New Shaping Us badge launched with Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood
We’re delighted that a new badge will help raise awareness of the need for children and young people to gain social and emotional skills for the future and recognise those supporting them.
A special blanket badge has been launched to recognise the work of all those who are helping young people develop the skills they need to thrive. This includes volunteers, parents, carers and young people themselves.
It’s especially relevant for those in and supporting our youngest section, Squirrels. which is celebrating a milestone birthday this year.
The badge can be given to anyone who engages with the Shaping Us Framework, initiated by our Joint President, HRH The Princess of Wales. It describes, in a clear and accessible way, the social and emotional skills that young people need to thrive.
Time to talk and reflect
We’re encouraging volunteers to give children and young people opportunities to discuss and develop particular social and emotional skills.
To help, we’ve mapped activities from our Squirrels programme to the relevant clusters of skills in the Shaping Us Framework.
You can use these activities to reflect on the skills the children have practiced and learned. For example, if you play the parachute game you might want to talk with the children about how they needed to communicate to complete the task.
We hope this will help our volunteers, potential volunteers, donors, supporters and parents understand the benefits of their children taking part in an early years programme such as Squirrels.
Why this work matters
Improving social and emotional development in early childhood has been shown to improve the likelihood that children will be happy and healthy in childhood, and throughout life. These skills are linked to better academic and career outcomes, and physical and mental health in adulthood.
Developing children’s social and emotional skills supports HRH The Princess of Wales’ mission of creating a happier, healthier society.
The Shaping Us Framework is designed to provide an accessible way of focusing on social and emotional skills. It can be used by organisations of all shapes and sizes to design and deliver interventions that raise awareness across society, and to support the development of these critically important skills for people at all stages of life.
HRH The Princess of Wales
Order the badge
You can order stocks of the badge from Scout Store which is available now. It can be given to volunteers, parents, carers and young people.
Order the Shaping Us blanket badge