Background to Girasol UK

Girasol Uk was set up in 2006 by Pilar Lillo, one of the original founders of Girasol in Spain. Girasol Spain (Arcos) was set up in 1984 to provide treatment for drug dependent adults and also prevention programmes in schools for parents and adolescents. Pilar drew from research based on years as a clinical psychologist in Spain, which showed her that behind each case of addiction there lies a poor affective and psychological development or a lack of maturity and emotional balance in the patient. The patient seeks relief from the symptoms created by this imbalance by taking drugs or engaging in other forms of substance abuse. Girasol Spain’s experience of working towards prevention of such addictive illnesses with adolescents, proved that it was often too late to do effective “prevention” work as a high percentage of adolescents had already developed addictive behaviours and were manifesting the same lack of emotional and affective stability as people with recognisable addictive dependencies.

Based on this experience Pilar began to conceive of a programme which took action at an earlier stage of a young person’s life, that’s to say in childhood. Not only to prevent addiction in later life, but also as an essential foundation for the healthy development of the child.  As psycho pedagogy describes, the period from 5 to 12 years old is crucial in the development of the personality. Her vision was to help children at this stage to develop a more solid personality and to give them the personal resources with which to respond to life’s challenges.

Motivated by the need to fill this gap in children’s education, Girasol UK formed and over the last three years has been developing and piloting an early prevention programme for children, parents and teachers at schools in the UK. The programme focuses on the development of the whole child; bio-psycho-social-spiritual and it is based on the following premises;

• Children who learn how to think for themselves and be independent are more likely to resist peer pressure
• Children who learn self esteem and who know themselves and have good   social skills have the personal resources with which to respond in a positive and healthy way to challenges in their everyday lives.

Find out more about the Girasol Educational Programme