The strength of the RAINBOWS programmes is the commitment to provide the necessary training for those adults who care enough to become facilitators. Part of the training is to introduce them to a thorough understanding of the materials provided for the delivery of the curricula. Our materials can be used by teachers, parents, and other volunteers who are trained as volunteers and who are interested in working with children, youth and adults. The trained facilitator uses the materials that are part of the RAINBOWS kit, which is ordered and sent to each site. This kit consists of many components that are needed to suit the participants’ age level.
Some of the components are:

•  Facilitator Listening Module
•  Facilitator Component Module
•  Coordinator Manuals
•  Personal Journals for Participants
•  Storybooks
•  Pocket Cards
•  Special Keepsakes

A ‘must have’ for all Facilitators and Coordinators, this comprehensive book teaches the importance of effective listening. It provides handy tips on how to listen with the head, and the heart as well as the ears. It also contains a full statement of the nature of grief and is fundamental to the training of facilitators for the whole range of RAINBOWS programmes.

Facilitator Component Modules

The Facilitators Component Modules help the facilitators to lead the children and young people in their groups through their journey. They help the facilitators to plan in depth the weekly meetings for the participants.

Personal Journals for the Participants

Rainbows: The Great Britain and Ireland Edition of the Rainbows Journals are easy to use. Colourful, they help the children on their journey from hurt, through healing to hope. Rainbows Level 1 and 2 are A4 size and Level 3 is an A5 journal.

The three Spectrum Journals ‘Making Things Better’ are colourful and user friendly. They are designed to encourage young people to understand their grief and the feelings associated with it. Young people face many difficulties as they begin to learn their place in the world. For many young people one of the most distressing challenges can be the changes that occur in their families through death, separation, divorce or other painful transitions. Young adults need a chance to express their feelings, both positive and negative. Like adults, they fear rejection or lack of understanding. Spectrum provides the opportunity for young people to be with others who are experiencing the same feelings. Through the peer support group with the trained facilitator on hand, the participants are encouraged to build a stronger sense of self-esteem, and to begin to accept what has taken place.

Kaleidoscope and Prism

Kaleidoscope is the journal used by the peer support groups for participants of college age and older. They are adults who have experienced death, divorce or other painful transition in their lives. Kaleidoscope is so named because life is like the coloured bits of glass that make up the design that can create a picture of beauty. Life’s joyful and painful events form the picture of who we are as adults. The past has a profound effect on shaping our lives and on the quality of our relationships with others. Loss of parents through death, desertion or separation can affect how we act, feel and think. We may bury feelings of grief but they remain inside us and chip away at our feelings of self-worth and self-esteem.

Prism is the Journal used by the peer support groups for single parents and stepparents wanting to create family once again. As parents we have been given the greatest gift of all……our children. Children are for life and parenting can be hard but exhilarating work. We are shaping lives for tomorrow. The experience of death, divorce, separation or other painful transition can create a terrible pain on their journey through life. The purpose of Prism is to heal the hurts and restore the hope of a brighter future. Prism is designed to offer parents the opportunity to reflect on their own experience of loss and how they are dealing with the grief issues of their children.

Both Kaleidoscope and Prism are twelve week programmes for adults dealing with unresolved grief. These programmes are run as peer support groups with other adults who have similar feelings, fears and experiences.

SILVER LININGS

All the RAINBOWS Journals, Manuals and Modules are copyright and for use only in RAINBOWS sites. To become a site, contact is made with either the National Office or a local Registered Director. You may find your local Registered Director by contacting the National Office.