Twenty Years ago, after completing a certificate 3 in Children’s Services I was presented a job opportunity in the Netherlands working for a Dutch family, caring for three children. It was here where I developed the critical foundations of how understanding family culture fosters respectful connections and responsive engagement. 

After heading back to Australia I spent majority of my career working for the City of Melbourne as a Cert 3, Diploma, Educational leader,  and 2IC of a small 50 place service nestled in between highrised apartments in North Melbourne. Mid into my career I found myself back overseas and was further provided worldly Early Childhood experience throughout various Primary School and Early Childhood settings embedding the new UK curriculum. This is where my passion towards Early Years frameworks and striving towards developing the ‘perfect’ program grew. After completing a Bachelor of Early Childhood, I began my teaching career at a small Community Cooperative before moving to Hume City Council. During my time working as an ECT, Nominated Supervisor and Regional Team Leader I was able to successfully complete a Graduate Certificate in Education, Business and Leadership.  

I have a strong alignment to Child Wise’s mission to transform systems and services to keep children and young people safe from abuse and harm and am an advocate for building strong relational partnerships. I am highly influenced by Lev Vygotsky’s socio-constructivist approach as I believe in co-constructing knowledge through relationships and the surrounding environment.  

It is so important that we take care of ourselves before we can take care of others.

Remember to take the time to do the things you enjoy often....

*Connect to Country/ Nature Walks

*Spend time with family and friends

*Travel & Explore

*Exercise

*Be Grateful for the little things

How frequently do you reflect on the planning cycle, both individually and as a service? If you don't, why not, and how can you motivate others to do so in the future?

How do you make each stage of the planning cycle evident to families and children, as well as in your documentation?

How do you incorporate children's perspectives into the planning cycle for your service?

NCPW aims to engage, educate and empower Australians to understand the complexity of child abuse and neglect and work together to prevent it. The campaign does this through sharing evidence through webinars and events as well as creating resources in order to empower communities to have conversations regarding children’s safety and wellbeing.

As early years teachers and educators, we are often faced with confronting conversations where children disclose challenges they are facing at home. They do this because they feel safe to share because of the relationships we have formed with them. We have a duty of care to do our best protect children. This is a big responsibility but an important one.

This is why Body Safety education is so important. Many of our services are implementing the Body safety incursions but we should also be incorporating Body Safety education into our every day practice and conversations with children so we continue to empower them and so they know it is ok to share if they are feeling unsafe or scared. I would like to teams to reflect on how they are doing this in their educational programs and conversations with children and families.

It is also important that as educators we all have a strong understanding of the Child Safe Standards. The Department of Education Authorised officers have a role to play in ensuring we are compliant with the standards and that every one of us understands how they impact the work we do with children and families. Authorised officers are also carrying out Child Safe focused compliance visits where they will attend a service and discuss how the standards are understood and implemented in our early years service. We will soon be undertaking a few in partnership with the Department to assist us to understand what we can do better in this area and how we can improve.

All early years staff should have a clear understanding of the 11 Child Safe Standards and be able to talk to how we implement these. https://ccyp.vic.gov.au/child-safe-standards/the-11-child-safe-standards/ I encourage teams to discuss these standards in your team meetings to ensure you are clear on what your role is and how the standards are implemented in your service.