have to grow up healthy, safe and happy.