ZIppy's Friends: Southampton Evaluation Report


Summary

As part of the emotional health and well-being initiative developed by Southampton, the Zippy’s Friends programme (Partnership for Children) was run as a whole class 24 week programme for Key Stage 1 and early Key Stage 2 children. This curriculum is designed to teach them ways of coping with present and future problematical emotional issues.

This report outlines the outcomes of an investigation exploring the effectiveness of the programme. The Zippy’s Friends programme was then in its second year, with the previous year being essentially a pilot study.

Using Experimental (Zippy’s Friends classrooms) and a Control group of classrooms, significant differences were found indicating the effectiveness of the intervention in improving the quality of children's problem-solving and coping strategies and in the deepening of the complexity of their emotional vocabulary. Several of the findings are statistically highly significant. In addition, there were significant improvements in the behaviour of the Zippy’s Friends group as compared with the Control group in the perception of both teachers and parents. Further, the quality and effectiveness of both the content and procedures of the programme were viewed very positively by the vast majority of teachers running the programme.

To read the full report (no appendices), click here (2MB PDF).