New resource for children with severe learning disabilities

Children and young people with severe learning disabilities and autistic spectrum disorders are at much higher risk of developing mental health problems than other young people. Three out of five are expected to suffer mental health problems at some stage of their lives.

There are few resources to help schools and teachers promote these children's mental health, but that will soon begin to change. Zippy's Friends is being adapted for children with special needs.

The work is being led by Sunfield School in the UK, Sunfield Housewhich provides educational and residential care for children with severe learning disabilities, aged from six to 19. Sunfield's Chief Executive, Prof Barry Carpenter, chaired a national inquiry in 2001-02 which recommended the development of more resources to promote mental health. Five years on, he was concerned that little had changed, and felt that adapting Zippy's Friends would be the best way forward.

'The programme deals with so many of the issues that we need to tackle with our children,' he said. 'It helps them to identify and talk about their feelings, to communicate, and to cope with difficulties and disappointments. Many of our children will face enormous problems in adult life, and we need to do everything we can to promote their mental health and coping abilities while they are young.'

Adapting the programme is a daunting task. Many children with severe learning disabilities have little or no verbal communication and may have only limited reading skills, and so materials need to be rewritten using symbols familiar to them. Some activities need to be changed or replaced, and new lesson plans prepared. While Zippy's Friends is usually for five and six year old children, the adapted programme will be for a wider age range, and so additional activities need to be developed.

Caroline Egar, who manages Zippy's Friends for Partnership for Children, said: 'The children have severe and complex difficulties, and so the materials have to be adapted almost on a child by child basis. 'For instance, the more able children can read a simplified story, expressed in words and symbols. Others can understand only an even more simplified story, told in symbols and pictures, while the children with most severe difficulties can only match pictures. Materials have to be produced for each level of ability. It is painstaking work.'

Sunfield staff have now adapted and tested the first of the six modules in Zippy's Friends with four classes, and the response from the teachers who have used the new resource has been positive. Assistant Head Teacher Gill Rowley said: 'Some children have made significant progress, and two have made astonishing progress.'

Prof Carpenter was so encouraged by the initial results that he arranged for 30 more of Sunfield's staff to be trained to run the programme, and every child at the school will take part in Zippy's Friends this year.

'I am delighted with the way this is developing, and the positive impact the programme has had on the children,' he said.

The initial pilot has been supported by the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust in London, as part of its commitment to promote high standards in special education and to support pioneering work that can help large numbers of children. Funding is now being sought for the next phase of the project, which will involve adapting the other five modules, training teachers, running the programme in different settings and then evaluating its impact.

Encouraged by the work at Sunfield, the Hong Kong Institute of Education hopes to adapt Zippy's Friends for Chinese children with severe learning difficulties, starting in early 2007. Interest has also been expressed by teachers of children with learning difficulties in Canada, and Prof Carpenter will present Sunfield's results at a conference in New Zealand next Spring.

'Only a handful of children have been involved so far, but the potential for this project is tremendous,' said Caroline. 'The dearth of good resources to promote the mental health of children with severe learning difficulties seems to be an international problem, and we expect many countries to be interested. Here in the UK, we have already introduced the adapted programme to the people who coordinate Zippy's Friends in mainstream schools, and they agree that it will be helpful for all sorts of children with special educational needs.'

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