The Australian Child and Adolescent Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing Report found one in seven young Australians aged between 4 and 17 have a mental health condition. That’s 560,000 Australian children and teens.
These are the children and young people in our schools, and according to Kids Matter, only one in four get the help they need, but “Education settings are well-placed to comprehensively support children’s mental health and wellbeing in close collaboration with families and the community”.
Thankfully, your school chaplains can help these young people through programs like those included in the Friends Resilience suite, which are aimed at equipping children and teens struggling with a range of issues, including mental health.
And through SU QLD’s partnership with Friends Resilience, we are now licensed to train your chaplains to become trainers of these programs over the next three years.
Our nominated trainers completed their training in the Easter holidays and are now accredited to train other chaplains to be facilitators of the Friends Resilience program. Regional Managers and Field Development Managers will help to organise and host these training events.
Having our own in-house Friends trainers will allow SU QLD to run dedicated Friends training events with great flexibility across the regions and minimal expense to chaplains and LCCs.
The Friends Resilience programs teach children and families cognitive, emotional, and behavioural skills for managing feelings and coping with life challenges with a positive and resilient attitude. It promotes important personal development concepts such as identity, self-esteem, problem solving, self-expression, and building positive relationships.
Friends developmentally targets children from preschool through to primary school. The Fun Friends program is tailored for children aged between 4 and 7, and the Friends for Life program targets children aged 8 to 11. The My Friends youth program is for tweens and teens aged 12 to 15.
For more information about the Friends Resilience programs please visit their website.