Teaching the world's kids how to cope

By REBECCA WALSH

A school mental health programme featuring a green stick insect called Zippy is helping children round the world cope with adversities, from starting a new school to dealing with death.

The programme, used with 6- and 7-year-olds, was developed in Britain about seven years ago and is showing promising results.

Children who take part have been found to be more cheerful in the morning, make friends more easily and develop better coping skills. The programme has not been used in New Zealand.

Chris Bale, director of the London-based charity Partnership for Children, which runs "Zippy's Friends", says the programme centres around five experiences many children face, from bullying in the playground to their parents splitting up.

Its six modules cover a range of subjects from feelings and communication to dealing with change and loss.

Teachers work through a series of stories with their class, following up each module with role-plays, games or pictures. For example, Zippy dies in one of the stories.

"That's a profound thing," said Mr Bale. "He doesn't come back by some magic. That's it, he is gone."

As part of that module the pupils visit a graveyard.

"Many of the teachers were quite worried about that but interestingly when they come back it's always rated the most popular session. Teachers come back and say, 'The children had no trouble at all talking about death - it was me who had the problem'."

Mr Bale, one of the speakers at an international mental health conference in Auckland last week, said the aim was to get children talking - be it about death or how they felt about starting a new school.

"Rather than saying to the child here's the magic formula for what to do when you are moving to a new school, it's about getting a child to think about a range of things they can do when they are worried or scared."

The 20,000 children who have been involved in the programme were found to have better coping skills than a control group and the benefits still existed a year later.

Mr Bale said coping skills developed early could be taken through to adulthood.

Studies had shown emotionally well-balanced children learned better.

"If you talk to parents, even though they are keen to see good academic performance, they also want to know their child is able to cope with life."