Sensing Friends Online Friendship Groups

 

We are now taking on new young people to join our fun online social groups, funded by the Big Lottery

 

Find out more 
As well as offering friendship groups and counselling within nature, we are also now offering online friendship groups and online counselling for young people between the age of 8 years to 25 years, with any sensory need.
Please email our team at admin@sensingfriends.org or phone Penny 07584201837 to find out more or to register. 

Read below to find out a bit more about the online groups

Building Trusted Friendship In a Safe Space 
The friendship or peer support groups run normally for 12 weeks in succession. Young people who take part are asked to register with us for that particular 12 week group. Once each 12 week group has formed we normally don’t take on new members, keeping the young group members feeling comfortable within their peers as they gradually build trust, over the 12 weeks, with the familiar faces.
Currently we run online

Friendship peer support – Sundays at 4pm

This group is an informal friendship group facilitated by two friendly youth counsellors who have a good understanding and grounding in supporting young people who are experiencing any issues or living with sensory needs.

The groups size is quite small, allowing young people to get to know each other easily without feeling overwhelmed. The group size is usually around 8.

Within the group there is a chance for everyone to check-in in any way they wish, talk and share a bit if they want, about what has been happening for them lately.

We then have either a subject we chat about 0 chosen by the young people on the day – or a selected chosen subject by the young people selected in advance. Some of the subjects we have talked about in the past have been making friends, feeling included or excluded, how we feel about asking for help and the whole idea of self advocacy.

More recently we have touched on a lot of issues around living through COVID, such as all the feelings and issues that have come with lockdown, wearing masks, home schooling as well as the feelings that have come with coming out of lockdown or unlocking as many like to call it.

Often in the groups we get a chance to share some helpful tips and thoughts such as.

  • Handing out warm fuzzies ( this might be giving friends a warm smile of compliment)
  • Exploring and expanding our window of tolerance ( are comfort zone and how to comfortably stretch it, if we wish or need to)
  • My Song (Creating play lists and sharing them to represent and acknowledge important feeling and experiencing times in our life)
  • Art Of conversation (each young person has a chance to be in the hot seat to lead the way in debate on a hot topic such as ‘if  I could make one new vital law what would it be?’)
  • And many more tips, emotional tools and explorations too.

Storytelling Monday evenings 6.15pm (Zoom online call)

Storytelling is run by our amazing storyteller Kay. The groups again our small and limited to those who join at the outset, again facilitating trust amongst those who attend.

The story telling groups offer a chance to come and share and  join in with the power and magic of story telling, with all its metaphors. Story telling offers another rich way to explore what is happening for the young people who take part and with this express their feelings and emotions through a different imaginative medium, story.