For nearly 20 years The Bears have been used in countless situations to help explore and articulate feelings. Innovative Resources is proud to announce the release of a brand new edition of this iconic card set that has already found a home in the tool kits of thousands of human service workers.

Our new Bears have even more charm, express a greater range of emotions and look…even more human!

The Bears actually started their life in the early 1990’s as The Bear Family which we thought might be a different way of creating ‘family sculptures’, a well known family therapy technique. Little did we know that The Bears would go on to become one of our best selling conversation-building tools. One reason for this was their versatility.

They could be adapted to a huge range of conversations. But the other reason is their ability to give a voice to those whose voice is often not heard or whose voices have been silenced. It is easy for linguistically gifted people (as most human service workers are) to assume that it is easy to express one’s feelings. But for many of the folk we work with describing their smorgasbord of emotions can be confusing and at times unattainable. People with intellectual disabilities, learning disabilities and physical disabilities can all struggle to put the words together to express their feelings. Consequently many can feel silenced. We can also assume that children readily build a vocabulary to express their emotions but again this is simply not so. It was when we began to hear stories about how The Bears were used to allow sufferers of cerebral palsy to evaluate their services, how they were used with inmates in New Zealand prisons or how they were used with non-English speaking refugees, that we realised that The Bears could indeed play a vital role in insuring that those without a powerful voice in society could still be heard. In more recent years The Bears have become pivotal in methods to obtain clear and genuine feedback from both children and parents who use a variety of family services.

The new Bears are even more cute and cuddly than the originals but beyond this they still serve as a front line tool for social justice by giving voice to the silenced.

PLEASE BROWSE THROUGH THE BOOKLET

Ben Woods is the talented illustrator behind our NEW EDITION Bear Cards.
 View his illustrations in the book "Give me a home among the gum trees". 

To original Bear cards