P.A.T.C.H.E.S. did not begin as a product. It began with a question Kathylee Forrester kept meeting in her work with children: what do you do for a child who cannot yet say what is wrong?

Twenty Years Of Listening

Classrooms, hospitals, shelters, military family programmes. The same pattern appeared everywhere - children with a great deal to communicate and no comfortable way to do it.

A Bear Instead Of A Questionnaire

The answer had to be something a child would want to hold. Something soft, something with pockets, something that could carry a feeling across a room on the child's behalf.

Hope As The Last Face

Hope is included on purpose, and on purpose it is not first. Children are not asked to skip to it. It waits at the end of the collection for whenever they are ready.

What Comes Next

The mission has not changed: help children name what they feel, and make sure no child has to carry a feeling alone because they could not find the words for it.