About Us
In 2015 Claire Orange and Helen Davidson formed ‘BEST Programs 4 Kids’, beginning a collaboration on their long-held, mutual ambition: to create a range of products that would teach every child the explicit skills of social and emotional wellbeing; to help them to lay down the foundational habits of lifelong, positive, mental health.
Why?
Because Helen and Claire’s combined six decades’ clinical experience in a wide range of paediatric health facilities – acute and long term, hospital and community-based – had convinced them that children’s mental healthcare was falling short.
Big changes were needed.
The place to start the enhancement of positive mental health wasn’t in a doctor’s office, but rather where children live, learn, love and develop: in their schools and with their families. Helen and Claire, in their research and experience, knew that social and emotional skills build lifelong mental health and need to be a part of everyday learning.
So began a creative partnership of writing and a pooling of Claire’s and Helen’s years of experience in providing therapy to many, many thousands of children and their families. In 2015 they published Highway Heroes, an Australian Curriculum-aligned, social and emotional teaching resource for Primary Schools, based on the metaphor of Life’s Highway with its ‘BUMPS’ and ‘HAZARDS’ and navigating them with ‘TOOLS’ (skills). The creation of Little Highway Heroes for pre-primary school education, followed in 2016.
The spotlight then fell on products for families with the publication of the Kids’ and Parents’ Guides in the What to do About series: What to do about Friends, Fitting in and All That Stuff, What to do about Bullying, Teasing and All That Stuff, What to do about Feelings, Moods and All That Stuff completing the six book series, winning a Moonbeam Children’s Book Award in 2019.
Helen and Claire’s journey continues to progress with a presence in over 500 schools, paediatric health practices and early childhood facilities internationally.
Claire and Helen have been the recipients of many awards, both collectively and individually, although their personal satisfaction is knowing that on a playground some place, somewhere, there’s a child being assertive in the face of nastiness, there’s another who’s turned, “No, you can’t play!” into “Sure, come on in!”, and in a classroom one small head is held high whilst continuing with a task that at first seemed too hard, a determined look of persistence telling it’s own story…
We call them ‘Highway Heroes’.