FRIENDS

What is the 'fun friends' intervention?

‘Fun Friends’, ‘Friends for Life’ and ‘My Friends Youth’ are school-based anxiety prevention and resilience building programmes developed by Dr. Paula Barrett in Australia.

Friends programmes helps students to develop resilience by teaching them effective strategies to cope with, problem solve and manage all kinds of emotional distress, including worry, stress, change and anxiety. Skills learned throughout the programme help students both now and in later life. The programme can be run by teachers as a whole class programme, or as a small group intervention.

FRIENDS is an acronym for the skills taught throughout the programme:

• Feelings. Talk about your feelings and care about other peoples feelings

• Relax. Ways for us to relax

• I can do it! I can try (Inner helpful thoughts)

• Encourage. How to be a good friend

• Nurture. Quality time together doing fun activities with others

• Don’t forget to be brave. Practice the skills every day with friends and family

• Stay.

Fun friends is aimed at teachiing 4 to 7 year olds about the valuable social and emotional skills that are also key life skills.

Pupils to target

A program of work that will help children who find it difficult to relate emotionally and socially to others and how to build positive relationships.

Session format: key points

• Parental Permissions and involvement - if possible to discuss the new skills and goals

• There are 12 sessions with activities that are designed to build resilience in young children

• Sessions = 45 minutes to an hour or can be broken down into smaller sessions or repeated sessions, it is not a rigid programme. You may want to spend more than one session on each of the skills

• What is important is the structire and sequence of the content, which should be followed exactly as described, as research has suggested that this is most effective

• Groups should have no more that 8 pupils. It can also be delivered 1:1 if needed, however group work is best

• Work with families and provide homework to encourage practicing the new skills as a family

Here are a list of the 12 sessions and the key learning components within each:

1. Getting started - sense of identity, feeling is scared is ok / we can all learn to be brave, we all have similarities and differences, social skills training games

2. My feelings - understanding feelings in ourselves

3. Your feelings - understanding feelings in others

4. Our bodies and relaxation games - understanding body cues

5. Red and Green thoughts - Learning about 'red' (unhelpful) and 'green' (helpful) thinking

6. Changing 'Red' thoughts into 'Green' thoughts - Learning more about 'red' (unhelpful) and 'green' (helpful) thinking

7. Doing things one step at a time - learning to set goals and trying to do new things

8. Steps to being a good friend - learning how to be a good friend

9. Giving ourselves a pat on the back - learning about rewarding ourselves

10. Family, school, neighbours, friends - learning about role models in our lives

11. Our circle of love and friends - learning about support teams in our lives

12. Dress up Party! learning to be happy with our efforts

Who can deliver the sessions?

Fun friends is designed for children to work through with the support of a parent or professional, such as a mental health practitioner, teacher, mentor, teaching assistant, social worker or youth worker.

Where can the resources be accessed?

They can be accessed electronically in the shared intervention drive:

Fun friends folder