News and blog

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.

Monday 4th February 2019 was the start of Children’s Mental Health Week and we were delighted to visit an Apple’s Friends class at Merton Park School in south London.

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

Around 100 Apple’s Friends teachers from all over China gathered at Hongxinghai Primary and Middle School in Dalian to celebrate three hugely successful years.

In November 2018, our Programme Director Caroline and Project Manager Hannah visited Kuwait to deliver training on Zippy’s Friends for Special Needs to our partner, COPING.

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

SPARK Resilience, has already been running in Japan for a few years, so Caroline went to meet Hiromi Imamura, director and trainer at the Japan Positive Education Association to hear about their experience of the programme. 

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.

Moving from primary to secondary school can be a difficult time. That’s why we are delighted to be involved in a new book Curse of the Nomed, created by our corporate partner Wesleyan.

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.

Children North East is the oldest regional charity in the North East. For the last 127 years we have been transforming the lives of disadvantaged children so that they have a better chance in life.

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. 

Partnership for Children is supporting an important research project that is looking to recruit girls aged 10 and their parents with a focus on emotional competence during the transition from primary to secondary school.

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.

In our fast-paced lives technology certainly offers many benefits. In terms of communication we can have chats with many people at the same time on social media platforms. We can be always up to speed and in the know. Is this 21st Century Communication part of evolution? Is there a side effect? Should we be concerned?

The Todd Ouida Children's Foundation is proud to have introduced Zippy's Friends to the United States, with the enthusiastic support of Dr. Gerard Costa, now director of the Center for Autism and Early Childhood Mental Health at Montclair State University.

The original impetus for Zippy’s Friends came from the suicide prevention movement, with the aim of enabling children to find positive coping skills so that they wouldn’t feel the need to resort to desperate measures such as self-harm or suicide.

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

The attack at the concert in Manchester and the attack in London has, understandably, caused a lot of fear and anxiety amongst children and parents. 

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: