Whilst commonly believed to be an adult or teenage problem, depression is now increasingly being diagnosed in primary aged children as young as eight or nine.

Stride’s Fantastic Friends is a childhood depression preventative program for senior primary students and junior secondary students.  The program is based on Stride’s sound experience of holistically addressing serious issues in schools and has been developed through consultation with children and teachers at various primary schools.

Fantastic Friends teaches junior and middle-years children to understand their own and other people’s feelings and to be empowered to know what kind of action they may take to alleviate a difficult or disturbing situation. 

How Fantastic Friends works
At its core, Fantastic Friends has strong visual elements with which the children can identify. Through this activity based learning, the students learn a variety of life skills that enable them to be aware of the concerns of others.  It teaches them to support other students and feel empowered to take action in their lives as well as providing coping skills for when they may face difficulties.

About the training
Stride’s experienced trainers work directly with young people in your school. Over the course of the one-day workshop students are taken on a journey that revolves around a combination of activity and self-reflection.  Students are challenged to explore their feelings, think about concepts such as optimism and taking risks, the importance of supporting others and feeling empowered to take action in their own lives.

Using props as a way to work through deep issues, the program is divided into three sections:

1 Knowing others and ourselves

Emphasises the importance of valuing and knowing each other’s strengths so we are able to support each other in times of need. 

2 Skills training

Students undertake skills training in: 

• Observation (body language)
• Listening/questioning
• Assertiveness
• Problem solving.

3. Dealing with serious issues

Students identify issues that concern them and affect their involvement in a friendly school and learn to determine what problems require adult support and what issues that they can deal with. They learn how to apply the above skills in supporting other students to get the support they need.

More Information:

• Course Dates
• Course Registration
• Workshop Fees (45KB PDF)