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Since its original development in 2013, Zippy’s Friends for Pupils with Special Educational Needs has been adopted by schools across the UK and by a number of Partnership for Children’s overseas partners.

As schools start to prepare for more children to return to the classroom, there is increasing concern about the impact the Covid-19 pandemic has had and continues to have on pupils mental wellbeing.

We are delighted to have successfully launched our Skills for Life programmes in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland.

The Education Endowment Foundation have released a new guidance document which focuses on how primary schools can evaluate & develop a curriculum which supports all children’s social & emotional skills.

Charlotte Loveday in is a HLTA in Lincolnshire. She’s found lots of ways to make her Zippy’s Friends sessions a special part of the school day.

CASEL has analysed numerous research studies from around the world, producing solid evidence that promoting SEL also improves children’s academic performance.

We are delighted to be offering our Skills for Life mental health promotion programmes free of charge to primary schools across Dumfries and Galloway.

Here at Oldham Council, we are passionate about embedding The Whole School Approach to Emotional Health and Mental Wellbeing.

From September 2020 Relationship and Health Education will be compulsory in Primary Schools in England.

In March 2019, we visited Burpham Primary School CoIN Centre in Guildford to observe a Zippy's Friends for Pupils with Special Needs class.

Zippy has travelled far and wide over the past 20 years, since his first trip to Copenhagen to meet the pilot groups of Danish children.

Zippy’s Friends has been running in Slovakia since 2013, with the programme currently in its sixth school year.

Eight trainers from around the UK gathered in Birmingham to share best practice and hear about programme developments.

Partnership for Children is pleased to be supporting Place2Be’s Children’s Mental HealthWeek 2019 (4-10 February). 

The incredible contribution our partner Vaiko Labui makes to the lives of Lithuanian children was recently recognised by the Prime Minister of Lithuania!

Zippy’s Friends has been introduced into Korea by the Mental Health Welfare Centre in Gwangju, in the south of the country. Caroline Egar visits a lively school in Korea.

As an educational psychologist I have always been aware of how an individual’s early life and in particular their attachment experiences impact on their cognitive, social and emotional development.

The Zippy’s Friends programme in Panama has transcended school classrooms and has become a way to involve teachers, parents, families, whole schools and the community, with everyone cooperating to promote children’s emotional well-being.

10 years ago… Zippy landed in the Republic of Mauritius, a small tropical island in the Indian Ocean. It quickly adapted to the climate! and started its journey in 10 primary schools, meeting 1,045 children and 34 teachers.

The development of thinking skills is an essential life skill for all our children. Consider the journey a child takes as they move from a curious baby to an inquisitive pre-schooler, moving to an experimenting reception child, into a questioning KS1 child, then using their skills as a theorist and researcher in to KS2, ready to move into the next stage of their life. 

In our last newsletter in Summer 2017 we asked for your feedback on running Zippy’s Friends and Apple’s Friends. We received feedback from over 70 schools. Such feedback is invaluable and helps us to develop and improve the programme, so many thanks to all those who took the time to complete the survey. All schools were entered into a prize draw.

Here’s something to fill those spare hours(!) over the summer… Download our new Zippy knitting pattern and make your very own Zippy!

School transitions can be an unsettling time for both teachers and pupils and may bring up difficult feelings. To help your new class or current class with the transition to a new year group and teacher, try these Zippy’s Friends and Apple’s Friends ideas at the end or beginning of term:

Ever since Zippy’s Friends was first trialled over 17 years ago, teachers have asked, ‘What’s next?’ After many years and stages of development, Apple’s Friends has been launched as the follow-up programme to Zippy. However, children don’t have to have done Zippy to do Apple – it can be run as a programme by itself.

Zippy’s Friends is now extremely successful and well known in Lithuania, with some 35% of all six to seven year-olds taking part in the programme. But ten years ago, this wasn’t the case at all, and times were tough for our NGO, Vaiko Labui.