MEET CONNIE.
Social Stencil created by
Dr. Connie Buckingham, PhD
connie@socialstencil.com
Our childhood experiences shape us, every one of us.
Connie experienced first hand the negative and destructive impact when someone is lacking social and emotional strategies to manage relationships. Connie experienced domestic violence as a child, and this set her on a path to understand social development, how skills develop, and find ways to reduce violence and abuse in relationships.
Her own experience led to a career as a Psychologist, and what she discovered in her own family history was that her father, and his father before him, experienced domestic violence and childhood trauma and those early experiences, carried through to Connie’s childhood. Research has taught us that early life experiences (personal and learnt) shape our templates for managing relationships throughout our life span.
With this in mind, Connie set out on a life long journey to find powerful ways to teach all young people social strategies and concepts to support their social development. Research has taught us that no matter what a child brings with them to school, what they learn at school can significantly change a young persons developmental trajectories, and that’s why social emotional programs in schools matter.
Social Stencil has grown out of this first motivation, and the program itself has been influenced by Connie’s adult life experiences too. Connie worked as a Therapist for Autistic children, an Integration Aide in a student-centre teacher-guided school, a School Psychologist and Private Practitioner.
Connie first wrote Social stencil in 2008 for a Sydney based Girls school seeking strategies to support the friendship challenges they were identifying. Following the successful pilot study, Connie returned to Melbourne to undertake PhD research with the University of Melbourne, to understand whether the same outcomes could be attained in other schools.
In 2009 Connie also opened The Allied Health Studio Collective (AHSC, formerly the Social Learning Studio), a neuro-affirming multidisciplinary practice located in Brunswick, Coburg and Geelong, Victoria. AHSC supports all young people and their families, with a particularly flair for supporting the neurodivergent and LGBTQIA+ communities.
Today, Connie lives in Hobart, and travels across Australia sharing her social learning strategies, training programs and quirky conference themes with educators, clinicians and parents.
Connie is also constantly researching, refining and expanding the Social Stencil program, to continue to engage and support all young people.
In 2023 Social Stencil underwent a process of reflective practice. With the support of an incredible team of adults with lived experience (Check out this powerhouse of women: Sandhya Manon from Onwards and Upwards, Em from Neurowild, Rebecca Challoner from My Spirited Child and Christina Keeble from Christina Keeble Consulting), Social Stencil was picked apart and built back up again with many sessions completely revised, and other new ones added.
This new program was launched in 2024 and we’re excited to undertake a new round of research projects to understand what’s possible when programs in classrooms are neuro-affirming, supporting all.
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Why exactly Did Connie first design social stencil?
Social Stencil was originally designed to respond to the challenges teachers identified in the peer groups operating within their school. Teachers identified that much of their day was consumed by responding to peer conflict. They sought direction regarding “best-practice” strategies to respond to these conflicts in a way that would support and nurture students’ social development.
Without an evidence based resource on hand to meet these specific needs, Connie developed the Friendship Saver Program, now known as Social Stencil.
In her counselling role at the school Connie gained insights about the students’ peer conflicts. From grade two onwards the following scenario was common.
Scenario:
One student would upset, annoy or anger another student. A moment of tension ensued. Words might be exchanged.
Then one would leave, retreating to a friend to retell the event, and receive support, sympathy and advice.
The other student also retreated to their friends, for similar support.
Sometimes the friends actively involved themselves by playing peace-maker.
Sometimes the friends passionately defended their helpless, vulnerable friend.
Subsequently, the students either agreed to move on from the issue and restore the friendship,
sought help from a teacher to resolve the matter,
or avoided one another entirely, leaving the conflict unresolved.
The latter two strategies were common, and for some, this conflict occurred on a weekly basis.
Outcome:
For a small proportion of students, hostility escalated and became vindictive. Revenge often took the form of relational aggression which involved causing hurt by damaging another student’s relationships and reputation. The damage was achieved by revealing sworn secrets, spreading rumours and turning to allies to help exclude and segregate enemies.
For the allies involved, their motivations were often simple. “You have hurt my friend, so I will help my friend, and protect them from you. Their enemies are now my enemies.” With strength in numbers, the experience of rejection and aggression was amplified.
Response:
Connie’s response to the school’s needs was a plan to introduce a universal intervention to teach all students about interpersonal conflict and productive conflict management strategies. However, an Australian evidence-based universal intervention, with an emphasis on interpersonal conflict, was elusive. The most accessible used in Australian schools focused on general social skills, and lacked supporting evidence of effectiveness in spite of widespread use (Slee et al., 2009).
Development of the model:
Connie subsequently explored theories regarding children’s social processing, interpersonal conflict and relational aggression. The aim was to develop an engaging intervention that would embed a shared language and skill set across the cohort to build their interpersonal skills and, in particular, to better manage interpersonal conflict. Connie was most influenced by the Social Information Processing (SIP) model (Crick & Dodge, 1994).
Outcome:
The intervention which resulted was called the Friendship Saver Program, an intervention designed to be delivered to the whole class through facilitated discussions, group work activities, and drama-based games.
In its first pilot year, the Friendship Saver Program was delivered in classrooms across the junior school and was received with enthusiasm by students, teachers and parents. A PhD with the University of Melbourne followed, helping to examine the effectiveness of this universal program for supporting positive peer relationships. After a further 10 years of research across a diverse range of schools, the research edition was put aside to make way for Social Stencil - an evidence-based universal program for all students.
True to the spirit of the original program, Social Stencil will continue to be developed, now supported by a team of Educational and Developmental Psychologists, Speech Pathologists and Educators from The Social Learning Studio. The Social Learning Studio is a Multidisciplinary Practice established by Dr. Connie Buckingham in 2009. This practice was designed to provide a safe space where individuals could access social learning with interest, creativity and curiosity.