Specialist Teaching Service

Autism Outreach Team

Circle of Friends

Guideline 1
An introduction to Circles of Friends - a staff guide
A handout for staff members.

These brief notes will give you some background information and an idea of what would be entailed in setting up and running a Circle of Friends in your school.

Circles of Friends originated in North America as one of a range of strategies to encourage the inclusion of children with disabilities into mainstream settings. Circles have been used to support children with a wide range of disabilities and have also been used in the community.
A circle usually consists of 6-8 volunteers (most often from the same class or tutor group) who meet regularly (usually weekly) with the 'focus child' and an adult. The circle has three main tasks: to offer encouragement and recognition for successes and progress; to
identify difficulties, sat targets and devise strategies for achieving targets; and to help put these ideas into practice.
Setting up a circle includes the following steps:

gaining the support and agreement of the focus child and his or her parents
a meeting with the whole class (which the focus child does not attend) aimed at recruiting volunteers, which takes roughly 30-40 minutes
informing the parents of volunteers and gaining their agreement to their children's participation
weekly meetings of the circle, the focus child, and an adult facilitator (taking 20-30 minutes).

Guideline 2
An introduction to Circles of Friends - A parents' guide.

1 What is a 'Circle of Friends'?

A circle is a group of 6-8 youngsters who have volunteered to meet regularly with your child and a teacher (usually this is for 20-30 minutes per week).

2. What's a Circle for and what happens?

The circle has 4 main aims:-

- to create a support network for your child

to provide your child with encouragement and recognition for any achievements and progress
to work with your child in identifying difficulties and coming up with practical ideas to help sort out these difficulties

to help put these ideas into practice.

The adult is there to help the circle, but the work is done by the youngsters with your child - coming up with ideas, trying things out, reporting back.

The circle can't provide instant friendship - but we hope that it will help your child to build closer and better relationships with other children.

1 .How will it be set up?

The members of your child's class would be asked if they are interested in volunteering to be in the circle. Your child's teacher will explain to them what this involves - usually this is best done when your child is not actually in the room.

We almost always end up with more volunteers than we need and selection will be carried out by your child's class teacher. The group then meets regularly with an adult.

2. Will it help?

Obviously we can't guarantee this. However, Circles of Friends have been used quite widely in North America and are increasingly being used in this country. As far as we know, Leicestershire was the first Local Education Authority to use them with youngsters with autistic spectrum disorders. We evaluated the first 7 circles that have been run locally and results were very positive indeed:-

children at the centre of the circles have shown improved behaviour and less worry about mixing with their classmates
the volunteers have been very good at coming up with creative and practical ideas.
most volunteers have been keen to continue their involvement
school staff have found then very worthwhile.

Please contact the specialist teaching service if you would like to discuss 'Circles' in more detail or if you have any questions or concerns.

Diagram showing children at the centre of four circles

Circle of Friends Contents