Melksham emotional resilience project
Published: August, 2013
The Melksham 0-19 Resilience Projectis a partnership involving Bath Spa University, Melksham Community Area Board, schools, children’s and youngpeople’s development centres, Wiltshire Police, local services and the whole community. At its core are the notions that everyone – young and old - deserves to be treated with respect, and that everyone in the community is responsible for nurturing and supporting the next
The main aim of the project is to build resilience and community well-being by integrating emotion coaching into everyday practice in work with children and young people. It does this by
• promoting the use of emotion coaching techniques by community groups (professionals, peer mentors and parents) in their work with children and young people
• supporting children’s and young people’s capacity for pro-social behaviour and emotional self-regulation
• building on and strengthening current positive practices and partnerships that contribute to and promote community networks and collaborative work througha shared framework
WHAT IS ‘EMOTION COACHING’?
John Gottman, the psychologist who introduced the notion of emotion coaching describes it as:
‘helping children and young people to understand the different emotions they experience, why they occur and how to handle them’
A key aspect underlying the concept of emotion coaching is the development of ‘meta-emotion’, that is an‘organised set of feelings and cognitions
about one’s own emotions and the emotions of others’.
It supports the development of empathetic responses and thought constructions that promote self-management.
A growing research base in America demonstrates the positive impact of emotion coaching on children’s social development, progress and behaviour.
A network of supportive adults, who work together to empower children and young people to build a repertoire of internal and external socio-emotional regulatory skills, provides a successful context forpromoting resilience.
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