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Dear Colleagues: I receive many inquiries throughout the year from youth workers and therapists looking for more information about the Banana Splits program so that they might consider starting their own.. Unfortunately, there seems to be very little useful/searchable material on the Web that doesn't land you right back to our site. Here's what I know: Banana Splits, as a program to help children cope with the effects of separation and divorce, began in New York State in the mid 1980's by a school social worker named Liz McGonagall. Family circle, in February of 1988, ran a story about the unique group. Over time the concept and program was picked up by a non-profit educational collaborative called "Interact" which was based in California. Interact supplies a booklet of materials to help get practitioners going with starting their own group. Some groups were school-based, while others, like ours here in Dartmouth, were community based in an agency. Apparently Interact has ceased to exist, at least that's what others have told me who have tried to contact them. I have no information on them either. Their workbook was also fairly primitive by today's standards. We stopped using it many years ago as we slowly built up our own materials to replace the original worksheets from Interact. Our program has been running every year since 1993, with two groups meeting every other week. We have a 2nd/3rd grade group and a 4th/5th grade group with each group meeting 10 times between October and March of the school year. Attending our groups is free, though we accept donations for snacks and materials. I'm sorry that I don't have more information than that. If anyone learns more, I'd appreciate hearing about it so that I can pass it along to other in the future. Because I'm so busy with running groups and seeing clients, (like you, too!) I frequently just don't have the time to return all of the inquiries that I receive during the year. But here's my email if the above information doesn't answer your questions. Kevin Lee, Youth Advocate |