Helping Hands is a free, fun and valuable education programme delivered in your local primary school by us for children in Years 3 – 4. It aims to increase children’s understanding of feeling safe and healthy relationships.
There are three key themes that children will learn:
- We all have the right to feel safe all the time.
- Others also have the right to feel safe with us.
- There is nothing so small or so awful we can’t talk about it with someone else.
In the small group session activities, children will learn how to keep safe, understand their feelings, control anger, and identify acceptable and unacceptable behaviours in themselves and others.
“Helping Hands gives children a safe place to share with their peers, learn vital social skills, have an opportunity to be listened to as well as learn to respect and listen to others. Children learn to identify who they can trust. These protective behavior skills are crucial in teaching our children how to keep themselves safe.”
The key objectives of the programme are to:
- Develop children’s levels of self-esteem and confidence
- Enable children to explore and express feelings
- Manage worry and anxiety
- Inform children of the right to feel safe at all times
- Increase children’s ability in safety planning
- Empower children to identify their own personal support network
- Explore how choices of behaviour can affect the feelings of others
- Identify healthy ways to manage conflict.
Helping Hands also supports learning areas such as personal development, problem-solving and communication skills through talking, listening, reading and writing.
Our charity currently delivers this excellent programme, developed by Women’s Aid NI, in participating schools across Central Bedfordshire.
“Helping Hands was extremely useful when supporting our vulnerable children in school. The children gained a lot of new skills and are able to feed back what they have learnt and still talk about the group work.”