Partnership for Children’s work in 2020
The last 12 months has been a challenging time for everyone. As the pandemic continues to have a momentous impact on the well-being of children around the world, we have managed to continue our work with children, teachers and families, promoting good mental health and helping children to learn skills for life.
Teacher training moved online
The pandemic provided a challenge to the way we provided our services in 2020. However, we successfully adapted our training for online delivery, and ran 13 online courses in the UK, reaching 400 new teachers.
“Just to pass on my gratitude for being part of this and congratulations on the course, the way you present it and the obvious commitment you have to children and young people. Amazing!” - Tim, Oldham
Covid-19 wellbeing resources
To help children develop the coping skills needed to deal with the impact of the pandemic, we produced 22 free activities and additional videos for teachers, parents and carers. Themes include: how to deal with changes in routine, how to effectively communicate during the isolation and how to cope with anxiety over change and loss.
Programmes reached more children and young people around the UK
2020 saw the successful launch our Skills for Life programmes in 37 schools in Dumfries and Galloway and Newcastle. Teachers in these regions attended our online training courses and received programme resource packs thanks to funding from the Kavli Trust. We were thrilled that a local group of young carers continued to take part in Passport during lockdown by meeting online and were continually impressed with the ingenuity of teachers who continued to support the well-being of children in different ways.
“We sat around the fire, on a friday afternoon, and shared our feelings from the week. We spoke about how being outside helped make us feel calm and how it could be a way to cope. Our Head Teacher joined us outside too.” - Laura, one of our Dumfries and Galloway teachers leading a Zippy’s Friends session
Brand new Early Years resources
Thanks to funding from Oldham Opportunity Area, we developed a selection of play-based activities for early years practitioners, parents, carers and family members of children aged 3-5 years to promote their social and emotional development during these challenging times.
Reaching children globally
We worked with our partner organisations around the world to continue to support children with our Covid-19 wellbeing resources (translated into 7 languages) and we organised webinars to share best practice in online training and digital resources.
Over 2 million children have benefitted from the work of Partnership for Children since we were founded in 2001. Despite the unprecedented challenge of school closures around the world in 2020, 180,035 children took part in our Skills for Life programmes during the 2019/20 academic year. During the challenges of the past year and as we learn to deal with the pandemic in our daily lives, our work promoting good mental health and emotional resilience has never been more vital.
