Kate has taken her 30 years of experience as a hands-on practitioner to develop the Healthy Compassionate Touch Program.  The Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement has an enrichment program and healthy compassionate touch forms part of the extension program.

 

This program explores ways of teaching children and educators how to recognize and use touch that is nurturing and helpful, and how to avoid touch that isn’t.  Touch is such an important aspect of who we are yet there is a lot of fear surrounding the topic. There are easy and simple ways to incorporate touch into the classroom that can support the reduction of aggressive, problem behaviors and enhance the connection and sense of belonging for the children. When children are asked “show me what love looks like” they reach out and touch each other.

 

Information and guidelines are presented in the form of a series of videos and worksheets covering Kindergarten through to 12th grade. In addition, there are resources provided by a school nurse, for children with overwhelm and a Latino Cultural Perspective. These resources have been created to support educators formulate their own way of using Healthy Compassionate Touch within their classrooms.