Toolbox 1: Best Practice Principles of Supervision in Outside Hours School Care- Unpacking the ‘Supervision Policy’ and Associated Procedures in the School Environment.

Rekha Moda: Hi, I'm Rekha. I'm the program manager for Gowrie New South Wales for Drummoyne and St. Mark's. I'll be unpacking the supervision policy today.

Question: How do you ensure your team members understand and meet the supervision policy? Where can you find the supervision policy?

Rekha: Our supervision policy is found in our Induction pack and also in our Service Policy folder. We also have a supervision policy on our intranet, and it's shared with key stakeholders, like the school and families. When new families join in, we share our supervision policy with the new families.

Question: What must the supervision policy contain?

Rekha: The supervision policy must contain high-risk activities, like water play, excursions, climbing structures, and transportation, if the service is using any form of transportation. It also considers the expectations of the nominated supervisor and the educators. It also has to consider the children's age, their abilities, and their growing independence, so their growing independence versus effective supervision. We also take into consideration the skills, the experience of educators, and the dynamics of children.

Question: What procedures do you need to know about in the school environment?

Rekha: The first thing that the educators should know are, what are the OSHC-approved spaces in the school? And the school sites allocate certain areas for OSHC to run the program. It's important that the educators understand where the approved spaces are, and which activities are of higher risk. The other thing that is considered is, who is signing the children in? Who's responsible for signing children in, and how can we minimise the time that we take to sign children in? Because if we have a big group of children and they're queuing up for a long time, it disrupts supervision and disrupts children's behaviour. So, it impacts all of that, so we try and minimise the time taken for signing children in. Then there's a procedure that we need to follow if there's a booked child who is not marked absent. Then we go to our missing child's procedure, and we try to find out why the child's not on our rolls and account for the child. The other thing that we look into is the toileting procedure, where the toilets are located, what is effective supervision happening around the toilets? When the children are using the toilets, do we have effective supervision around there? And then there's the use of multiple spaces. Like for our school, we have the COLA (covered outdoor learning area), the basketball area, the outdoor area. So how effectively are the staff supervising all those various areas and how they're communicating amongst each other when they're in those areas. And knowing where the children are, where the children are throughout the session. We just account for each child, we need to ensure that we know where the child is. And this is done through communicating through walkie talkies. The staff communicate with each other through walkie talkies and find out and account for children through headcounts also, throughout the afternoon and the morning sessions.

Meray Parsons: Good morning. Thank you everyone for joining our session today. This webinar is part of a series of webinars we will be presenting this week and next week. The sessions will be focused on 2 toolboxes. Toolbox one, which we will be presenting this week, will be focusing on supervision and toolbox 2, which will be focusing on medical conditions in the OSHC setting, we will be presenting next week. All the sessions will be recorded and all the sessions also have some supporting material that you can access on the Department of Education website once the sessions are complete.

The first topic we will be covering under supervision, so for toolbox one, is about unpacking the supervision policy in the school environment. This resource is developed by Gowrie New South Wales and funded by the New South Wales Regulatory Authority. I my name is Meray Parsons, the equality and compliance manager for Gowrie New South Wales. I work closely with nominated supervisors and educators in developing policies, systems, procedures, and processes to ensure that services are not only compliant, but they are implementing the best practice approaches in the work that they do with children. On the call with me today is Belinda. Belinda, would you like to introduce yourself?

Belinda Rouhan: Hi, my name is Belinda Rouhan. I am the general manager of outside of school hours care (OSHC) for Gowrie New South Wales. I support our OSHC teams and families and work closely with the OSHC managers in ensuring better outcomes for children.

Meray: Gowrie New South Wales acknowledges our First Nations people as the Traditional Custodians of our land waterways. We also acknowledge the continued connection to the land, sea, and the traditional countries across this nation. We thank Traditional Custodians for caring for Country for thousands of generations. We recognise this country was never relinquished by Traditional Custodians, and then the continued connection and commitment remains to Country. Gowrie New South Wales pays respects to Elders past, present, and emerging, and all First Nations people, including those joining us today. I am currently joining you from the traditional lands of the Bidjigal people.

So, for today, we are going to unpack a few different elements of supervision of the supervision policy in the OSHC setting. We are going to look up what supervision policy is. What do the National Regulations and the National Law say about supervision? Where do the National Quality Standards fit into the picture of supervision? We will be looking at specific strategies and how we can put supervision into practice. And we will also be covering some additional resources that you may wish to access later. So, Belinda will take us through the next few slides. Belinda, thank you.

Belinda: Thanks, Meray. Let us first look at what supervision is. So, ultimately supervision is about keeping children and young people safe. We are going to unpack the principles of supervision in more detail during this session, including what aspects of the National Quality Framework relate to supervision. But first, let us look at the laws and regulations. So, you can see here, regulation 168 requires a policy for a child safe environment of which supervision is an important aspect.

On our next slide, we have outlined some of the National Laws and Regulations, which relate to supervision in the physical environment and the legally responsible person or entity. I do want to remind everyone here that we all have a duty of care in regard to supervision. However, under specific laws and regulations, there are responsibilities according to roles. So, the first one you can see under National Law section 165, it is an offence to inadequately supervise children with a penalty of up to $10,000 for individuals, or $50,000 for organisations. So that $10,000 also applies to the nominated supervisor. An example of this offence could be not rostering to ratios so that you do not have enough staff to supervise the number of children in care. National Law section 167 states that you must ensure that every reasonable precaution is taken to protect children being educated and cared for by the service from harm and from any light hazard likely to cause injury. An example could be a gate left open with no one supervising children in this area, and children then leave the school grounds. And under National Regulation 168, as we said, there are required policies for a child safe environment, but also water safety and collection of children. So, you can see the first 2 National Law area sections. These are the responsibility of the approved provider and nominated supervisor under National Regulation 168. It is the approved provider's responsibility.

So, we are going to look now at active supervision. ACECQA (Australian Children's Education & Care Quality Authority) provides the definition of adequate supervision as being an educator who can respond immediately, particularly when a child is distressed or in a hazardous situation, and also knowing where children are at all times and monitoring their activities actively and diligently. So adequate is a legal requirement. But what about active supervision? The active supervision fact sheet by ACECQA describes active supervision as being attuned to children and the environment and promoting children's learning and development, whilst also being aware of risks and hazards and minimising the impact. Remember that supervision is a consistent and present engagement with children and young people and relates to the term of working directly with children, that is articulated in the Education and Care Services National Regulations. So, you can see on the breakout bubble here, examples of an educator not working directly with children would be a nominated supervisor at their computer doing admin, someone taking an extended parent call on the telephone, or an educator doing the dishes in the kitchen with their back turned to the children. So, think about your service. Do you currently consider these people in ratio because under the regulations, they are not considered as actively working or working directly with children.

Next slide, we will talk about the supervision policy and what it will cover. So, the supervision policy should cover high-risk physical activities like climbing structures, water play excursions, transitions, and transportation, if that's part of the program. So especially in vacation care, the supervision policy will outline the expectations of the nominated supervisor and educators, and it should also reference child to educator ratios. The supervision policy will also consider children's ages and the need to balance children's growing independence, whilst also maintaining effective supervision. This is especially important when we are working with children in the older years in OSHC.

So, there are some contextual considerations for OSHC services and supervision. It's really important that you know where the approved service spaces are in your school, as our OSHC services are often run on school sites where the OSHC is approved to operate from a portion of the school. Did you know that the service is not automatically approved for all indoor and outdoor spaces within the school grounds? This is why it is important to have a map of the school with the approved spaces identified. OSHC sites on school grounds can often operate from various locations, which may or may not be in physical distance of each other, and different OSHC spaces within the school environment may have clearly maximum capacity numbers. So, for example, you might access a library that allows for 30 children, but your hall space might allow for 80 children. How do you manage this and how do you communicate it to your educators? Because unlike early years centred-based services, OSHC services operate from school environments may be limited by the service environment such as gates to enter and exit the school grounds being accessed or left open by school staff or other members of the school community. On site at schools, there can be a number of people coming and going through the day, especially around key transition times when children are arriving and departing. So how do you ensure children at your service cannot access high-risk areas such as school, car parks or gates onto main roads? When there are other providers and visitors accessing these spaces? How do you ensure children transition safely between areas when there are external providers on site? And how do you manage the transitions for children attending your OSHC service who also attend an extracurricular activity? Arrival and departure times look very different in OSHC as children transition between school and OSHC. Do you have clear procedures and identified responsibilities in place for the service school and families regarding these transitions? And what strategies do you have in place to ensure you are able to sign the after-school care children in during the afternoon session in a timely manner so they're not waiting, and all children are accounted for within a reasonable timeframe? What is the process if a child does not attend a booked session and they are not confirmed absent by the parent? So, this lasts one is really key. What are your current procedures? If a child does not arrive for after-school care and you have had no communication from the parent, where do you go next? I am going to hand back over to Meray for the next slide.

Meray: Thanks, Belinda. So, when we are thinking about some of those considerations Belinda's gone through, we can really see that there are responsibilities or there are responsibilities for every for everyone at the service. Effective supervision and engagement are based on the premise that supervision is everyone's responsibility. When we really unpack that for the different roles, we can have a look at and see that for the approved provider, this is really around ensuring policies, procedures, facilities are kept up to you know, maintained. Reporting processes are known that there are enough staffing arrangements for effective supervision, and that there is training and support that is adequate for the nominated supervisor and educators. When we are looking at the nominated supervisor, it will include things like ensuring that rosters, inductions are done for all educators, that there are risk assessments completed, supervision plans are available, and perhaps even supervision maps.

Team meetings include changes to supervision risks or changes to the plans. That supervision is a key consideration as part of the physical environment, whether it be a pack up and pack down service or a specialised hub for the OSHC service. These responsibilities also then carry over to educators. So, when we are thinking about educators, the responsibility of educators is really to understand and to contribute to implementing these policies. Is there a change that an educator has seen? Is there an increased risk or hazard that they need to inform the nominated supervisor about so that the risk assessment can be reviewed? Is there a gate that is not latching so that we can then put that on a hazards list and either get it rectified, or does it mean that we need to have a different supervision plan for that afternoon?

Lastly, as Belinda mentioned, families are part of the responsibility for supervision. So, while they might not be engaged in active supervision during a session, they do support effective supervision by being aware of what the risks are. So, are they letting children in and out of gates when they come for arrival or departure? Are they letting us know that their child is absent so that we know to mark them off and we are not using time to enact a no-show procedure? So, what do the Education and Care National Regulations and National Law say about supervision? We have looked a little bit about the responsibilities now, but we are going to look at specific regulations that do pertain to supervision.

So, regulation 168 (2)(h) talks about policies and procedures being required in regulation in relation to providing a child safe environment. So, providing a child safe environment is where all educators ensure that risks to children's health and safety and as well as wellbeing are monitored, that the risks are managed and minimised as much as possible. Effective supervision, protecting children from harm and hazards and appropriate buildings and environments, equipment and resources are all essential to children's safety. So, while regulation 168 stipulates that there must be a policy in place pertaining to the provision of a child safe environment, this specific policy has a direct relationship to the supervision policy. Supervision is a big and it is an important deal. And there are specific considerations for OSHC settings that Belinda touched on earlier that we are going to unpack further to support you to understand what must be included in your policy, as well as putting strategies in place for effective and active supervision.

So, regulation 115 this next regulation really talks about the premises being designed to facilitate supervision. So, the approved provider or a centre-based service must ensure that the education and care service premises, including the toilets are designed and maintained in a way that facilitates supervision of children at all times that they are being educated and cared for. We also have to regard the need to maintain the rights and dignity of children, specifically the physical environment and its impact on supervision will be discussed in topic 3 of this toolbox. So, I believe that is tomorrow on Wednesday, the 14th of June. This regulation then also focuses on how our premises and our facilities and the environment we operate in really impacts supervision. So, we consider here supervision during the transition between the OSHC service and the supervision of children.

On transportation, we also think about the design of the environment and how it facilitates supervision of children at all times. At the same time, we really balance the rights and dignity of children in how the children are supervised in the environment. So, for example, the location of children's toilets and how children are supervised when visiting and returning from well, it is in a way that considers their right to prophecy. A good tip here is to think about what the school does and really either parallel that or have something that compliments the school's policy if you are on a school site. We also then want to discuss the setup of the environment and the unique challenges that pack up and pack down programs have. So, we also think about things like the timing of pack up and pack down. Do we have access to spaces before the session starts?

We also then think about the boundaries and gate access. So, families will need to access school sites to do a pickup, but then at what point do then we lock those gates down so that our children in our OSHC setting aren't able to freely exit. We can also think about discussing the importance of supervision risk assessments when it comes to regulation 115. Do we have a creation, or have we developed a supervision plan? While they are not regulatory specifically, they are really good tools to ensure that we are able to be compliant with this regulation. The importance of communicating the environment supervision requirements to new casual and agency staff, and then reviewing and updating each time there is an incident or a change to the environment. So those are all the types of strategies you would implement when ensuring that regulation is being compliant.

With the next regulation, regulation 99, there are some specific reasons or circumstances that children can leave. An education and care service or an OSHC service. Those include being signed out or being collected by parents or authorised personnel, needing to access emergency medical care, if they need to seek a hospital or we need to call an ambulance, if there is authorisation for a for an excursion transport, and if the service is being evacuated. So those are the types of circumstances that are really where children are, sort of that gives you reasons for children to leave. Other reasons, so if children are leaving because they did, they forgot they were supposed to access OSHC or for example, if they found the gate, decided to walk home, those are outside of regulation 99 so there are consequences to that. And if they do leave outside of those circumstances mentioned above and the circumstances mentioned in regulation 99, there are some penalties that do occur for that, so it is important to know what those are. I am going to hand it over now to Belinda to talk us through transport of children and supervision. Thanks, Belinda.

Belinda: Thanks, Meray. Regulation 102C outlines how risks for transportation of children are identified, assessed, managed, and minimised. This is especially important due to the changes to transportation regulations that have come into effect in March this year. So, you should have a transportation risk assessment at the service, which includes the process for entering and exiting the education and care services premises, which is your OSHC, as well as the pickup location and destination as required. It should also clearly identify the procedures for children embarking and disembarking the means of transport, including how each child is to be accounted for on embarking and disembarking. So, procedures for embarking and disembarking are further laid out in regulation 102E and 102F, and transitions and transport will be discussed in further detail in toolbox topic 2 this evening.

So, regulation 101 is about the need to undertake a risk assessment for excursions. Clause 101(2) (f) provides specific detail around ensuring there are enough educators or other responsible adults appropriate to provide adequate supervision. There is not a specified excursion ratio. It continues to be one to 15. However, the ratio should be assessed in relation to the risk of the activities and an adjusted accordingly. So, for example, an excursion to a busy open plains zoo will be a different ratio to an indoor play centre with security gates and a specified amount of children able to access the space. This regulation also asks whether there is a need to have adults attend with specialised skills, such as a bronze medallion for swimming. This will also be discussed in more detail in toolbox topic 2 this evening. I am going to hand it back to Meray now to go over reporting requirements.

Meray: Thanks, Belinda. So, we have had a look at some of the specific regulations that that really interrelate with supervision, but there will be times and sometimes there are incidents that we need to then report that relate to supervision. So, it is important to note here that if there is a serious incident where a child is missing or cannot be accounted for, it is a reportable requirement that there holds 24-hour timeframe. Also, if children are mistakenly locked in or out of the service. So, if you are about to go on transport, and we have noticed there is a child still in the service, that is a reportable incident. So, we, you want to really think about those instances and think about what systems do you have in place to prevent that from happening. You know, there will be times where there'll be near misses, so it's really important that you learn from those near misses. But it is also things do happen, there are some timeframes and some requirements around reporting. So, there will be other types of reports, these are not exclusive; these are just the ones that we thought relate specifically to supervision. But there will be reports that if there is a complaint, if there are children who need to seek medical attention likewise, there are also additional reporting requirements under different legislation. So, under the Child Protection Act and the Reportable Conduct Scheme with regards to reportable conduct and the Office of the Children's Guardian. So, these are just a few that you may have come across, but just to be aware of the 24-hour timeframe for most incidents that have to be reported.

So now I have talked a little bit about the laws, the responsibilities of the approved provider, of the nominated supervisor, the responsibilities of educators and families, as well as the requirements under the regulatory framework. So, what does the National Quality Standard and how does that fit into the picture around supervision?

So, in terms of Quality Area 2, supervision is at the core of element 2.2.1, and as we have discussed so far, it is central to ensuring that children's safety is protected in the service, while on excursions and during transportation provided and arranged by the service. The guide makes a really good reference to the important role that the educational leader and educators hold in promoting children's learning and development, by creating a safe space and social and safe social environments that have positive impact. Children have the right to be protected from potential hazards and dangers posed by products or by plants, by objects, animals, and people in the immediate and wider environment. So, if we are thinking about our program and the role of the educational leader as well, to have children engaged with different equipment, this element really does connect with that because we really have to think about what the materials are. Are the children used to working with woodwork items or cooking? Have we had a discussion with children about the safety about their own safety and how they can keep themselves safe during an experience. So, there's this interplay between our program and Quality Area 2, which is really important. So, at all times reasonable precautions and adequate supervision ensure children are protected from harm and hazard. And educators need to be alert to and aware of potential accidents and injury throughout the service and not just in their immediate area. So, if we're thinking about an external provider who is running a new basketball program that's really close to our service, what does that mean? Do we have to think about changing something and having those discussions with children really fosters their capacity to understand and respect the social and natural environment. So, creating those learning environments but being really aware of hazards and changing circumstances can create challenging but safe environments for children.

So, we are now going to move into supervision and practice and really talk about some specific strategies that you may want to think about, or you may want to utilise that might really enhance your supervision and engagement with children. So, these 6 areas we call the building blocks of effective supervision and engagement. There are several, obviously 6 of them will cover the next couple of slides. So, Belinda's going to take us through a few, and then I will join you through a few as well. Thanks, Belinda.

Belinda: Thanks, Meray. So, let us first look at the physical environment and layout of the space. Again, this will be covered in more detail in toolbox one, topic 3. So, consider the layout of the premises and grounds of the service indoors and outdoors. I also consider transitions between the indoor and outdoor spaces. Thinking of your own service, are there any high-risk activities such as gymnastics, tree climbing, or woodwork that you do? Are there the presence of any animals such as kangaroos, snakes, lizards, which inhabit the local area that you need to be aware of when supervising? So, this might impact our regional and remote spaces more so. Where are your bathrooms located and how do you transition to the bathrooms? Thinking about your spaces, what are some high-risk activities or spaces you may have? Jot them down. Are there any ways to change the layout to facilitate more effective supervision? So perhaps this is something you can do with your team. Unpack your spaces and how you are effectively supervising. One example I would like to share from a Gowrie New South Wales service is in a regional space that during summer, there is an additional person rostered for after-school care to support transitions between the indoor and outdoor spaces. So, at this school, there are a lot of gardens and shrubbery between the hall, which is the main indoor space, and the playground which the children access. So, snakes have been known to frequent the shrubbery close to the hall, and between these 2 spaces in the warmer months, this additional person was actioned after a risk assessment by the nominated supervisor.

So, if we now move on to our second ingredient of effective supervision, which is engage and redirect. Educators will use the information they have about each child's abilities and interests to plan learning experiences that are inviting and engaging for our children. Being present with the children in your care and building rapport with them is essential. This can be done even with agency and casual staff by using simple techniques such as saying hello and introducing yourself, showing interest in the activity they are doing, or asking them to join you in an activity, especially if they look lonely or bored. Educators should also be supporting and guiding children throughout the program using strategies such as role modelling, posing questions, being attentive, demonstrating, suggesting, redirecting, and encouraging.

So, the third building block is positioning. Educators will work with your colleagues to consider your positioning and ensure all children are in sight and sound. This is more than knowing where to stand in the outdoor play space. It is thinking about where children are and how we can adapt our positioning to most effectively supervise. So it is in simple changes such as if you are engaging in a quiet activity with a small group of children, have your back to the wall so that you can scan the main space regularly and have other children in view. If you are in an outdoor environment, consider where you can stand to see the children transitioning between spaces as well as the children playing in your area. Or if you have a high impact activity such as a soccer game, and then some children playing quietly off to the side, you will position yourself closer to the soccer game and still have the other children in view. Educators will liaise with colleagues to manage supervision risks in their environment and adapt their supervision as children move throughout spaces. Regular and ongoing communication with colleagues across the day is essential and supports the educative team regarding staff whereabouts, individual circumstances for children and hotspots in the playground. So how do you currently ensure strong communication between educators in your service, especially for those in larger services or those that are geographically spread out? Some of you may have walkie talkies if you do use walkie talkies. What procedures do you have in place to ensure information is shared, received, and acknowledged before staff or children transition from spaces? Are your procedures documented and how does the staff know how to follow them? So do you include your walkie talkie procedures, for example, in your new staff inductions? As a base level of communication, educators and staff should identify their movements and whereabouts with each other. So, this includes if someone is going to the bathroom, to the storeroom, or if they need to go to the kitchen, or even if they are doing first aid for a child. They should share pertinent information with each other so that children can be best supported in their play. So, if you know a child's coming to after-school care, not having a great day, sharing that information with others. Discuss issues arising regarding supervision communication as part of regular team meetings and daily debrief meetings. So, for example, if you notice a walkie talkie communication has really dropped off or there are some changes to the environment. And most importantly, if you need assistance, speak up, ask your colleagues for help.

The next slide I am going to talk about is anticipating children's behaviour. It is important for educators to know and understand the children in your care. We understand this can be difficult with a transient workforce. However, it's really important that we don't just see this as a barrier that can't be overcome. Ask yourself, what can you do unique to your service and your community to build relationships and knowledge about the children in your care? And this will look really different for all our services because when educators know the children's likes, dislikes, strengths, triggers and capacity, it is easier to support them in self-regulating their behaviour and anticipating what could happen. So, considering larger services, having educators build primary relationships with children, have consistent educators in the different spaces and ages, and they can anticipate and pre-empt children's behaviour and prevent escalation or intervene if needed. Again, we are going to explore children's behaviour and the relationship to supervision more in toolbox one topic 4.

Meray: Thanks Belinda. So, the next couple of strategies we will talk about or building blocks to effective supervision are going to be about listening to children. So, listening to children is a key element. I am sure you can all think of a time where you have heard children's escalation of play while you have been supervising children, and you can hear there is a change of tone or there is a change of mood or dynamic of the children's play and you've responded because of that. That's a really key strategy to use and to encourage new educators to our sector to use. I would say there are specific sounds or noises or even the absence of sounds that, or noises that might trigger educators to investigate children's play a bit further. This is something that we all have done in the past, but it is just a really good way to interweave especially if you think about anticipating children's behaviour, but also balancing children's rights and their need for autonomy and how do you might use listening as a way to do that. So, you might not be standing immediately next to the play, but really actively listening to that play, giving children a sense of independence, but ensuring that you can intervene if something does come up.

Likewise scanning and accounting, so educators do have to know which children are at all times while they are in their care. So how do you do this? There are different systems that you might want to use, whether it be your sign on and sign off system that you use as part of a kiosk. It can be regular roll calls during transition times. We do talk about transitions a little bit more in topic 2 but there might be times where you are going from the school environment to the OSHC environment or the OSHC environment to school at the start of the school day. That's a really good time to think about a roll call so that children are accounted for. Larger services or services that have multiple play spaces might have different educators completing a roll call for the space that they are supervising or it could be for an in-ratio group. So a one to 15 ratio group and educator Belinda might be looking after those 15 children and doing a headcount for 15 children that she is responsible for. And then I will be doing a headcount for another 15 children, that can really work in larger services. Really think about what dynamic your services use, whether it is multiple play spaces or whether it is a pack up and pack down service. And then that will give you some information about how you can do those accounting strategies, but also scanning the environment, so when we look supervising the soccer game in, in Belinda's previous example, really thinking about also positioning yourself. So, you can also scan the pickup and drop off area, for example. So being strategic around where you are positioning yourself can then help you scan and account other spaces as well as the immediate space that you are supervising.

So, when you are thinking about all these different strategies obviously these are fantastic to use, but they cannot be implemented by each educator in isolation. There may be lots of examples you can think about where you might know that these 2 children are really not getting along today. But if you are not sharing this information with your colleagues, then it is very hard for us to implement that effective supervision when those 2 children transition to somewhere else. Or it might be that a child's having a bad day and communicating that with the team might then help other members redirect the child when they do see their behaviour is escalating. So really the glue that holds these building blocks together is really strong communication with your colleagues and with your peers at supervising the session.

To support deep understanding of what your responsibilities are in relation to effective supervision engagement there, are there a number of resources available to you and your teams to look at. There are the Laws and National Regulations, ACECQA, The Guide to the National Quality Framework is a fantastic resource that really spells out some different suggestions or specific for quality but also your policies and procedures. How can you utilise the information in your service policies and procedures to help new individuals or new staff members who are just starting with you, or whether it be agency staff members to provide induction. There are lots of different professional development sessions around supervision including this one today and also the next couple of sessions this week that you will be able to access live. But also, you will be able to access the recorded sessions. So, if you do feel something like your team, you can then go and look at those, those sessions directly with you, with your team members.

So where to next? When we think about professional development, it is also really important to think about, not for ourselves, but we have got different supports that you can use to deep dive into this topic. So, we have a fact sheet, a video vignette which is fantastically short, a 5 to 6 minute video with 2 educators sitting down and discussing different topics, and the you’ve also got some literature with the critical reflection pack that you may want to utilise. There is no specific order that you would use this for, and all of these resources will be available through the Department of Education website once the last sessions are completed. We have utilised the ACECQA website for this information as well, the National Law Regulations as well as the National Quality Standard. One fantastic resource is actually the active supervision factsheet by ACECQA. So that is a really fantastic starting point if you are looking at sharing this information.

Lastly, we would like to thank you for contacting me to get onto this session. We hope you have found this helpful and if you receive any link to provide feedback, we would really value your feedback and encourage you to participate in the feedback survey so that we can continue to further improve our professional offering. Thank you.

Toolbox 1: Best Practice Principles of Supervision in Outside Hours School Care- Transitions and Supervision in Outside School Hours Car Services

Bree Hawes: Hi, I'm Bree Hawes, I'm the Program Manager of Kelso OSHC. Today we'll be talking about transportation and supervision of children.

Narelle Howard: Hi, I'm Narelle Howard. I'm the OSHC Regional Coordinator, and I support Gowrie's OSHC services in the regional spaces.

Question: What do you need to consider when planning for transitions between school and the OSHC services?

Narelle: Probably one of the key considerations is actually the number of children that are going to be attending, because you've got limited seats on a bus, so you need to make sure that you're compliant in regard to the number of children that you can actually transport on that bus. And also, the schools that they're attending, because depending how close or how far they are geographically will determine the number of bus runs and how long they're going to take and the number of children that are actually coming from each of those schools. Also, the number of children, depending on their ages, whether they actually need to have booster seats or whether they're old enough to sit in a normal seat. So that is probably some really key considerations for transporting some of the children. So, some OSHC services actually have children that are attending extracurricular activities like sports, tutoring, dance and things like that. So, the families really have to be communicating this with our services and staff, because we are having to locate and know where these children are at all times, especially if they're meant to be in attendance at our services. And this communication has to be updated quite regularly with the families because things change as we move, say, from soccer season to cricket season and things like that, and the afternoons that they have training and that changes. The communication that we have with the families could be conversations when they're coming, which is then documented and notified to our staff in attendance. We also have them emailing and texting through what the changes are for their children, which is then also then communicated to the team and also documented on our attendance sheet.

Question: Supervision on transport adds another level of complexity. What does that look like at your service?

Bree: We always have two educators on the bus at all times. Bus drivers have to have a full license and they go through bus compliance training, they go on training drives with no children on the bus. They also go through a lot of information, including absent children and the process if they're not there. This process is that parents notify us prior to the bus leaving the service in the afternoon. If we get to the school and the children are not there for the bus, we call all the parents on the emergency contacts, and we do not leave the school until we know the location of the child, whether they are attending or if they are absent for the afternoon.

Narelle: So, at the end of the trip, once we've arrived back, we make sure that the bus is stopped completely, then both the driver and the passenger ensure that all children are safely exited from the bus. And we also do a safety check of the bus to ensure that there's no children. So that's actually checking behind seats, making sure that there's no belongings left, as well as there's no children left on the bus. And we actually have a photo taken with our daily check, which shows that the bus is completely empty, there's no children left on, and that actually comes to me, so I can visually know that there are no children being left on our buses. And that happens for both before and after school care or whenever we use the buses.

Bree: We know the children best with the bus runs, so one thing that we can do is supporting where the children are placed on the bus, whether the children need to be sitting closer to the front or whether we can support them sitting at the back with their friends and siblings to make sure that the bus run goes as smoothly as possible. In situations where we may have a delay or a route change, we have a working phone on the bus so we can call back to the service to notify the service that there's going to be a delay or some kind of change that may affect the bus run.

Question: What factors must be considered in the orientation process in OSHC?

Narelle: OSHC is probably quite complex because we have such varying ages of children. We have them starting in Kindergarten at sort of 4, 5, 6 years old, and we're having through to children that are 12. As part of the orientation process, we actually link in with the schools. So, we tend to participate in their Kindergarten orientation days, so we've got opportunity to link with new families that are accessing school for the first time, or the children are looking at needing to access OSHC for the first time. So, it's probably being there so that we can actually help reassure the parents and involve them in the process of that transition between school and OSHC.

Bree: The school system and OSHC are completely different to what they've known in long daycare or preschool. So, we provide families with an orientation booklet, which contains key policies and procedures, it has photos of all of the staff, it has photos of our service and the spaces that we have. It also has key information for the parents in this book, that parents can refer back to at any point. We also make sure that when they can come in for an orientation session, there are staff available to answer any questions that they may have.

Meray Parsons: I think we'll get started. I know it is that time of the evening where it's family time, so we are grateful for everyone joining, and hopefully you'll find this session helpful. This is the second topic of Toolbox one of the OSHC Best Practice series. My name is Meray Parsons and I'm the quality and compliance manager for Gowrie New South Wales. I work with nominated supervisors, educators, and staff on supporting services in proactive compliance and working on embedding high quality practices throughout our OSHC and early education services at Gowrie New South Wales. On the call with me today and presenting with me today is Belinda Rouhan. Belinda, would you like to introduce yourself?

Belinda Rouhan: Thanks, Meray. My name is Belinda Rouhan, and I am the general manager of outside of school hours care (OSHC) for Gowrie New South Wales. In my role, I support our OSHC teams, families, and work closely with the OSHC managers to make a lasting impact on children's lives.

Meray: So, this is the second topic of toolbox one for anyone who joined us this morning, we had topic one which was unpacking supervision policy. Today we're going to be really looking at transitions outside of school hours care. So, transitions are a high-risk activity, and therefore we have dedicated a whole session to them. But before we get started, I would like to note that this resource is developed by Gowrie New South Wales and funded by the New South Wales Regulatory Authority. I would also like to acknowledge our First Nations people as the Traditional Custodians of our land and waterways. I would also like to acknowledge their continued connection to the land, sea, and traditional countries across this nation. We thank Traditional Custodians for caring for Country for thousands of generations. We recognise this country was never relinquished by Traditional Custodians, and that their continued connection and commitment remains to Country. Gowrie New South Wales pays respects to Elders past, present, and emerging, and all First Nations people, including those joining us today. And I'm currently joining you from the traditional lands of the Bidjigal people.

Okay. So, what we will be looking at today is how to really manage transitions in your OSHC program. We will be thinking about some key considerations and how different year groups may impact transitions and effective supervision. We will unpack many regulatory requirements and manage effective supervision on transport in OSHC. We will also be looking at this within the context of balancing children's privacy and their need for autonomy whilst maintaining effective supervision. So as we know, we have children who are developing a sense of independence, we are looking at children in primary school, this will be a key consideration also.

So, what does supervision mean? In the ACECQA fact sheet, ‘Active Supervision, Ensuring Safety and Promoting Learning’ published in 2023, active supervision is defined as educators being alert and aware of risks and hazards and the potential accidents and injury, not just in their immediate location, but throughout the service. So to provide effective supervision, educators need to be conscious of the physical environment and be attuned to each child and their needs. Educator to child ratios do not alone constitute active supervision, it is more than just being alert of risks and hazards. It is about providing an environment which supports children's social and emotional development. So, active supervision in OSHC should take into consideration children's growing need for autonomy and independence, and how do we balance children's rights and agency with appropriate levels of supervision. I will hand it over to Belinda. Thank you.

Belinda: Thanks, Meray. So on this slide, you can see some highlighted words that really jump out. Consider your current practices and those of the educators in your service. How are you balancing children's agency and autonomy with effective supervision? So, taking note of the key words highlighted here, effective supervision means being able to respond immediately, being actively involved, and monitoring children's activities. So, there should be a level of engagement and observation and balance between both, using some of those building blocks we discussed in topic one this morning. And if you didn't get to attend topic one these are recorded and will be provided.

So on our next slide, we've listed some of the tools which support effective supervision, especially during transitions. As we talk through these tools, consider how many your service has implemented and has documented procedures for. If there's any tools that you don't have implemented or perhaps you don't have documented procedures for, you might like to jot them down. So walkie talkies are used for transitioning between spaces, you should have a documented procedure on how to use walkie talkies. For example, before a child transitions to another area, ensure that the educator in that area has confirmed they heard the message and are expecting the child, this way the child doesn't go missing between transition. Headcount should be conducted regularly, either informally or more formally, and documented depending on your service policies and level of risk. Maintaining communication between educators is important, so letting your team know when you are moving out of one area, or if you can see an incident escalating near another educator. And service routine should be documented and consistent for educators, families, and children. Tools such as visual routines displayed for the children, documented, and regularly reviewed routines for educators and including these routines in the service orientation for your casual and agency staff. Staff positioning is also important, so when transitioning to larger groups, consider having an educator at the front and the back of the group. For smaller transitions of children between service spaces, consider standing where you can supervise the transitioning children as well as the main group. And if possible, your service should have a supervision map documenting the approved licence spaces in your service for both the indoor and outdoor spaces. It ideally should have high-risk areas and positioning of educators for best supervision of the area. It may also identify which spaces are open depending on how many educators are present. So, for example, in one of our Gowrie New South Wales vacation care programs, we have a service which slowly opens their outdoor space as the educators arrive in the mornings. So they start with the veranda, and then they progress to the sand sandpit, and then they also include the playground, and then finally they head to the oval as well as more educators arrive. So, take a moment to reflect on these tools. Are there any that you think need a review with your team? Are there any that you currently maybe do but you don't have documented procedures for?

So from here, we're going to the next slide, and we're going to look at transitions and what the word transition means. So before we begin to unpack the relationship between supervision and transition, we need to understand what transition in the context of our service means and understand what transitions are happening. This will be unique to each service but is crucial to understand in terms of then understanding what regulatory aspects we must consider for specific situations and contexts. As you can see on this slide, both ‘My Time, Our Place’ version 2, and the guide to the National Quality Framework refer to transitions as being day to day, such as between OSHC and home or OSHC and school, or life milestones, such as moving from an early year centre to the OSHC program or the OSHC program to a high school. I'm going to hand over now to Meray and she's going to talk more about transitions.

Meray: Thanks, Belinda. Thank you for highlighting some of those transitions. There are many transitions on this slide, you can see some different ones that might occur, but we often associate transitions or big transitions with the change between the year before formal schooling, whether that be from the home environment or a preschool environment and school. But transitions like the ones on the screen can occur regularly, and they will occur over years of the child's life. They're often 2 ways, both in and out of before and after-school care programs. So, these experiences happen quite often in a child's life, and when we manage these transitions well, we can support strong connections between OSHC program and schools to enhance children's holistic learning, wellbeing, and development.

So this big milestone is an important aspect of the big picture, this big transition beginning school, and that will impact the children's lives in the early years of their schooling. Some key factors here to consider are the importance of routine, so the idea that there is a consistent routine and a welcoming environment are important for new children to feel at ease. Take a step back and consider what this might look like from children moving between their home and their school, and then their OSHC service. So, we might be attending our sessions or our OSHC services regularly, but if we take a step back and think about what that might look like from a routine perspective for a new child starting. Likewise, it's also important to consider building relationships with new children. We will discuss this a little bit more in topic 4, but thinking about relationships as being important for supervision. How will children who are beginning care for the first time be supported to build relationships with new friends? In some circumstances, the children might not have attended any care environment before starting in OSHC. So especially in that January period, you might have children starting in your OSHC program or in vacation care that have never been too preschool and haven't yet started school. So how do we invite them into our environment? How do we invite new children and their families to spend time at the service? And thinking about how for those children who do attend an early year’s program, whether it be preschool or a long day daycare program, how can we think about how that setting can be part of this process? So do early education, early years, educators know of a group of children attending a school OSHC program together, and that would be a great opportunity to connect those children together and likewise, supporting families. So, something else to consider with that transition is how before and after-school care and vacation care can play a significant role in a child's family life, especially when a child spends a lot of time in the service. So, effective transitions are built from good communication and positive relationships with families. And if we are putting families' anxieties at ease, then children will be best place to start that big transition. This can happen through giving clear communication and providing opportunities for families to discuss issues and ask questions as quickly as possible and even before they start.

So, as we speak about this big change, it's important we acknowledge that change can be stressful even when it might be necessary and positive. So a child starting school is a really positive experience, but it can be stressful. Not knowing what the new environment would be like can be a stress factor in the transition to OSHC for everyone, and even sometimes the OSHC educators themselves. It's important that that a process of change management is acknowledged and that this process will impact each person in different ways. Providing information about the unknown can remove some of those attached fears, being prepared and support and supporting educators with the change can create a smoother and positive transition. At this point, we're going to take a moment to reflect on 3 areas that provide a bit of a tool for planning and preparing for transition. While this is used in relation to transitioning into OSHC for the first time, these areas to consider can be adapted and used in other scenarios and situations. So the first is to think about experiences, consider what the child brings to the transition, what questions do include in our enrolment process? And these can be specific questions for insight about their first transition. The other area to consider is what expectations, so this is about us planning what for you as a team you might wish for our new children, what will the focus be, what support will you have in place and who will be involved here? Some of the older children can definitely be part of that process. And finally knowledge, what do we need to know to support the new children and our families, what information will you need to provide families and children about the OSHC program? Both prior to commencement, so you might have a family handbook, and in the first days and weeks of care.

So, in terms of transitions into the OSHC program under National Regulation 99, both the approved provider and the nominated supervisor are responsible for ensuring a child does not leave unless in accordance with sub regulation 4. So, we're going to unpack this a little bit and it is a shift from the emotional and social wellbeing of children through transitions, because underpinning these transitions is a really solid foundation of regulatory requirements. So, we will unpack these in a fair bit of detail here. As you can see, there are a number of laws and regulations which relate to transitions. I won't read them all out, but I will just draw your attention to the fact that there are different responsibilities for different people across the OSHC program. So really a main one here is the National Law section 165, that children are supervised adequately supervised at all times. We referenced active supervision a bit earlier, with the law it does talk about adequate supervision. So, there is a slight difference, and active supervision is really around ratios and being engaged with children, whereas active supervision is a little bit more around engagement and how we do that. With National Law section 167, we have to think about every reasonable precaution being taken to prevent children or to protect children from harm and hazard likely to cause injury. You can see here that as the different regulations that relate to supervision are listed out, there are different responsibilities. So for some, it is for the approved provider, nominated supervisor, and educators, so the bottom 2 regulations do talk about that. For some it is for the approved provider and the nominated supervisor, and for some it is just the approved provider's responsibility. That's not to say that those requirements are for the approved provider aren't then implemented through processes that the nominated supervisor will be across. So Belinda will be taking us through some additional regulatory changes that you might start considering now also. Thanks Belinda.

Belinda: Thanks, Meray. So there are expected upcoming changes to the National Regulations in the second half of 2023, in relation to transitions between school and OSHC. This is as a response to the 2019 NQF (National Quality Framework) review, further guidance will be released by the Department of Education closer to the date. However to prepare your teams, you can start to consider the following. So, what documented policies and procedures do you have in place for transitions between school and the OSHC service? What documented risk assessments do you have in place for transitions between school and the OSHC service? And what policies and procedures do you have in place for families notifying the OSHC service if their child will be absent for a session? Once school finishes for the afternoon, the OSHC service should be assuming responsibility of the children and their transition to OSHC. This is going to be formalised the regulatory changes but consider your current practices. Who do you expect to be assuming responsibility of those children between the after-school bell ringing and OSHC program starting?

So on this slide, we have included some reflective questions to assist you in unpacking your arrivals and departures procedure. I'm not going to go through them now, but this is a really great tool to use with your team in team meetings. So if we consider the regulatory changes that are expected in relation to transitions between school and OSHC, some of the procedures you may have in place include informing families upon enrolment and regularly reminding them throughout the year about the process for notifying if a child is absent for after-school care, having an additional fee in place to discourage families from not notifying if a child is absent for after-school care. So additional fee if you have to contact the parent during that session to find out if the child's attending, because this takes you away from supervising the children in your care and it also means that you have a child who could be missing. Working with the school to have a list of absent children from school to cross reference if you have children unaccounted for in the afternoon. And something simple but effective is having all families phone numbers pre-programmed into the service mobile, so you can quickly contact the parent of a child who has not arrived at after-school care. Do you have a documented timeframe before you contact police if you cannot locate a child? And if you do have a documented timeframe, what steps do you take before contacting the police? How do you ensure all your staff are aware of the procedures in place for a non-arrival of a child for after-school care? So what is the responsibility of the responsible person and do you include this in training of responsible persons before they take on the role? So, another key consideration for your team.

So we're going to look at the arrivals and departures now of extracurricular. The number of OSHC services who have children attending extracurricular activities has increased exponentially in the last few years, and this is now an expectation across many of our schools. Extracurricular adds complexity to transitions, and some of the suggestive practices and considerations are listed on the slide. Procedures are not consistent across all OSHC services, and in some settings, the provider must come to the OSHC setting to collect the children and sign them out. In other settings, the OSHC is responsible for escorting the children to extracurricular activities. If your OSHC service is responsible for transitioning the child to the extracurricular activity, how are you managing this whilst maintaining ratios? For example, some OSHC services have an additional person rostered to support these transitions, especially in larger and more complex services. Are you using transport to transition children to an extracurricular activity? And if you are, then you'll need to consider your responsibilities under the National Regulations for transport. I'm going to hand over to Meray, who's going to talk about some internal transitions again.

Meray: Thanks, Belinda. So, we've covered transitions related to arrivals and departures at OSHC. Some other transitions at OSHC that could happen also include professional hygiene transition. So, it is recommended to have a risk assessment in place for bathroom or toileting and clear procedures for educators to follow. So how would you share this information with educators, especially new educators and agency educators? A useful strategy that a lot of our OSHC services use is to find out what the procedures that the school implements are. So, whether it be sending children in pairs, or using a card system, and we implement a parallel strategy so there's a continuity for children as well. How do you monitor how long children are in bathrooms for? And how do you staff identify which children are in bathrooms so that we can account for all children at all times? So going back to that requirement under the law and the regulations to know which children are at all times. What additional considerations might you have if you're a single staffed service or if the bathrooms and toilet facilities are at a distance from the main space. Other transitions you might want to think about are transitions between spaces. So, we are thinking about transitions from the COLA (Covered Outdoor Learning Area) to the indoor space or to a library. Sometimes those spaces are within visual distance from each other, sometimes they're not. So, what are some of the strategies that support those transitions? They can include walkie talkies, and really with walkie talkies, it's important to have a documented procedure around that. We might also have a think about risk assessments and written procedures for transitions between spaces. So do children let an educator know that they're transitioning from the COLA to the oval for example, and having different expectations for older children who may be in Year 4, 5, and 6 versus children who might be in kindergarten, acknowledging that they have a different level of autonomy and agency as well. These things might be recorded in your supervision plan and procedures as well as procedures that occur in the afternoon. So, thinking about when families come to pick up children, how do we identify where their child is and how do we communicate this effectively to families? Do you acknowledge families when they arrive and confirm that their child might be coming back from the oval? Or do we let families know where they can find their child? And so, these go a long way in ensuring children are supervised effectively during transitions. When we have those expectations, we really have to think about how do we share this with staff, families, and children, and not forgetting those that are new to the service.

So, we are going to really unpack supervision on transport in the OSHC setting here. There have been some recent regulatory changes, when I say recent March, but we really want to think about how we do this on transportation. So for services that utilise transport, this can be really necessary for children in order for them to even access the OSHC service. And for situations where children are transported as part of an excursion and or vacation care program, there are additional regulatory requirements and procedures that must be followed to ensure children's safety. As you can imagine there will be a higher degree of risk associated with transportation compared to care based solely in one environment, and these risks should be really assessed and mitigated. This being said there are lots of positive opportunities for children's learning and wellbeing through travel routines. They will have connections with peers that they might otherwise not, educators and children can connect in a different way, and the community links are strengthened through that. Children and young people have the opportunity to learn really valuable lessons around safety in and around vehicles. And some children can actually can access OSHC settings who might not otherwise be able to, as their school might not have an OSHC setting on site. So over the next coming slides, Belinda will be unpacking transport in a bit more detail. Thanks, Belinda.

Belinda: Thanks, Meray. So with those regulatory changes in March, we've got some new information that I hope everyone has implemented into their programs, and if you haven't, it's really an opportune time leading into vacation care. So regulation 102C details what need to be included in your transport risk assessment. We're going to talk through some of the responsibilities as well, so it is the responsibility of the approved provider and nominated supervisor to ensure a risk assessment is in place prior to children being transported and communicating this with all staff. It is the responsibility of all educators to follow the risk assessment in their practices. When writing your risk assessment, consider the high-risk points such as embarking and disembarking, which Meray will cover more in the next few slides. If there is a vehicle accident or breakdown, or if there are a medical emergency, do you have these detail in your risk assessment also? How would you manage these incidents and transitions? What resources and risk mitigants do you have in place? And how do you ensure all families have access to the risk assessment before children travel? What stakeholders do you engage in the creation of the risk assessment? So consider who is impacted by this risk assessment, engaging your community, engaging your children. How do you share this information with your staff? Do you have an induction for new staff who supervise on transport? And consider having an induction and training session for all staff who will supervise children on regular transport and schedule regular training sessions throughout the year, for your staff to reflect on current practices and any changes to practices. Document these sessions and any changes made to practices and procedures. So especially leading into vacation care I would suggest you do revisit your transport risk assessment with your teams.

On the next slide, we're talking about authorisations. So, authorisation for a child to be transported must be given by a parent or other person authorised by the parent and named in the child's enrolment record as having authority to authorise transportation of a child. So going back to your enrolment records, I think it'd be, again, a great opportunity to go back to enrolment records and ensure that they're updated to reflect that not only the parent, but authorised persons have authority to authorise transportation as per the new regulations. Regulation 102D outlines what must be included in the authorisation, it is the approved provider and nominated supervisor's responsibility to ensure a child is not transported without the required written authorisation as stated in regulation 102D. It is the responsibility of the parent to provide written authorisation for the child to be transported. So, I'm going to encourage everyone to revisit regulation 102D when they're back at their services as well. Now I'm going to hand over to Meray and she's going to talk about embarking and disembarking procedures.

Meray: Thanks, Belinda. Some really good points there to think about as well. Now with embarking and disembarking, we will go through 2 regulations that are separate but they basically talk about embarking and there's some really specific procedures that are required. So we are talking here a lot about the requirements, and one of the things we did at Gowrie, is we went through each regulation one by one and just matched up what do we have in place that meets that regulation, that's one of the ways that we put this stuff into play. We then actually handed it to educators who are involved in transport and they did the same exercise, and we actually picked up some different perspectives. So I would encourage you guys to look at these, if you haven't already, I'm sure many of you would have, but then to think about how these how these things happening in real life. So it is regulation 102E talks about the responsibility of the approved provider and the NS, the nominated supervisor, to ensure there are embarking procedures and that staff are trained in these procedures. The responsibility of the staff who are present when embarking is to sign their name. So this one here is one of the regulations where it does talk about educators' responsibilities, and so it's important that they sign their name, and they account for each child as they embark on the transport. The staff member does not have to accompany the child or the children on the bus, however they cannot be the driver. So it cannot be the driver that gets out and does this embarking procedure, it must be another educator who either gets on the transport with children or they can go back to the service. So at Gowrie New South Wales, we have implemented a procedure of a minimum of 2 educators on all transport. However, obviously this may not be feasible for all services. It just we really looked at minimising those opportunities for error and made that decision.

Likewise, regulation 102F talk talks about the disembarking from transport. So, it's the responsibility of the approved provider to ensure there are procedures in place for staff and that they are trained. It's the responsibility of the staff member who is present when disembarking to sign their name and account for children as they are disembarking, and to check that the interior of the transport has no children. So this is a little bit different because as children are embarking, we don't have to do that check, but as children are disembarking, that's why there's a separate regulation, they do have to do a check. So think about how do you do this at your service? How do you know that the interior of the transport or the bus has been checked and that there are no children? At Gowrie, we take a photo of the bus from the inside, from the front to the back, and then a photo from the back to the front, and that means that we know the educator has walked, physically, walked up and down and checked the bus. So how do you ensure this happening? And how do you ensure that staff are confident with this procedure? Who is responsible for overseeing this procedure? Do you nominate the RP (registered provider) on the excursion or transport to be the person that does the final check? And do they sign anything? And do you document how you've trained them in this? So those are the sorts of considerations you might have when really thinking about how we are meeting this regulatory requirement.

So aside from that, there are some additional considerations. So transport, as we said, it was a higher risk, and I think this does come with due course and it does come with additional considerations. So there are some different considerations here on the slide. Have you updated your policies and procedures since the changes in March? Have you trained your educators and staff on these training on these changes? And perhaps, as Belinda mentioned, we are coming up to vacation care, so have you revisited your transport and excursion requirements to ensure that everything is captured and that all staff have been captured in the training? Also consider having responsibilities assigned to staff before going on excursions. So looking at who is using the transport, who will be taking on which responsibilities? And if there are changes, who is the other person that is then trained and made aware of that responsibility? I will just take this point in time to say, if you have any questions, you are more than welcome to start popping them in the chat box, and we will get some time at the end to answer any questions as well.

So, where to from here? We have a number of resources I'll talk through for this topic, so this is topic 2 transitions. There will be a fact sheet that you can share with your team. We also have a video vignette that you can watch. These are short 4 to 6 minute vignettes where there is a conversation with an OSHC professional about this topic. And then further on, you can explore some additional literature about this topic with an article that has some critical reflection questions. So these will form part of the series that will be available to you to access on the Department of Education website, because you've registered with us, we'll have your email address and you'll be notified when these are available to download and to access.

We have some references here on the slide to just talk you through what we've used to create this information. We do hope that it has been helpful for everyone, I will give everyone 2 minutes, I know that it is that crucial time in the day for anyone who has little ones. It is probably dinner bath and bedtime, so we won't keep you for much longer. But if there are any questions, please feel free to pop them in the chat. We have had a question earlier, and I think we've answered it around when you'll have access to the sessions and when the recording will be available, so that will be through the Department of Education website but you will get an email notification once that happens. Any other questions? Belinda, would you like to add anything at this juncture?

Belinda: Yeah, so we have had a question which asked how does responsibility work in family daycare as the educator is the only responsible person on site? So, I think this is something that we probably haven't really captured.

Meray: No, yeah, we really captured the OSHC setting, and by default centre services, will have a similar, but for family daycare there will be differences. Did you want to add anything as well Belinda to that one?

Belinda: No, I think just acknowledging their differences and also acknowledging that yes, we haven't been able to answer your question. But this information session or set of information sessions has been put together to specifically reference some key findings that were needed within the OSHC setting. So it was found, the Department of Education undertook a survey, and found that supervision and medical management were the main things that we needed to review within an OSHC setting. So absolutely, but you can refer to the regulations, so all these regulations we've referred to, there are specific considerations for family daycare. And if you're still not finding out the answers, I encourage you to contact your local regulatory authority as well because they're always really helpful.

Meray: The guide to the National Quality Framework also stipulates specific recommendations for family daycare versus OSHC and also for centre-based care. We have another question that's coming in about minimum requirements. So Caitlin, thank you for your question. Are there any minimum requirements for transport? If we have a 12-seater bus, can a ‘green p’ plater drive that bus as they have a licence to drive that bus? It's a really good question, we did consider this at Gowrie, when you are thinking about section 167, I believe protecting children from harm and hazard, so it is not stipulated that you can or cannot have a ‘green p’ plater. It's up to the service to make that determination based on a risk assessment. What we do at Gowrie is we ask educators to complete a driver induction. We also ask them to complete a statutory declaration of their past driving history. So for example, somebody who has had different suspensions and things like that might be a different consideration for driving a 12-seater bus, but it isn't a requirement, it's something that you would consider as part of your risk assessment. At Gowrie, we've decided that it has to be full driver's license, no p plates available, this does reduce our opportunity to sometimes we don't have the people to run the buses because there might be people available, but they don't fit that requirement. So it's really based on your service decision at that stage.

We have a different question from Carly, thanks Carly, should we have a different risk assessment for transportation and excursions, example our local movie theatre? So, you would have a different risk assessment for an excursion and the transportation. The excursion may have transportation as part of the risk assessment but you also, if you're doing regular outings, you might consider having a subsequent standalone transport risk assessment as identified by the regulatory requirements there.

Belinda: Any other questions?

Meray: Any other questions while people type any other questions in? Thank you so much, we really thank everyone for attending and we encourage you to utilise the resources once they're available and provided to you for further reflection with your team, as well as reviewing current practices and to ensure that they are aligned with the National Quality Framework and the Regulations We appreciate the time it's taken to get on this session, I know it's after hours and for many of you've had a very long day, so we hope you found this helpful. And there will be a feedback survey sent via email, please if you could participate in the feedback survey that would be helpful to further improve our professional learning. I'll just check that there are no more.

Yeah, we do have one from Michelle. Do you have any tips for services who are single staff ticking all the boxes? It's a very good question, so really to think about, the transport forms part of your service. I would say that's one of the considerations I would take, and to really think about if you are the driver who is then doing the check of children as they are embarking and disembarking. So I don't know if your service is a single staff service running transport, that would be very difficult. But I do think for one of our services generally with transitions when you know children are going to the bathroom or children are transitioning between spaces, we really work closely with children in making sure they tell us where they're going, and we used to record that. So we used to just say we had 15, if you're single staff, you'd only have 15 children, so you would have the list of children and what we did was we moved up, we just had little acronyms oval library, oval COLA, and then that way we could track where those 15 children were during that space. So hopefully Michelle that's helpful. I don't think there are any other questions at this stage. Thanks everyone for the lovely feedback. We hope it's been useful and practical, so thank you. If you have any other questions, we can stay on for a couple more minutes until 7:15, but totally understand if you'd like to go and spend time with your family, so thanks so much everyone.

Belinda: Thank you. Yes we're happy you wait around, but you are also welcome to leave early. I think just coming back to that single service one too, just really ensuring that your risk assessments are robust, and your procedures are documented and regularly followed with your children and families.

Meray: Shelley's just added we have a child checkmate alarm. That's great, so I'm guessing this is for the bus, that helps us make sure, Shelly correct me if I'm wrong, ensure that there are no children left on the bus, which is fantastic. So the alarm is on the back and you have to walk in, so I think I know what you're talking about. There's either an alarm at the back of the bus and you either have to pin it, put a pin in, I believe I have seen a service use that, it is a fantastic strategy and way to make sure that the buses are being checked. Thanks Shelly.

Meray: Thanks everyone for your really fantastic feedback, we are really glad it's been useful. We will use this chat but also if you do have that feedback link, that would be fantastic as well if you could put that in. I think most people are logging off to go get some dinner and have a bit of a rest. So, we'll stop sharing and we'll wait for everyone to come off. Otherwise, like I said, more than happy to answer any more questions if there are any more.

Toolbox 1: Best Practice Principles of Supervision in Outside Hours School Care- The Physical Environment in Outside School Hours Care

Joel Appleyard: Hi, my name is Joel, and I'm the program manager at Gowrie NSW Erskineville OSHC, and today I'll be speaking about the concept of risk versus supervision.

Question: What are some of the activities that may pose risk in an outside school hours care setting?

Joel: When I think of risks in the physical environment, I think of the individual children we have in our services, and I also think that a physical risk for one child's going to be different to another child. A child with individual sensory needs, motor or fine motor skill delays or challenges is going to have different challenges than other children in our service. Some physical risks might be permanent fixtures such as playgrounds, slides, ropes. Others may be spontaneous experiences like incursions or excursions as well, whether your child is near water, whether they're near steep hills, whether they're near trees, soft fall, concrete. Each of these different natural factors plays a large part in risks for our physical environment. Other aspects that also play an additional physical risk to the environment is when there's changes to the environment, such as out of ordinary experiences such as outings on excursions, evacuation drills, lockdowns, or shelter in place requirements at services. Additionally, where you may need to use spaces outside of your standard environments such as alternate classrooms or class spaces, based on maybe renovations in your service or your inability to access other spaces, which, alongside the physical, will pose some emotional risks to some of your children in the services. Alongside that, even simply getting new resources. A child playing with a slide or playing on the climbing frame is going to have trouble using a new scooter or a new bike you get for your service.

Question: How does the dynamic nature of play impact practices of supervision?

Joel: I think one of the things we love about our role in OSHC is that no day is the same, and I guess that speaks to the same for dynamic risks in our services. Something we do in our service every day is cook. Our children love getting their hands in, getting messy, getting sticky, getting gross. And sometimes the risk associated with these kinds of experiences can change due to many factors such as new educators, casual educators, new children, children with additional needs, lack or excess of resources, or even just external factors such as weather. I'm sure everyone's had experiences where children's behaviour changes with wet weather play. As educators, we're constantly working towards what we believe is best practice, and when it comes to risk, that means constantly reviewing, constantly discussing, and constantly adapting our risks as well. Reviewing and implementing risky play in your program involves continual reflection. For me, that looks like having constant conversation with educators during team meetings, staff meetings, educators reflecting on experiences when doing programming or reflecting on how an activity went, or even when discussing behaviours or experiences with families at collection and drop-off.

Question: Is there a scenario or aspect of the program that describes this?

Joel: I think a great example from our service is the implementation of loose parts. So, we have a lot of external resources such as milk crates, tyres, bread baskets, and these kinds of equipment are great because they allow for creative interpretive play. However, because often they're quite large, they do pose some physical risk to children in our program. So, implementing these kinds of experiences was amazing and beneficial to the learning outcomes of some of our children, but we also found that initially, it did implement some additional risk and concerns, and not every child wanted to engage in this play, based on the fear of potentially getting hurt and things like that. Through having constant conversations with not only the children in our service, but also the educators reflecting on how the children use these resources, and additionally, working with the school teachers and school principal to look at how this fed into their curriculum, we were able to discuss how we could strategically utilise these resources as play cues in our environment, to not only inspire new creative styles of play, construction, fort building, but also engage new children in these learning experiences. So, I think in considering not only how we could set up the activities and set up the resources to inspire play, but also having conversations with children about how they could use these resources and how they would feel safe when using these resources, played a massive part in ensuring that we could not only use these amazing recyclable resources, but also adding to the creative experiences of our children in the service.

Question: How do you effectively undertake risk assessments in your program?

Joel: Sometimes being a program manager or a coordinator and constructing risk assessments can be quite stressful because you're considering all of these risks in place, and how they may affect your children. But for me, the best thing you can do is collaborate with your stakeholders, with your children, with your families, with your educators, and with outside practitioners where possible. Firstly, with our educators, when I'm creating a risk assessment, I almost take on the role of a classroom teacher and like to ask my team some questions. What do they think is risky? What do they think could happen? And I'm quite confident that everyone will have some educators who are a little more nervous than others with taking risks, so it's really great to have those people on board to join in and giving you suggestions about, what's the worst thing that could happen? Playing devil's advocate and giving you those scary things, because when we're considering some of these greater risks, such as those on excursions going to areas with water, we do need to consider some of these more challenging aspects of risk. Working with children as well, they have creative ideas that you've never thought of. Asking children, "What do you think is dangerous?" Or "What do you think some of the expectations on this excursion or in this activity might be?" And more often than not, I've gotten some great new ideas out of the children as to different risks that I've never thought of. Additionally, looking at excursion risk assessments, I think the best way you can conduct an in-depth risk assessment is by getting hands-on. If you're conducting a risk assessment for a zoo, head out there for the day. Walk around, see what risks you can see. The best way you can assess a risk is by going yourself. I think a great example of a risk assessment I've done at my service is with some of my children. Our school implemented a new playground, and I took a large group of the year six and year five children to the playground before they went on it, and asked them, what looked dangerous to them? What do they think could happen? I said, "Consider some of our new Kindy children. If they're going to try and climb on this playground, what could happen to them?" And the children gave me some great ideas about different expectations we could set in our environment to help in reducing the risk of harm, physical hazard, slips, trips, and additional risks in our space.

Question: How have you communicated risk assessments in this space? What has been important?

Joel: It is really important to work with the different kinds of educators we have in our services. For some of my team members, they work really well in a team meeting, having a debrief before the session, and looking at some of our risk assessments, reading together and providing feedback. Some of my colleagues, however, work really well if I email them our risk assessments, and they send me back some detailed notes. As well as working with educators, we ensure that all of our risk assessments are sent directly to all of our families, so they additionally have the opportunity to review. This has played some really great parts in updating some of our risk assessments and policies as well. I think a great example is that recently we updated our water play risk assessment. Having a lifeguard give us some feedback on ways that we can not only review our risk assessment, but also reduce the risks for our children, as well as promote fun water play has allowed children to engage in this new kind of experience regularly in the service.

Meray Parsons: And we will continue to work through those topics for this week, next week, it will shift to medical conditions. So, at this point, I would like to acknowledge that this resource is developed by Gowrie New South Wales and funded by the New South Wales Regulatory Authority. And I would like to hand it over to Belinda for our Acknowledgement of Country.

Belinda Rouhan: Thanks, Meray. Gowrie New South Wales acknowledges our First Nations people as the Traditional Custodians of our land and waterways. We also acknowledge their continued connection to the land, sea, and traditional countries across this nation. We thank Traditional Custodians for caring for our Country for thousands of generations. We recognise this country was never relinquished by Traditional Custodians, and that their continued connection and commitment remains to Country. Gowrie New South Wales pays respect to Elders past, present, and emerging, and all First Nations people, including those joining us today. And I am currently joining you from the traditional lands of the Wangal people. So, in this webinar, we are going to look at the laws and regulations underpinning supervision and who is legally responsible. We will also unpack Quality Area 3, the physical environment and supervision. Then we are going to look at some more practical aspects, such as key considerations for supervision in the physical environment, as well as steps to creating a supervision risk assessment and looking at sample supervision plans and maps to assist you in building your own. I am now going to hand it over to Meray to look at the laws and regulations in more detail.

Meray: Thanks, Belinda. So, what is the physical environment in outside of school hours care (OSHC)? So, considering the physical environment within regard to supervision is critical. It can either be a physical environment, can either be a support for supervision, or it can create risks which make supervision more challenging. When we are intentional in setting up our OSHC space, we can support our supervision needs and provide children with an engaging learning environment and something they can holistically enjoy. Now to really start this, we always do look at some of the laws and the regulations, the regulatory requirements underpinning or that relate to supervision in the physical environment. You can see in the dark arrows, the laws and the regulations, and they have specifics around who is responsible under the law and the regulation. So, with section 165 and section 167 those responsibilities are for the approved provider and for the nominated supervisor and others such as regulation 105 furniture, materials, and equipment. This is an approved provider responsibility under the regulations. However, you can all imagine that there will be places where nominated supervisors and educators undertake some of that set up or looking into the environment with the resources and the equipment.

So, to set the scene for thinking about supervision and the physical environment Quality Area 3 offers a good starting point. If we break down the overarching principles of this quality area as shown on the slide, we can really see the importance of looking at all factors as essential for supporting children's learning, their wellbeing, and their safety. So, specifically standard 3.1 and element 3.1.1 is about the physical environment being fit for purpose. So, our outdoor and indoor spaces, buildings, and fixtures, are suitable for their purpose, including supporting the access of every child. And when it comes to element 3.1.2, it's about the premises, the furniture and equipment being safe, clean, and well maintained. It is also important here to remember that the outdoor spaces are just as important as the indoor spaces that children access.

So, to further unpack the key aspects of element 3.1.1 especially those that were highlighted in bold, it is important to consider the relationship between supervision and the physical environment. We want to think about balancing the concept of minimising risk and supporting children's development. So, what are appropriate levels of risk? An example I like to think about and one that comes up often at Gowrie is monkey bars. So, for some children this presents a significant level of risk for other children, this may be an important step in their development. So something to consider is have the children access the monkey bars before. One of a good rule of thumb that we use is if children can't reach the monkey bars themselves to get up onto that first rung, then and if an educator is required to pick them up, then they probably aren't at that stage of development, and that those monkey bars might pose more of a risk than a development opportunity. There is important information in The Guide to the National Equality Framework to support this. So, it talks about supporting children's access to indoor and outdoor environments services, including family daycare and centre-based services. We should really have sufficient space, equipment and facilities that are fit for purpose. Well-designed indoor and outdoor spaces support children's health and safety of also for children, for staff, and for families. And they support the grouping of children in ways that really minimise risk of injury. Minimise conflict between children and reduce prolonged exposure to internal and external noise. So, the guide does really unpack what are the ways that you can assess that risk and benefit.

So, we are going to unpack 3.1.2 a little bit more as well. And it is important to think about equipment that might be broken or in disrepair that does then create an additional supervision risk, can this be removed or cordoned off if that is accessed? If you can imagine a piece of equipment that might not be safe anymore because it might be broken that requires a significant level more supervision than if we either removed it or cordon it off or rectified, or fixed it before the children accessed it next. So, to summarise this element, the guide also talks about this, and it talks about the upkeep of buildings, furniture, and equipment impacting the safety of children and service staff. Every child has the right to be safe. Upkeep refers to the responsibility of services to implement effective maintenance and cleaning and appropriate safety precautions, which also then help prevent injuries and the spread of infectious diseases. So, at this point, you might want to think about the organisation or the service that you are at what WHS logs do we use? What is the maintenance process between the service and the school? And it is not just enough that we are aware of a risk, and we have assessed it and documented it, but then how do we manage it in the immediate space? So how do we minimise that risk to children? We will then ask Belinda to carry us through the next few slides. Thanks, Belinda.

Belinda: Thanks, Meray. In these next slides, we are going to share some tips and ideas for consideration when thinking about supervision of the physical environment. So first, let us look at some key aspects of effective supervision in the physical environment.

So, on the next slide, you will see the layout of the space. What are your blind spots? So, before the children arrive, ensure you consider the layout of the space. Have you planned the space so that there are no large indoor areas which would encourage children to run around or hide behind? Are the quiet activities located away from high traffic areas? These spots may not be limited to physical issues. Are the afternoons more problematic than the mornings? Depending on the numbers and ages of children in the group.

Do you have engaging and inviting experiences presented on the tables? Is there a mixture of soft and hard furnishings? Low and high tables developmentally appropriate resources for both older and younger children? Is there a free-flowing program between indoors and outdoors? When we have ample resources, and a variety of lush spaces on offer, children are able to engage constructively. So, think about slowly unfolding spaces and experiences at the beginning of the day in before school care and enveloping or wrapping up, packing away slowly as the end of the after school care session winds down. Consider the key collection times for your families too. So, if you have a pack up or pack down service, do your family see your staff or frantically packing away at either end of the day? Or do they see a mixture of educators engaged with children in quiet activities or group games whilst other staff are packing away in cleaning? So, if we go back to toolbox one, topic one, staff who are not working staff are not working directly with children. If they are packing up, play spaces away from the children and cannot be included in ratios so they are not directly supervising and not included in ratios.

If we think about hazards and risks, so are your staffing ratios maintained for the different areas you have open? Have you considered the staffing for high-risk activities? Have you removed or minimised risks within the space and documented on the maintenance logs needed? Remember, the standard you walk past is the standard you accept and know your supervision plan. Well talk about it, review it, reflect on it, ensure everyone knows it well. What about your casuals? And what about agency staff? What role do you play as a permanent educator, responsible person or nominated supervisor to engage casuals or new colleagues in understanding what the supervision plan means in practice? So, we are going to cover super supervision plans in further detail later in this webinar as well. And how do we communicate the guidelines and expectations of the different spaces to children? Are they a part of this process? What social contracts do you and the children enter into? So, it's really important that children have a voice that they are empowered to contribute and be accountable for their safety too. Consider visual reminders and when entering high risk spaces or activities, having a debrief about the expectations for the space and activities with the children.

And the program should be engaging and based on children's interests, which will also assist with facilitating supervision within the session because children who are engaged and happy will be a joy to supervise. Use strategies such as scanning the play area, moving closer to children who are engaged in riskier play and listening for any changes such as if the children suddenly go quiet or get excited and be creative with how you engage in play. You may play Uno with a small group facing the main supervision space, or you may choose to referee a large soccer game from the sidelines. Communicate with the children and encourage them. Praise the children who are role modelling that we want to see more of.

Now on the next slide, you will see some resources to support effective supervision. Many of these should be referenced in your supervision risk assessments when you review them, they are tools to use for your effective supervision practices. Program routine should maximise supervision within the service and provide agency for the children. Ask yourself, do you know the routine specific to your service? Do they take into consideration the ratios of children and staff and transitioning between spaces? Are there visual cues of routines for the children? Are there program expectations displayed for children and staff to follow? And are they easily accessible for new staff? Is the program equipment suitable for your purposes and other resources already available for the programmed activities planned for the session? Or will someone need to move away from the supervision area to gather them together? And then consider if someone is moving away to gather resources, how will this impact on the children and staff around children and staff around you? And how will this impact ratios? Do you have a line of sight across the furniture? So, consider your quiet space in your services. Is there an abundance of cushions that is blocking line of sight? And how do you ensure you maintain supervision whilst also maintaining children's sense of agency and dignity within the space? So, I am going to hand it over to Meray to now to talk about some considerations for the physical layout of the space.

Meray: Thanks, Belinda. So, these are going to be some really practical examples and considerations to think about for OSHC services who often operate from a school setting. So, the ability to make changes to the school environment might be limited in ways. Often some of our services are pack up and pack down, and it is critical to have spaces set up before children arrive to the OSHC setting. Obviously, some spontaneous experiences can be set up with children like arts and craft or board games, but there should be enough for children to experience and interact with already prepared in environments. You may think about the changes that can be made to the layout to enhance supervision before children arrive. So, you have to think about, are there natural lines of sight for spaces? And perhaps you can put an open shelf instead of a closed shelf so that you can still see through and supervision can still be maintained.

The type of experiences that you set up indoors. Think about if they are loud, are they big movement experiences and can they be moved outside what is considered a high-risk experience or activity? And how do you supervise this? So, you may need close supervision for a woodwork experience or a cooking experience. So, you may want to think about how that is set up. Perhaps it's something that you move out of the main play space or indoor spaces. Consider how furniture can create nooks and prevent running thorough fares. In those large indoor halls, especially, think about large spaces for block play. So, if we have large, it is a large service. You really want to provide children with enough space for small groups of children, but also a number of groups of children using those blocks and having enough space. So how do we use shelving? You can use rugs, dividers, and furniture to create zones and designated play spaces. And as Belinda mentioned, we can use soft furnishings as visual cues for quiet play.

Sometimes the outdoor space is often forgotten but we do have to consider how outdoor spaces are set up. Do we have outdoor spaces for rest and relaxation as well as rest and relaxation indoors? Think about experiences that are prepared ahead of time and our outdoor resources ready to go when we transition to the outdoor space. The importance of the research on the importance of outdoor spaces and children having access to natural environments and the impacts, the positive impacts of that on children's self regulation, emotional and social wellbeing is extensive. So, we really want to think about what opportunities children do have to be in natural play spaces. With natural play spaces and children's self regulation, this is covered in upcoming topics, but as part of the layout design involving children in discussions about things like social contracts and rules for the play spaces is a really good part of that rule setup as well.

So, we are now going think a little bit more about the risk and how those interplay with supervision. There are lots of tools for risk assessment and management to support our practice, and it is important to integrate risk assessment and management plans in an ongoing part of our daily practice for OSHC settings. There are lots of tools online that you can access, especially those provided by ACECQA, and they offer a really good starting point to start thinking and understanding the relationship around hazard identification, risk management, and planning experiences for children. These tools will help you identify, assess, and manage the risk of harm before an incident occurs. And remember that the specific templates really need to be adapted to fit your particular service. This makes it more meaningful for families, for children, and for educators, and it is more meaningful as part of that daily practice if it is contextualised to your OSHC setting. So, we will look at some examples of this can and how we do this at Gowrie New South Wales as part of this webinar as well. But first I will unpack 5 key steps of assessment risk assessment and managing risk.

So, first, we identify the risks. So as educators, nominated supervisors and even approved providers, we identified the potential hazards, anything that can cause harm or have a new negative impact. So, think about things like broken equipment or dangerous materials or practice or even systems. We do need to be vigilant in monitoring our service as a whole environment. If you see something that may be dangerous now or it could be dangerous later on, assess it. And this can be done with a watchful eye, being aware of possible risks through daily checklists. So, there is an opening and closing checklist. We can add those things on. And it is also a good idea to start to think about hazard identification as part of our regular team meetings.

Once you have identified risks or hazards, we need to then assess whether they are, how harmful they are to children and staff and families? How likely is something to happen? And if it did happen, how serious is the consequence? So, we will look at a bit of a risk matrix that really talks about this specific point, and it will be on the next slide. So, we will talk a little bit about how that works.

And once you have assessed that risk, how do you then manage it? Can you eliminate the risk? So, if it is a piece of broken equipment, is it something that can be completely removed or cordoned off, or is it something that needs to be documented? And our practice needs to change to minimise that risk.

Once that risk is managed with an evaluation, is this now safe enough? So, is that piece of equipment removed, or has it been, repaired and is the risk still there? And then we evaluate the current risk after we have put in those things that have minimised or eliminated it evaluate. Using your safety checklists and the risk matrix on the next slide is really helpful to do this reassessment. And we can also include here if the risk has not been eliminated or effectively managed, then perhaps we do not go ahead with using it. So, if it is an excursion that might be considered too risky, we have identified the hazard or, and we have assessed it, we have managed it, we have then evaluated it and thought, this is still very risky. If we have not been able to minimise it, then it is perhaps that time that we then decide to either not go ahead with the excursion or we have to completely remove that piece of equipment. It cannot be rectified, or it cannot be repaired.

And then the last step, which is a really important one, is to continuously review and monitor. So you might do a risk assessment once a term, but do we have this approach of dynamic risk assessment? So, when we're in the day to day are the daily checklists being recorded and do we have WHS inspections or facility inspections that are part of those that ongoing monitoring. If there's an incident or a change to the environment if there's a near miss, that's a really good opportunity to document and review that risk assessment. If it relates to, if it relates to the environment.

So, on this slide you can see there are 2 types of risk matrix examples here. The one on the left is a Gowrie example, and the one on the right is from ACECQA site. And they are very similar, the axes are reversed. So, you have how likely is something to happen and then what are the consequences? And so, for both you have things like medium and extreme. Or for the risk assessment, you have high or critical. And when we do that reassessment that we talked about on the slide previous, it is still in that point being critical after you have done everything you can to minimise is, that is when you would start to think about actually is this activity or is this resource or this environment too risky. So, this is just a guide that thinking when you are looking at section 2 assessing, that is what that risk assessment metrics is for. And then you can continue using it for reassessing it after, after you have managed it as well. So, I am going to hand it over to Belinda now to talk through some supervision plans. Thanks Belinda.

Belinda: Thanks Meray. So, on this slide you can see a sample of a supervision plan. We are not going to read this example, but I just want to point out a few things. You may have seen or already be using a supervision map where there is a floor plan, and it has indicated where educators should position themselves for effective supervision. So, on the following slide, we are going to look at a supervision map which sits alongside this. With a supervision plan, like the one above. Again, it can complement the supervision map as it considers more nuanced and specific areas that relate to the routines of the session, like set up and pack down. We can see it provides more details around the specifics. For example, what preparation is required? Another point I would like to highlight is that for the pack up pack down services, this is where you would explain those more detailed aspects of the spaces which aid supervision, such as where to place furniture and where best to place high risk activities or messy or loud experiences.

So, we go to the next page. You can see a supervision map like we discussed. This is just a sample supervision map. And you can see it is very simple, so it can easily be created on Word or PowerPoint. It is just something to mark the key areas and spaces in your service as well as key supervision points. You might also like to include out of bounds areas in red.

At this point for this specific webinar, we have used a sample supervision risk assessment which Meray's going to unpack on the following pages from an exceeding Gowrie New South Wales service in which they also refer to the supervision styles for each space. So, on this slide you can see the different supervision styles they use in their service, and this will be a key for the following slides. I am going to hand it over to Meray now to take you through the supervision risk assessment.

Meray: Thanks, Belinda. So, just noting this is an example of how a risk assessment can really make connections to the key components that we just talked about. So, this Gowrie service has contextualised their risk assessment to reflect their service philosophy and their approach to play. The first image shows how the risk assessment connects to the why, the rationale and to the children's outcomes. So, it also references the services philosophy, and they place a bit of importance on risky playing the benefits of risky play. So, the risk assessment gives that information, context, and background theory as part of this. So that when as an educator you are un you are looking at that risk assessment, you can understand what the reasons for why they have decided to assess it at certain levels.

So, this is another way of how services have a supervision map, but it is really a good way to think about it. By including this as a risk assessment, it is clear on the areas that the physical environment refers to and the proof spaces we mentioned in topic one. Especially the spaces that need specific types of supervision and those supervision styles that Belinda mentioned just before. This is helpful for large OSHC services that operate on large school sites and use multiple areas. They can be you can adopt this for smaller services too, but including this map really does provide the detail of around what you know, where will experiences occur and is really clear for those pack up and pack down services as well.

So, this is another example of a risk assessment from an outdoor area noted on the map. So, on the map here, it has been noted that there is an outdoor area and then the risk as assessments provide even more detail about what the outdoor area is. So, this is the top playground as you can see, and there are ideal supervision points that are referenced here as well in the risk. This is an example of a really large service that has, as you could tell, multiple play spaces. This might not be required if you have one space you are accessing with a smaller service. But it is, we found the feedback from educators, especially when it comes to casual and agency educators, knowing what the top playground is can sometimes be something that you have not thought of informing somebody. So, providing those visuals and those images has been really effective or for that purpose especially.

And then this aspect of that services risk assessments provides really comprehensive detail about what experiences and activities will occur. There has been a risk benefit analysis and a risk assessment. So, within the risk assessment, you can see here the benefits. There's been a risk benefit analysis as well as a risk assessment. It also talks about what to be aware of the hazards and the risks and which equipment will be needed so that if it is a new educator or a casual educator, then that person is setting up the experience within the risk assessment. So, they are not using the wrong equipment because they are not aware of what that might be. Those are the things that can create the risks and hazards when people are not sure it is this, are these monkey bars okay or is this piece of equipment out of bounds? This is a really detailed comprehensive risk assessment that looks at that.

This is also the last page of that risk assessment. So, you can see it is very detailed. It has really specific lined off site, for example, for handball, for the soccer courts and for the picnic tables. That is the type of supervision there is also highlighted. I will hand it over to Belinda now to take us through integrating voices and into the risk assessments. Thanks Belinda.

Belinda: Thanks, Meray. So as part of this toolbox topic, we have provided an article in the going deeper reflection pack and also in the vignette there is some detail about how a Gowrie New South Wales OSHC service has integrated children's voices in the process of assessing and managing risk. The approach here is one that works with the children instead of around them. And one where educators actively teach children how to competently use equipment that holds potential risk. And I think the really nice thing is the example we used comes from the same service who provided the risk assessment. So, you can see the passion for risky play through that as well.

On the next page, we have some quotes here from an article that is provided in the going deeper critical reflection pack. That again is provided as part of this toolbox topic. These quotes really highlight how risk assessment and managing risk can be an embedded process that supports multiple dimensions of the learning and care environment. We encourage you to explore these sorts for further in the provided article.

Now, where to go next? So, we do have time for some questions, so if you have not already, can you please share any questions or feedback in the chat box now and we will answer these shortly. We also encourage you to view the video vignette in relation to this topic. We shared some great ideas for an interview with an OSHC professional. We also encourage you to explore the critical reflection pack with your team or individually. And just a reminder, this recorded webinar will be made available along with the accompanying resources on the Department of Education website. And we will also be releasing these packs, so with the video vignettes and critical reflections for all 10 toolbox topics. So, if you miss a session, you can always watch it later. Ideally you can even watch it with your team as part of a team meeting.

On this slide, we have also referenced some key resources to support you in your learning. So, when you receive the recorded webinar, you will be able to link to the resources on the following slide. And finally, thank you. We really appreciate the time taken to get onto this session. So, we hope you have found this helpful. We also value your feedback and encourage you to participate in the feedback survey that you will receive in the email to further improve our professional learning. So, it is important to complete the feedback because that is how we improve and can better tailor our webinars to your needs. So, I can ask some questions in the chat.

Meray: We do yes, we have, Melanie has asked where we would find these resources on the department website. So, it will be in the sector development program when everything gets sent out to your email address that you have registered with, it will link where that is. But there it is, I believe, it is a sector development page on the Department of Education website.

Belinda: I think they are still putting together. So once the Department of Education makes these available, they will notify us,

Meray: Correct, yes. I think I have got another question. A service was told by assessment rating they could no longer allow children to climb trees due to not having enough wood or a compliance certificate from the school. So, look, these things do come up. And one of the considerations around climbing trees or even monkey bars is what is the surface underneath that location that then does make a big difference in the type of injury that a child will have if they fall on a rough surface or if it's on bitumen or asphalt versus if it's on a surface with specific decks that you can't just put some wood chips on, they have to create a soft fall. Now some schools are really great at giving us those they are called drop fall certificates. You can place gym mats underneath too to reduce the impact of an injury. There is no hard fast rule with this. It is about the service risk assessing whether a climbing structure or a tree or a monkey bar and really understanding what is possible, if we think about that risk assessment, what is the possible consequence to an injury? How often has this happened? So, another thing to think about is if you are having lots of broken elbows or fractures from children falling off, it does not really matter whether it is a tree or climbing equipment, the likelihood if we think back to that risk matrix is then not unlikely anymore. It starts to move more likely. So that's why that ongoing review is really important because after you've had a number of incidents, you might think actually by moving it up to likely the risk rating is now high or critical. So, we need to do something different. So hopefully that answers your question, Terry. Without knowing the full context of your service. Any other questions at this stage? I really do like these questions. They are fantastic to discuss. Belinda, would you add anything to Terry's question as well?

Belinda: I think something that the service considered that does do tree climbing, and it is only one of our programs who does. So, they have really clear expectations with children, and they go through a whole process before that tree climbing. So, the children almost have to prove that they are competent at it before they start tree climbing. They can only climb trees to a certain height. The educators who are supervising have to meet a supervision requirement before supervising in that area. The supervision changes, so if there is tree climbing, it is minimal children to staff. And again, like Meray said, I think, yes, you could place gym mats under it, but just looking at one aspect is it a fix or is it not really so much more. Yeah, I think as Meray said, just keep looking at it, reviewing it. What other ideas do you have involved your school, involve your children, involve your families in that process too, because you might find that you have this great idea, but maybe your families do not agree with tree climbing. This service in particular, they love tree climbing. We have another service where the families really do not want that tree climbing and so that is not suitable for their community. So, I think all those things to consider as well,

Meray: It is about that critical reflection piece. Right. So, who are the stakeholders? Who is advantaged and who is disadvantaged by those decisions? Any other questions? We do have a bit of time, so what are some of the major questions you should be asking yourself when reviewing risk assessments? So, if we go back to that risk assessment, how often how likely is something to happen? Is the injury that might be caused by that incident or event? Have we spoken to families about that? So, if we are thinking about an excursion, for example, and I know that the session was about physical environments, but excursions are great ones. If you are thinking about going to an excursion to let us, just say a small an indoor play centre where there are security gates, and we talk to families about that and then we consider another type of excursion, and it is a zoo or a museum and there's public transport involved. So, the questions you might be asking are, what could go wrong and how do I prevent that? That's really as simple as it is. Risk assessments are about what can happen and what do we not want to happen and then how do we prevent that from happening? Risk is really about those fundamentals. And if something cannot be eliminated. So, here will always be levels of risk for lots of different things. Are we comfortable as a community with that level? So that's where family communication comes in. Canvassing views from children themselves and knowing what the regulatory requirements are a significant part of those questions that we have to think about. So, if it is likely that a child is going to go missing, and we cannot mitigate that risk, then that risk is too high because there is a legal requirement to keep children safe as basic as that is. So, you probably wouldn't continue on with whatever activity that you were you were doing at that stage. Hopefully, that answered your question, Rosie. Thank you.

Belinda: Any other questions or feedback?

Meray: Tomorrow's feedback. We have another session tomorrow. I am just going to let everyone know for those who have you who have registered for tomorrow's session, it will be in the afternoon or in the evening at about 6 o'clock. So, after most services finish, if you would like to join just a reminder, all these sessions are free, but they are recorded. So, if you think, actually I would like my team to hear this. This will be recorded and as we mentioned earlier, will be on the Department of Education website. I have another question from some feedback. Thank you. We were not providing feedback certificates or completion certificates, but we can take that on board and see if we can Shelly. It is not a bad question. And thank you for the feedback guys around PowerPoints. Yes, sometimes PowerPoint can be not very fun, <laugh>

Belinda: Especially when you are just reading it. The session we have tomorrow is probably another really popular one as well. It is about supervision and children's behaviour. So, if you are interested at all supervision and children's behaviour and then next week will be medical management,

Belinda: Any more questions before we

Meray: Wrap?

Belinda: And if you are finished, you have somewhere to be, you can absolutely leave now. You don't feel like you have to sound until the end. We are just waiting around. If you do want to ask questions, you're welcome to stay. We are here. You are also welcome to go <laugh>.

Meray: Thanks everyone.

Belinda: Again, if you do not want to ask questions in front of everyone, you're welcome to type them in. Now. I know it can be a little bit overwhelming when everyone is on the call.

Meray: And, there's a feedback survey that Belinda mentioned as well. So please if you could complete it, that would be great. And I think Rosie, you're absolutely right about the feedback with the resource pack available at the same time. We agree. So, for any other sessions we have to thank you.

Toolbox 1: Best Practice Principles of Supervision in Outside Hours School Care- The Relationship Between Supervision and Supporting Children’s Behaviour

Edyta Tucholska: Hi, my name is Edyta. I am the assistant program manager at Gowrie NSW Erskineville OSHC. We'll be talking today about supervision and how it impacts children's behaviour.

Question: How does the environment influence children’s opportunities for self-regulation?

Edyta: We have to think about the position of the furniture and what we know about the patterns of the movements when it comes to children's play. We also need to have a dedicated chill out zone and resting place. This is very important, especially for children with additional needs. For example, when we have a construction area, we will have a bigger space because we need to fit the blocks in, and we'll need to have a space for children to build from the blocks. But for reading, it can be something very cozy, something that is prompting children to rest and is still. When it comes to the position of furniture, we also should think about the natural lines of sight with our supervision, and it should be in line with our supervision plans that we have set in place for our spaces. The first thing is texture and materials. What textures and materials are we providing for children in those resting spaces, for example? Are they soft, are they sensory challenging materials? Like something that is very cold or something that's very shiny. And the noise level, it's very hard for children to self-regulate when it's very loud around. This can cause many behaviour challenges. It's very important to think about the space that we can create that is sensory-safe in the meaning of the noise level as well. And the next natural thing is lighting. The top light would be a very bright light or blue, cold light is also linked to challenging behaviours and is not helping children to self-regulate. We can think about just turning off the light and using lamps or just fairy lights, even just the light that is a little bit dim, a little more natural. When it comes to lighting, it's very important to bring natural light to the spaces. Open those windows and put the shades up. And just give the children the opportunity to enjoy this beautiful morning or evening and natural light and playing it. When it comes to textures and materials, it's very important to include some soft spaces, spaces that encourage children to rest and help with their sensory self-regulation. And when we are thinking about the objects or materials that we have in our spaces, it's also very important to include open-ended resources, for example logs, but also natural materials like pinecones, stones, pieces of bark or sticks. And they really help children to be occupied with play for a much longer time. And we've noticed there is less boredom and fewer changing spaces or activities when we're providing these types of resources instead of set activities resources.

Question: How do the ideas for self-regulation help in developing effective supervision practices?

Edyta: All the ideas that about self-regulation are crucial for developing effective supervision practices. Because when we think about children's behaviour, all of children's behaviour is communication to us as adults and communication to the outside world. Children are communicating through their behaviour. Even if they are not aware of their individual emotional state, they are already, we are calling this acting out. It's not acting out. There's something that we need to know. There's something that they want to ask to tell but they don't know how. Being aware of the individual needs of our children is very important. And this is why we should keep and build strong relationships with the families, with the community. And being genuinely interested in our children, how they feel, what they need. Because this is our starting point for the whole supervision and everything that's happening in the service. When we're thinking about active supervision and positioning ourselves doing the session, the spaces that we are using, we have to think also about the children that we are supervising and what their needs are. I'll be supervising differently a group of children that I know that they're amazing with their self-regulation and that they usually play quietly with just a group of friends. And I would supervise children differently because I know that they have additional needs, or they have a harder day at school. Or I know that the family is going through something that is impacting their behaviour. Getting our children and our families, this is the most important part of our supervision, I would say.

Meray Parsons: Will also be putting the recording on the Department of Education website but please feel free to add any questions in the chat box during the session, you don't have to wait until the end. If we have time we will then answer as many questions as we can. We have a fair few people registered for this event, so we might just give everyone one or 2 minutes and we will get started. But as mentioned, we will have this recorded. So, if you'd like to share this with anyone in your team or you'd like to revisit what we've talked about it will be on the Department of Education website. I know a few other questions have come up in previous sessions about where, so you will get a link to your email address with all the resources and the recordings once they are. Okay, I think we might get started.

Good evening everyone, and thank you for joining our session this evening. This webinar is part of a series of webinars we will present this week and next week. There are 10 sessions in total. So, this is topic 4, and the sessions will be recorded, as I mentioned, for future viewing. You'll get an email to let you know where those are going to be housed on the Department of Education website. We are focusing on toolbox one this week, which is supervision and toolbox 2 will be medical conditions next week. So, if you are interested in registering for all, please do if you are interested in registering just for the ones that are that you feel are relatable, absolutely, but we have sort of those 2 overarching topics.

So, this is the fourth topic, as I mentioned, and it is about the relationship between supervision and supporting children's behaviour. This resource has been developed by Gowrie New South Wales and is funded by the New South Wales Regulatory Authority. My name is Meray Parsons, I am the quality and compliance manager at Gowrie New South Wales. I work closely with nominated supervisors and educators in developing policies and systems and procedures to ensure services are not only compliant, but they are implementing best practice approaches in the work that they do with children. My colleague that will be presenting with us today is Belinda. Belinda, would you like to introduce yourself?

Belinda Rouhan: Thanks, Meray. My name is Belinda Rouhan, and I am the general manager of outside of school hours care (OSHC) for Gowrie New South Wales. I support our OSHC teams and families, and I work closely with our OSHC managers in their services.

Meray: Thanks, Belinda. Before we get into it, Gowrie New South Wales would like to acknowledge our First Nations people as the Traditional Custodians of our land and waterways. We also acknowledge their continued connection to the land, sea, and traditional countries across this nation. We thank traditional custodians for caring for Country for thousands of generations. We recognise this country was never relinquished by Traditional Custodians, and that their continued connection and commitment remains to Country. Gowrie New South Wales pays respects to Elders past, present, and emerging, and all First Nations people, including those joining us today. I am currently joining you from the traditional lands of the Bidjigal people.

So, for today's topic, we are really going to be focusing on how the National Regulations and the National Standards support educators' practices in relation to supervision and supporting children's behaviour. We will unpack the concept of knowing the child as an essential factor for effective supervision, and we are going to really look at that in the context of OSHC. We are going to then look at the why of children's behaviour, thinking about children's behaviour as a form of communication, and then the ways that the aesthetics of the space and the physical environment really enable children to have positive self regulation and positive behaviour. We will also then look at some tools linked to ‘My Time, Our Place’ outcome 3, and focus on environments that support our wellbeing as well.

Okay, so one, when we look at something like behaviour and supervision, children and supporting children's behaviour, there are some really good reference points here in the National Laws and the National Regulations. So for National Regulation 155, you can see those interactions with children are well defined. How do we balance child supervision, and reducing risk and hazards with the child's dignity and rights and ability to express themselves? We did touch on this a little bit in the last toolbox, but also considering relationships between educators and children and how those educators are able to anticipate the changes of children's behaviours or anticipate when incidents might be occurring while they're supervising. The other regulation here that talks about relationships is relationships in groups. So how do we group children in our services? Do we have opportunities to maximise groupings for maximum supervision? So, thinking about large and small services for our larger services, you might consider a senior grouping and a junior grouping. In smaller services, we might have opportunities to think about how children engage with other children in their own age groups. Do we use a buddy system that can help facilitate that? How do we think about those groupings when it is a single staffed service as well? So, there are obviously other regulations there and laws that reference or relate to supervision in children's behaviours. They are on the slide, so we won't go through them, but you can absolutely think about those, take them away and unpack that as well.

Now, as part of looking at those regulations and those laws, we also want to think about who holds responsibility for this. So, it is also important to think about as you can see here on the slide, when it comes to whether it be section 166 inappropriate discipline, this is a requirement or a responsibility for both the approved provider, the nominated supervisor, and staff members and volunteers. So that is a little bit different to the responsibility for regulation 115, which is around premises that is designed to facilitate. Now we all have a responsibility for supervision and for supporting children's behaviour because it is the work that we do. But when you do look at the National Law and the Regulations, it is interesting and informative to look at where do those responsible responsibilities lie as well.

And so, once we have now looked at the National Laws and the National Regulations, we can start to really unpack the standards that then guide that guide the thinking around relationships with children. So, the National Quality Standards 5.1 relationships between educators and children, I am going to talk through some of these points and what they might look like in practice. So, for example, adjusting supervision styles might be that we stand back and observe children when they are engaged in role play with each other compared to supporting a Kindy child in turn taking and role modelling. So how do we change our supervision style based on what is occurring or what the interaction is. A strategy to build relationships could be identifying new children in the service during your afternoon setup with educators or afternoon debrief sometimes services have and communicate about the child's movements in the service, or if they are observing that that new child is forming friendships, or do they need a buddy or a bit more support informing those friendships. Do we introduce new staff and educators to children during the start of a session, or do we post something on a communication platform that might be more helpful as well? And what strategies do we have in place to manage children who are at risk of absconding? So, knowing that there are children that want to leave the premises, they might have had a tough day. What do we have in designated spaces so that they can go off and tell an educator that they need some special time, or they need to access some resources. Do we have some sensory resources that they can have a level of time to deregulate, but also be effectively supervised at the same time? And how do we balance spending time with children to talk through an incident or through a child's feelings whilst also effectively supervising the rest of the group? So, it can be a really tricky situation where you have a child who is upset and wants to talk to you about something, but you also need to ensure that you have your supervision of the other 10 children is maintained. Do we think about calling somebody from another space or do we speak to the child and position ourselves so we can continue scanning and accounting for the rest of the play space? We talked a little bit about this in toolbox one topic one which is around scanning and accounting. And you can be really honest with children and say to them, look, I am listening, but I do still need to supervise the rest of your friends. And having that, that open communication can really be a positive way to build that relationship further. So, I am going to now hand it over to Belinda to talk through how do we get to know children.? Thanks, Belinda.

Belinda: Thanks, Meray. So knowing the child, this is an essential component of effective supervision in our OSHC services. When educators know and understand the children in their care, they have a strong foundation on which to build secure relationships. When we know children's likes, dislikes, strengths, triggers, and capacity, we can anticipate and preempt children's supervision needs, including behaviour, and in turn, adjust our strategy for supervision to prevent escalation or intervene if needed. So ‘My Time, Our Place’ framework emphasises that our program is built from the foundation of who the child is. We are going to explore this concept further in this session through the ‘My Time, Our Place’ version 2 outcome 3. But first I want to take a moment to acknowledge the challenges of staffing in OSHC. So, consider what strategies you can put in place to minimise the impacts of staffing changes, because even with start changes in staffing, we feel that many of the strategies can be used and adjusted in services. The aim of this session is to ask ourselves; how do we foster positive relationships between children and new educators? Because while we might find this hard, we can't forget the important role we play in a child's life.

So, I'll take you to the next slide, and let's take a moment to reflect on how you know the children in your service. So, you can see on this slide, we've included an activity for you to complete in your own time. As Meray said, these webinars will be emailed to you so you can access with your teams. You can approach this activity in pairs individually or as part of critical reflection or in your team meetings. We suggest you use the points in the circles to mind map your thoughts about a child in your program. Or you might have a few children, ask yourself, what are their nuances and what do we appreciate about their uniqueness? What do I know about the child that I didn't think I knew before? And how will this adjust my supervision style or approach? Especially helpful if you have new children in your service, children with challenging behaviours, or a child who might need some additional support. I'm going to hand it back over to Meray now to talk more about the importance of knowing the child.

Meray: Thanks Belinda. So, if we think about how knowing the child can support effective supervision in OSHC consider how you feel when someone acknowledges your strengths or your interests at your workplace. How do you feel when you are heard or when someone takes the time to get to know you and to listen to you? I know for me, I feel valued, I feel happy, and I feel safe and connected. So, this is the same for children, when they feel that somebody is taking the time to get to know who they are as a person, they feel safe, and they have a sense of empowerment and agency and security. So, when we listen to children respectfully and value their opinions, respond to their needs, support them, and grow their sense of self belonging, this is strengthening their connectedness to the educators and to the service itself. These things can happen even with casual educators and even with agency educators. It's about setting that expectation about how we respond to a child in the moment, it's about being present and how they communicate that information to the permanent educators, if they're only there for the day. There are really strong links between knowing the child and effective supervision because when children feel heard, their emerging sense of self esteem and self image in turn impacts on how they behave, how they communicate, and how they interact. So, it's a win win for our supervision practices when children feel positive, secure, and when they feel connected, their behaviour needs are positively impacted. This means that our supervision becomes more engaging as we respond to children's needs before it becomes a behaviour that needs to be intervened with instead.

So, I want to take a minute to share this quote from Clare Britt and Jill McLachlan with you from ‘Unearthing Why: Stories of Thinking and Learning with Children’ a collection of short stories. So, this is published in 2015, and it really does come to the heart of this knowing the child. So, when we listen, we create opportunities for connection, the possibility of seeing something new. As we listen to children, we open ourselves up to seeing them, hearing them, and being taught by them.

And so, one way to view the connection between supervision and behaviour is to adopt a mindset that our behaviour is a form of communication. Stuart Shanker, founder of Self-Regulation Institute, proposes the idea that we will not be effective with children if we are not curious about what children are trying to do with their behaviour. If you just stop trying to stop the behaviour, you won't be as effective as understanding why the behaviour or what's underneath that iceberg. So, the iceberg model is a really good way to represent the complexities of human behaviour, to be effective in supporting children's needs, their diverse needs, we need to meet those needs that underlie those challenging behaviours. We work with a great Australian psychologist, Beth MacGregor, who we work with extensively in both our early education and our OSHC services, and Beth really invites us to see the challenging behaviour is a red flag with the child asking us for assistance and support. So, the importance of knowing the child becomes really, really critical here. We are going to add another layer of this by exploring some of the elements that are maybe hidden needs that, that are part of that iceberg underneath. Belinda will now take us through some of those over the next few slides. Thanks, Belinda.

Belinda: Thank you, Meray. First, let's unpack basic needs. So think about the way in which people behave if their basic needs are not met. So for example, when we are hungry, when we are cold, when we don't have anywhere to shelter from the weather, when we do not feel physically safe. This is equally an equally important aspect to consider as part of our service and when we consider supervision that supports children's safety and wellbeing. This aspect also relates to the domain of self regulation that is called the biological domain and can help ensure that the child's needs are met. this domain relates to our sense of physical wellbeing. There are many examples of how children and adults can be impacted by stress in this domain, hunger, feeling ill, hormonal changes, tiredness, and so on. I want you all to pause now and think of a time when you have been hungry or tired. How did this impact your own personal self regulation? Now, think of a time when a child in your care was struggling to self regulate. Did you consider if their basic needs were being met? Because sometimes the most basic of responses can be the ones we miss. And Meray referred to behaviour as being a form of communication, absolutely.

Let's look at attachment. So trusting relationships form connection, for every one of us our past experiences have shaped our learning, the ways in which we behave, and the ways in which we form relationships with others. These experiences form our personal roadmap of how we interact in and experience the world. So, think about how you feel when you're in an environment where you do not have well-formed relationships with the people around you. So for example, if you're in a group of strangers, when you're with people who do not understand how you are feeling, when you don't have the support of your family members, or when you feel that you can't rely on the people around you to provide support, even think of the first day when you started your new job. In the first instance, supporting children's behaviour needs begins with our relationship. So now consider a new child at the OSHC service on their first day, or a child who hasn't made any strong connections with educators or other children, how do you think they might be feeling? The importance of attachment and relationships is reiterated in ‘My Time, Our Place’ version 2, outcome one. Educators support children and young people's attachment through consistent and warm nurturing relationships. And you can see in this webinar, we do refer a lot to the updated ‘My Time, Our Place’ version 2.

So, on the next slide, we're going to unpack or break down National Quality Standard 5.2, relationships with children, and consider the questions on the slide in regards to our practices. So, in element 5.2.1, children are supported to collaborate, learn from, and help each other. Consider the following in your service. So how are staffing and child groups arranged to support positive behaviour positive relationships between each other? Do you have designated spaces and resources for different age groups? Do you plan for the session and supervision based on the dynamics of the children? So, think about the different children who are coming today, their different needs, their different interests, the way that this child might work really well with this child, but have disagreements with another child, for example. Do you consider their ages and abilities in different settings and how this might impact on supervision? Element 5.2.2 states that each child is supported to regulate their own behaviour, respond appropriately to the behaviour of others, and communicate effectively to resolve conflicts. And this will be covered in more detail over the following slides.

So now on the next slide, we're going unpack environmental stresses. Meray referred to Stuart Shanker earlier. I really strongly encourage you to access his self-reg website, it has heaps of great resources on it. In the self regulation school toolkit, which again, you can find on his website, Stuart Shanker explains, the school settings are filled with environmental stresses that impact the behaviour of children and young people. To understand this in depth, it can be useful to look at the 5 domains of self regulation. These are biological, emotional, cognitive, social, and prosocial. Some key considerations for middle childhood in OSHC environments in relation to environmental stresses are visual clutter. So, what does your service look like visually? Do you have lots of cupboards overflowing? Do you have resources everywhere? What are the noise levels? What smells in your service? Is the lighting harsh or is it soft? What hydration and nutrition options are available? And what seating and spaces do you have that allow children and young people options to relax in different ways? So, do you have soft furnishings? Do you have highly appropriate tables for your younger children and your older children? Do you have nice wooden tables? Are your tables rickety? Do your chairs match your tables? A way to consider the OSHC environment is to reflect and ask yourself. So, when you go back to your service, I want everyone to stand at the door and think, if you were coming into this space for the first time, what do you think you would notice most? Think about the visuals, the sounds, the smells, and are these positive sensations or negative? Think about how you feel in the space. And then put yourself in the shoes of a child. How do you think you would feel in the space then? And what do you think you might change or adjust in this space as a response? Again, this is a great critical reflection activity for yourself, and then build on your exceeding themes as well.

So sensory needs, we're going to consider the feeling and mood of the space go merely beyond the aesthetics of the space, and brings us to the idea of a sensory scape. So, considering the senses in the OSHC spaces is important as a support to children with diverse needs who may feel triggered by specific stresses in the environment. Providing spaces where children can retreat to and find calmness for their sensory needs is crucial for supporting behaviour needs and facilitating self-regulating spaces. When we think about the relationship between supervision and supporting children's behaviour through an awareness of the environment, it allows us to be responsive to each child's needs. So again, consider your own or service. How does it trigger your ser your senses? Are these triggered in a good way or are you finding it overstimulating? Consider the lighting, the furnishing, the smells, et cetera. This toolbox topics has a great video vignette, which really unpacks these ideas for an OSHC setting. And I think I want everyone to take notice here too, don't feel that if you have a pack up pack down service can be limiting. Some of our best services with the best spaces and really great sensory spaces, are our pack up pack down services. I'm now going to pass you back to Meray to talk about the concept of self regulation.

Meray: Thanks, Belinda. It is late in the day, so thanks everyone. I just thought about that. It's probably time at most people's homes for dinner and if you've got little ones, bed, bath, and everyone's probably had a late day. So, thanks again for joining. But we will be looking at the concept of self regulation, which sometimes is probably the hardest in the evening. But to put it really simply, self regulation is about how we manage stress. So, it's about recognising and responding to stress in a way that enhances learning and social, emotional, and physical wellbeing. It involves learning to recognise and to respond to stress. The quote on this slide is also Stuart Shanker who's obviously a leading expert in the area of self regulation. So, his website ‘self-reg’ has a wide range of resources, as Belinda mentioned, and you can use them as a team, or share them with families, or even share them with children that you work with to support them to understand how to help manage their own stress. So, it's important to then think about this concept of self regulation and positive behaviours. So, there is a connection, obviously, to be able to self regulate, we see then positive behaviours as a result. So, for children, this look could look like children being really engaged, having empathy for others, having the ability to calm themselves down when something has happened, having more positive engagement with each other. It can look like having really strong communication, so sometimes we can see that children are saying, "I'm really angry, I don't want to be here I'm going to move myself, I'm going to go up to the oval”, recognising that that's a really great way to deregulate themselves and to manage that stress. You know, expressing their feelings, telling their peers if something has happened that they are able to express their feelings, and enjoying coming to afterschool care. So, those are all signs that children are having positive behaviours and that ability to regulate is happening. So, if we think about supporting self regulation and positive behaviours that then contributes to effective supervision. So, to make that link back to the broader concept in toolbox one, it's definitely then coming back to if children are able to do those things, and self regulate, and have those positive behaviours, supervision is a lot more effective.

So just when we're thinking about these things we do, I do really like to reference some of the key the curriculum frameworks that we use. So, with ‘My Time, Our Place’ version 2, it speaks to these things. Firstly, wellbeing is correlated to resilience, so providing children with the capacity to cope with the day to day stress and challenges, managing their emotions, developing self-regulation skills, and building perseverance all part of that developing executive function in the brain. Children's wellbeing is linked to that executive function, and educators can be then aware of the connection between sensory, physical motor systems, and brain processes. Secondly, educators are uniquely positioned to observe children's interactions and behaviours. And if there are issues of concern to identify these things and then take action to support it. Children can then adopt a trauma-informed practice approach to enhance children's safety and wellbeing. To support children's wellbeing, it's also essential that educators foster warm, trusting relationships and create predictable safe environments. So, when we think about those environments, whether it be a pack up pack down service, how do we then think about what ‘My Time, Our Place’ talks about when we are looking at those physical environments? So, trauma-informed approach is also really helpful affirmation and respect for children's physical, emotional, cognitive, social, linguistic, and as a spiritual being as well. So, when we talk about these 3 sorts of concepts here, take a moment perhaps if you have a notebook or if you want to pop a note in your phone. So, think about what small steps you can take, or big steps that you might want to take to really improve interactions and to help build relationships in your service.

I think I skipped a slide there, sorry. So, when we are, then we're talking about some of these concepts of the ability for children to regulate, part of that relationship building is really defined as attunement. And ‘My Time, Our Place’ does define attunement as being fully aware and responsive to children and young people comprehending their feelings and in their communication, whether it be facial expressions, vocalisations, body gestures, and eye contact. So really being in tune to each child and knowing their particular nuances or their uniqueness in that way. Being attuned to each child means that you are better able to provide by planning and adapting the program to meet their needs. So back in Quality Area one, element 1.1.2, talks about each child's current knowledge, strengths, cultures, and ideas, are the foundation for the program. So, we are then also linking these concepts of supervision and supporting children's behaviour with this information gathering really, that you can then go back and use in your program. So how can we use this information to guide effective supervision with your practice? If you think about if you've gathered this information and when you know somebody's had a bad day at school, you might have to think about how does that mean for their escalation of behaviour? You can then think about anticipating it, and if we're looking at topic one, for anyone there that was on topic one, if you go back and have a look at the recording or you get the slides, we do talk about anticipating children's behaviour as a strategy for supervision. So, when we think about attunement, it then really links into that anticipating children's behaviour. So further thinking about attunement, it is about building relationships with children and learning their capabilities and their boundaries. We have, when we are thinking about this webinar, we really have come full circle with how we know the child and how important it is for effective supervision. There are small things that you can do to support your awareness of each child that will also support your supervision practices, and these can happen with casual educators, even sometimes agency educators if we are using them regularly. But knowing children's names, and building relationships with their families, learning what the children's supervisions needs are, is it a child that does tend to abscond, or what does the child respond well to if they are escalating in their behaviour, but also who do they respond to really well?

So have a think about some of the following in your practices. How do you greet children on arrival? Do we ask children about their day, how they're feeling? Are we able to gather information which will set this bit of information, just asking them how their day is. We can then set ourselves up and set the child up for success for that afternoon session if it's the afternoon session. And what role do we take in children's play? Do we ask them what role they want us to take in, in their play at different times? We will in going back to those supervision styles, we might have to be either active participants or observers. And we might need to, especially that developing sense of agency, step back and observe as opposed to being an active participant. And how do you decide what role you play being, attuned to children in your care can really help you make those decisions You get to know what children like and what they don't like in that situation, and one way of doing this is inviting participation in these conversations with children. So have a conversation with children at the beginning of a session. How do you want us to interact with you today? You're, we're playing a game of soccer. Would you like us to ref? Would you like us to play? Do you not want us to, is it more about just supervising and we are there to help if you need it? And even casual educators can engage in these meaningful conversations. Ask children if you're there as a casual you can just ask children for their ideas, and engage them in activities or invite them to play in your spaces. But when we are talking about this attunement, you can probably think about lots of different ways of how you build relationships with children. Whether it be a permanent educator or a casual educator, you might do these things in different ways. So, if you list them down at your next team meeting, you might want to share those things and see what other people have as suggestions as well.

Okay, so when we are looking at ‘My Time, Our Place’, especially outcome 3, we do know that it talks about children having a strong sense of wellbeing. So, if you think about these 3 questions as points of reflection, and they do draw links to that attunement we've been talking about and supporting children's behaviour, what are the unique aspects of children's personality that we should consider? So, if we unpack each dot point, how do you discuss emotions, responses to events and emotional regulation and self control? How do we show that care and understanding? What is our response as an educator? One example might be to think about a wide range of vocabulary to discuss emotions. So, if for example, you might think about the Gottman Institute ‘Feelings Wheel’ so that's a really great resource to assist children in finding new ways to explore how they're feeling. We also at Gowrie have used the ‘Be You’ program. It's probably one of the best tools for services, and team members, nominated supervisors to access. It's by Beyond Blue and it's really a fantastic resource, I can't recommend enough for talking about with children and with families about children's mental health, emotional wellbeing as well. So, you might want to think about discussing and thinking about what are the responses that we would have before you're in the moment. So, whether it be as part of a debrief beforehand or it could be as part of your team meetings. We do have children who do need support with their behaviour. So, what is our response when children are communicating their distress or when their behaviour is communicating something? How do we respond to that to form those relationships? And what do we know about that child through that attunement to then support that response as well. I'm going to now hand it over to Belinda to take us through the next couple of slides. Thanks Belinda.

Belinda: Thank you Meray. So, coming back to that attunement, when educators are in tune and attuned to children, you will see a difference in the environment both indoors and outdoors. So for example, when educators are in tune and attuned, we see calm, settled, and engaged children. Meaningful engagement between educators and children. Educators picking up on and responding to children's unique cues. Children approaching educators when they need something. Educators checking in with children without intruding on play, so they might just be standing close, observing, checking in, seeing if they can get engaged within the play, but also respecting the boundaries. Educators are aware of where colleagues are and need to be. And so some of these points, as Meray said, come back to toolbox one, topic one, and those building blocks of supervision. After this session, go back to your service and observe the interactions between educators and children within your service. Consider your own interactions between yourself and children. So be really honest with yourself, it's a bit of a critical reflection, do you think you are attuned and in tune? Ask yourself what is working well? What could you adjust to become more attuned and in tune? And consider the different stresses and strategies we discussed earlier in the webinar. So maybe choose one to take away and work on first, and going back to those strategies it's things like considering children's basic needs, developing attachment, thinking about the sensory needs, and environmental stresses.

So where to go next? I'm going to remind everyone here at this point to put any questions or feedback you may have into our chat box so we can answer them shortly as we are coming to the end of our session. We really look forward to the questions we are getting during these sessions and we encourage you to share because there's been some great conversations, some really thoughtful questions from people in previous sessions, and I think it also helps us to tailor these sessions to your needs as well.

Meray: Yeah I think Belinda you are absolutely right, some of the questions have been really, I think, other people have liked them and responded to them in the chat. So, any question's a good question because it's really making sure this content is going to be relevant for your service, and if it's relevant for your service, I'm sure somebody else will find it relevant as well. So, as we're wrapping up, please think of any questions you might have. We do allocate the time for it, so we would love to answer anything that comes up. Sorry, Belinda just interrupted.

Belinda: No, that's great <laugh>. And on our next slide we have some additional resources which will be housed on the Department of Education website and really great timing because I saw one of our questions asked if they'll have access to the webinar. So yes, you will be able to access all of these resources along with the recorded webinar and you can review the webinar again with your teams. So, I strongly encourage you to watch the video vignette on this topic. It's by an inclusion support professional within a Gowrie service who had some really great ideas, which she's implemented in a very large program, pack up pack down, and they've worked really well. So again, don't think you can't implement it at your service, think about the barriers but think about how you can overcome them.

And in the next one, we've also got some resources, some additional resources to support your further research and learning. And you can see the self regulation school toolkit here, they’re a PDF link once you're on the website. But I think there's some resources we can also link in the chat like the Gottman Institute ‘Feelings Wheel’ and things like that.

Meray: Ask that question, Sarah, that I think you had a question about getting access to the website. So those are the ones we've referenced, but we will also when you get the link to viewing this, we'll add the chat links that we'll put on as well.

Belinda: So, thank you for joining us today for toolbox one, topic 4, the relationship between supervision and supporting children's behaviour. Again, we really value your feedback and encourage you to participate in the feedback survey that you'll shortly receive in your email to improve our professional learning. So, we're going to encourage you to explore the accompanying resources in the toolkit and encourage you to put any questions you have in the chat box so we can answer them now. We are also open to feedback on the session, so feel free to add that as well because with your feedback, we can continue to improve and ensure these sessions are meeting your needs. And I think something really valuable is these sessions are OSHC specific, so if you have any questions that, burning desire, please ask them. Now, everyone here OSHC professionals.

Meray: I have one question Belinda, so I'm going to put you on the spot, but what do you see as the best way to ensure new educators are supported to get to know children?

Belinda: I think something as simple as encouraging new educators to say hello to children. The amount of times, we go into services and new educators came back. I think even your agency staff, like when they very first come in, they sign in on the time sheet, tell them it's really important that you are greeting children. Or if you see a child as well, another really great thing is especially those new educators, ask them to look out for the children who are hanging back or by themselves. Because you find especially in your larger services, those are the children that kind of get left out and everyone's so busy and they've got their roles so that new educator can build some really great meaningful relationships quickly with those children. And it also means that you don't have that child sitting there by themselves so.

Meray: I think another one I would add as well Belinda is probably asking children, how do you want me to help you with your play? Do you want me to go and introduce you to somebody else? Or would you like me to, what game do you want to play? And then that way it's less, awkward sometimes, going and finding someone for the child to play with might not be what the child really wants. So sometimes really strategically setting up a game that a group of children will want to, or even, loom bands for example, there's going to be a number of children who are going to come and get excited so that you could strategically do that and start to get to know children's likes and dislikes as well.

Belinda: I’ve just put in the chat as well, the feelings wheel, it's a PDF document and I find it's really great for the school aged children because it has some really expressive ways to explain feelings. And as they get to those older ages, they really want that wider vocabulary to explain this is exactly how I feel. And, I'll link the self-reg website. But keep going. If you have any, any other questions, any feedback,

Meray: I'll give everyone a moment.

I do want to say here, if you do not have any questions please don't feel that you have to stay, it is 7:02 I'm sure for those who do have young children. I'm very happy to miss bed, bath and dinner, so I'm going to stay as long as I need to. But please don't feel that you have to stay if you have somewhere to go or if you want to finish your day and see your family. We do have a few comments, Thank you so much and there are a few nice comments there, so thank you. Otherwise like I said, Belinda and I are happy to stay and answer questions if you would prefer to ask a question with a smaller group as well. Otherwise, thank you so much. It is really appreciated that people are coming on in their out of hours' time after long days at work. So, we thank you and hopefully we will see you at tomorrow morning’s session. <Laugh>.

Belinda: We have also linked the self-reg website there by Stuart Shanker as well.

Meray: And if you haven't grabbed the links from the chat, these will be included. We will just pop them in the PowerPoint I think Belinda, so everyone can access them there as well. Thanks Jasmine, they’re some really nice comments in the chat so I won't be able to reply to everyone but thank you.

Belinda: And it is nice to see people saying again. So clearly, you've come to another one of our sessions, so we appreciate it even more. <Laugh>,

Meray: Our voices haven't scheduled <laugh>

Belinda: Feel free as well if you'd like to share any thoughts, I think we've talked about any feedback or any questions, but even if you've walked away. I think this is one of those nice sessions, behaviour, where if you've maybe thought “oh wow this has really impacted my thinking in this way”, feel free to share because that's always something nice as well. And then we strongly encourage you to complete the critical reflections, and there will be articles and follows. And again we'll support your practices, Quality Area 5, and then we'll also support your exceeding themes as well.

Meray: Oh Marina, that's a really great suggestion. Marinas has just suggested a follow up like round table style Zoom after we've unpacked these sessions. I think that's a really great idea. All of this feedback is going to form part of our next offering, so thank you. I think listening to other people's ideas in that round table, is really, really useful so that's fantastic. Thank you.

Belinda: Alicia has a good question. Are there strategies you would recommend for when behaviour increases to meltdown or outbursts that impact safety and wellbeing of other children in the service? I guess first and foremost, your service policies and procedures to follow those. I think it's really important in those moments that we are able to self regulate our own behaviours and emotions, because that can be really tough. And I think I don't have any clear strategies, it's just maintaining that calm, following your policies and procedures. But definitely afterwards unpacking what was the trigger, I think the biggest thing you can do after those situations is try and find out what caused it and what might have the triggers been, and then also work on rebuilding that relationship and then engaging with the families or other agencies as needed. The school or an OT (Occupational Therapist) if that's what you need, your inclusion support agency to put support in place for that child. I think Meray would you?

Meray: Yeah, absolutely. I think when you're talking about a, a major meltdown and it's impacting the safety and wellbeing of other children. So, we are managing that as an incident almost, we've got to self regulate, sometimes it's about moving children away, sometimes it's about giving the child space but continually supervising them but not, depending on what the triggers are, and that that's where attunement comes in. So, it's a really good question because I would say when those things are happening maybe there is an educator that that child really connects with and will listen to. So it's about knowing who that educator is and maybe moving them from another area to come and help at that moment, keeping the other children safe and then really giving, depending on the child, some children need space, some children will feel that they need to escalate their behaviour further to get your attention. So it's about be responsive to the child, giving them options, but also that attunement really comes in at that stage because you'll know actually this child's behaviours increased. If it's a first off, it might be something that then we talk to the family about and afterwards the school about. But if you know that it's starting to escalate, that wheel of emotions that Belinda reference is really good because you can bring that out and say like, talk to me about how you're feeling. There's also ‘Be You’ which has some great strategies, but like breathing movement too, movement exercises. So, escalation can look very different for children. Sometimes children are engaged in an activity, and they're engaged with children, but you can tell they're escalating internally because you are attuned to them. So, it's about going, okay, look, I can see that's happening, let's switch it up, let's do an, let's do another experience because I think this one is creating emotions that are escalating.

We've thrown a whole bunch of ideas at you, sorry Alicia, but it's really about with most things with children and it's the hardest answer to give, it's about prevention. Because that's where, once they are escalated, you do tend to have to work your way back. There is no, that I have come across, no guarantee that you can come in there and completely diffuse something. Sometimes that does work though, whether it is breathing or changing up an experience, but for every circumstance that might look different. Sorry if that is not the easiest answer but we are, yeah, absolutely. I think attunement here is the key to that sort of de-escalation node.

Belinda: I have also linked to the ‘Be You’ website in the chat box. So for those who don't know, ‘Be You’ is a free resource as well, and you can access mentors and support people from it to talk to you through the program. So it is a really great program as Meray referenced, and it is free to access for your services as well.

Meray: Thank you everyone. Alicia, I hope that answered your question. I am not sure if you're still on the line but thank you. And hopefully like I said, if there are any other questions, please pop them in. But otherwise thank you and we will hopefully see you guys tomorrow.

Belinda: Yes. And next week <laugh>

Meray: Well and all for next week. So yeah,

Belinda: <Laugh>. Next week's medical management, so different again. Any more questions? We're coming to the end. Feel free to log off if you don't have any questions. If you do that, you want to put in the chat box and you can actually, if you do want to ask something directly to the host, you can just direct it to them and we can respond to an anonymous question. So you can ask things anonymously, that's fine because I know especially around behaviour, it can be confronting sometimes.

Meray: One strategy while we're trying to fill awkward silence, one strategy we have used in the past is having those wheels of emotions and the zones, the red zone, the orange zones, the green zones is played around the spaces so that there is this reference point. So, thinking about not over cluttering a service, but also having little, in the quiet zone, having a reference point for children to go, “actually I think I am feeling a little bit elevated”, just a reminder. So having those visual cues in spaces can be helpful and have been helpful in some of our services. We have also really been thinking about support plans and documenting this. So, something we didn't touch on but is a really big part of this is when we are supporting children, if there is a document behaviour plan for children or an inclusion plan around their behaviour for children, to make sure that is being reviewed, it's part of your induction process. And that is what I would be asking casuals, especially casuals who might have blocks of time to really review, “okay well these children need support with their behaviour, this is what the support looks like, these are their triggers”, so that if they're out on the oval and you can see Bobby is starting to get really upset that he's not winning the game, you can start to go, “okay well I know that he has a behaviour support game, do I need to get somebody else, or do I know what I need to do in the situation as well?” So going back to that question about escalating in those outbursts, it's really trying to get in before we get there.

Also, I think, is there anything else in the chat? I think questions we might wrap up guys, thank you so much. We do have a couple more people, so I don't know if they've stepped away or they want to ask a question, I don't know if, we might finish up. The other thing is you can ask questions through your responses, but we just don’t know who it is. So in the feedback responses if you have questions, you can use that too, you just let us know who it is so we can get back to you with an answer as well. Otherwise, it's just 2 minutes to spare. We have no more questions. We've got a couple more participants, but I think they might have stepped away. So, we will wrap it up. Thank you so much everyone, and hopefully we'll see you soon.

Belinda: Thanks everyone. See you later.

Toolbox 1: Best Practice Principles of Supervision in Outside Hours School Care- Partnerships with all Stakeholders in the OSHC Community.

Vanessa Bavaro: Hi, I am Vanessa from Gowrie NSW Ryde.

Question: Who are the key stakeholders in the OSHC community?

Vanessa: All out of school hours care programs have different stakeholders, both internal and external. External stakeholders include families and children in addition to the broader community, such as principals, teachers, ground staff, P&C committees, and extracurricular providers. Out of school hours care providing care to children from other schools are also external stakeholders. Some out of school hours care operate from community-based locations. So, the council or organisation responsible will need to be considered as external stakeholders.

Question: How can these partnerships positively support high quality supervision?

Vanessa: Having strong partnerships with external stakeholders, such as school staff and teachers, can create strong alignments in several ways. Similar procedures a school has, such as toileting or out of bounds areas, using the same language with the children, sharing insight or patterns of incidents or behaviour that impacts supervision, reciprocal information, sharing about children that may help plan for the school day and vice versa, sharing information with the school and their teachers to ensure children are going to school happy and that they're coming back to us happy as well.

Question: How have you facilitated strong partnerships in your setting?

Vanessa: Upon enrolment, if there is a child with additional needs, we will meet with the family, we will review their behaviour plan, the NDIS, any support that they may have. We will then meet with the school, meet with the occupational therapist to gain additional information. This communication, with the additional support, with the occupational therapist, with the school, with the family, is continued throughout the entire duration of that child's time at the service, just to ensure that the child's getting the most out of our program.

Belinda Rouhan: Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our session this morning. This webinar is the final topic of toolbox one on supervision, and next week we'll focus on toolbox 2, which is medical conditions. So, if you haven't signed up already, we suggest you please do so. These sessions will be recorded and available for future viewing on the Department of Education website, along with resources to assist you in further reflection with your teams. So, you would've gotten a prompt once we started recording, but just be assured that it will be Meray and I photos on the recording, and no other participants. We welcome you to add questions or feedback or feedback, sorry, into the chat box. And we are going to cover these at the end, so feel free to add them throughout. And in the end, we'll circle back around. We have left time in this session for a debrief at the end as well.

So, this is the fifth topic as part of toolbox one, and we are talking about partnerships with all stakeholders in relation to supervision. Here, I want to acknowledge that this resource is developed by Gowrie New South Wales and funded by the New South Wales Regulatory Authority, and now for our Acknowledgement of Country. So, Gowrie New South Wales acknowledges our First Nations people as the Traditional Custodians of our land and waterways. We also acknowledge that their continued connection to the land, sea, and traditional countries across this nation. We thank Traditional Custodians for caring for Country for thousands of generations. We recognise this country was never relinquished by Traditional Custodians, and that they continue connection and commitment remains to Country. Gowrie New South Wales pays respect to Elders past, present, and emerging, and all First Nations people, including those joining us today. And I'm currently joining you from the traditional lands of the Wangal people. Now, I do want to stop here and introduce myself. I forgot to do that earlier, sorry. So, my name is Belinda Rowan. I'm the general manager of outside of school hours care (OSHC) for Gowrie New South Wales. So, I work closely with our OSHC managers and their teams supporting them in their daily practices and liaising with families. I'm going to hand it over to Meray, to now introduce herself.

Meray Parsons: Thanks, Belinda. Hi, everyone. I am Meray Parsons. I am the quality and compliance manager at Gowrie New South Wales. So as part of my role, I work with nominated supervisors and educators to develop policies, procedures, systems to ensure that they've got robust compliance processes in place, and that we are also embedding a high-quality practice and best practice approaches as well. Thanks, Belinda.

Belinda: Thanks, Meray. So, in this webinar today, we will discuss the laws and regulations as well as the responsibilities which underpin this toolbox topic. We're going to explore the National Quality Standard 6 with a deep dive into 6.2.3, and unpack the updated ‘My Time, Our Place’ version 2 in relation to partnerships. We're also going to explore the different stakeholders in supervision and how knowledge of our key stakeholders can support our supervision practices, as well as how to further strengthen relationships with these stakeholders. So, I hope you find it an engaging session today.

Now first we're going to start with our laws and regulations, which underpin supervision. So, on this slide, you can see the National Regulations and Law that are relevant to partnerships and supervision, as well as the responsibilities of the different roles. So, approved provider, nominated supervisor are the 2 key roles here. It's really important to note that we all take responsibility and speak up when these laws and regulations aren't being effectively met in the service. However, there are distinct responsibilities and possible fines for the different roles listed here. We encourage you to read these laws and regulations yourself to get a better understanding, but a brief overview is included here.

So, let's look at regulation 99 children leaving the education and care service premises. What does it mean for your service? It's about ensuring you have written permission for children attending extracurricular activities as well as clear procedures in place. So here that stakeholder relationship would be with the families, and it would be with the external extracurricular provider.

Regulation 157 access for parents. So how do you ensure families have access to the service and to children without leaving the families unsupervised? So here, your key stakeholder would be the families. How do you share this information with them? Make it a place where families feel welcome to come, but also have clear expectations in place for families as well in your service.

Regulation 168 Education and care services must have policies and procedures. So how do you ensure your policies are able to be accessed by families? For example, do you send an updated policy? When policies change, do parents have the opportunity to input on policy changes? Do you keep your policy folder at the parent signing area, or do you have key policies accessed online for families? These are all things to consider.

And National Law section 170, offence relating to unauthorised persons on education and care service premises. Visitors to the service must be either a), an authorised person, or b), under direct supervision of a staff member. So, this means you cannot leave the children in supervision of a schoolteacher, tutor, incursion provider or other external provider unsupervised whilst they assigned into your service. So, what does this mean for you and other stakeholders? For example, if you have inclusion support professional visiting it is really important that they remain supervised at all times. I know that some services have extracurricular, or incursions come into the service, having educators participate in that exco incursion as well. And things like tutoring. There have been times in different services where tutors have been requested to come in to support children at the request of the families. So how do you ensure they're not unsupervised? It's about how we want to meet these needs, the needs of our communities, we want to invite our communities in, but how do we do this in a safe way for the children? Meray's now going to take us through Quality Area 6 and its relationships to stakeholders.

Meray: Thanks, Belinda. So, as we've been discussing the different National Laws and National Regulations with regards to supervision and stakeholders, it's a really good segue into looking at what the National Quality Standards say, and in particular Quality Area 6. So, if you've been on any of the sessions during the week, we have discussed the different roles across the service, that have responsibility for supervision. And it's a good way to really unpack this in further detail and link it back into Quality Area 6. So, we will talk a little bit about the standards and also the elements around Quality Area 6, and then we'll go into a little bit more detail around standard 6.2.

So generally speaking, we've got collaborative partnerships with families and communities. So, a good way to think about it is 6.1 is around families, and 6.2 is around communities. And so, when we think about the first element of Quality Area 6 families are supported from enrolment to be involved in the service and to contribute to service decisions. So, a good way to think about this is how do we gather information about the child to assist with supervision upon enrolment and orientation? If any of you were at the session last night, yesterday evening, and we talked about attunement and knowing the child. So, this is a great opportunity at enrolment to know, to get to know children and so to, to understand what their likes and their dislikes, what are the experience, experiences that they’d be engaged in.

And so, when we then go to the second element, the expertise, culture, values, and beliefs of families are respected, and they share in decision making about children's learning and wellbeing. So, when we do have a behaviour support plan that we need to put in place, this is a really good way to link in with families and say, what's happening at home? What works at home for behaviours? Can we do something similar at the service? What's happening at the school as well? So, the family, then we think we can think about that as being a wraparound and really drawing on the family's expertise here. So, we always consider families as the expert of their child, and we can draw on that information.

And then the third element for 6.1 is really about having important information available to families about the service and the relevant community resources that you might have in your area. So, perhaps we could share information about our supervision practices in newsletters. We share information with families about supervision risks that might have come up. So at a centre recently, we had a service that had some significant construction work right next door. And so, families really had to come off the sidewalk and walk on the road. There was a lollipop person there. There were lots of different risks I suppose that they had to navigate just to get into the service. So, ensure that we let families know in advance and that we can continue to get their feedback as well. The other thing is sharing our risk assessments with families. So, families can be really great at giving us ideas that we might not have thought about.

When we look at element 6.2.1, we are thinking a little bit more around our community more broadly. So, the first element is around transitions and continuity of your learning. I think in topic 2 on Tuesday evening, we talked a little bit about transitions. So, what procedures do we have in place for arrivals, departures of children from before and after school care? How do we create these procedures in consultation with the school? Do we take opportunities to review and critically reflect after an incident has happened at these transition times? And I think Belinda has mentioned it with extracurricular providers, how do we know who is responsible for the children at what stage? So, are they with the service as soon as the bell goes, do they then get signed out? Then is it really clear that that transition is now happening to that provider? And so, a really good idea is to have a written procedure for that, for full transparency, share that procedure with the families, with children, and with the school.

With standard 6.2, it's really about effective partnerships, and so this is basically a lot of what we're going to be talking about today. So, when we are thinking about stakeholders and partnerships with families, children, and the community, it's really around having effective partnerships to support children's inclusion. And that's why. It's really about making sure that we've got children that have access, they are included, and they can participate in the program. So, when we have a supervision risk, that then is undermined a little bit. So, when we are thinking about different stakeholders here, we can think about occupational therapists or inclusion support people. It is a physiotherapist and how do we manage that supervision? So, do we make sure that we've got their working with children check on site, and do we make sure that they're not left alone? As Belinda alluded to earlier, something to think about as well is to make sure we have written permission from families if somebody is going to be coming in and observing their children.

And then the last element here around 6.2.3 is that the service builds relationships and engages with community. So, thinking about incursions, thinking about what checks do we do, think about the fact that we might have members of the community come and do a session with children, a gardening session, a cooking session. And so, what does that mean for supervision? Do we know that they are not part of ratio, but we also thinking about supervision styles in that situation, we might stand back and supervise, and we might not be participating in that experience depending on what that incursion or that visit is about.

So that's generally Quality Area 6. But when we are thinking about thinking about this in more detail and thinking about partnerships honing in on standard 6.2, and the 3 elements around transition access and participation and community engagement, they have a big they have big impact on supervision. So generally, like I said, 6.2 is around connections between children, families, services and communities, and the importance of collaborative relationships. When services develop respectful and responsive connections with their immediate and wider community, they're likely to further enrich the educational program. And we are likely to further get more information from whether it be the families or whether it be communities, children's settings have opportunities to be involved with a right wide range of communities. This also helps older children to develop their capacity for independence, self direction, and get to know their local community. When we are thinking about the notion of belonging you can see the connection there.

We do have, as an example, I thought this example was quite good. We have a service in regional New South Wales, and it's a small country town. There is a yearly festival raising money for breast cancer that the service is heavily involved in. So, the service that we make, they make little rock pets, I think we call them. And we put them across the town and people collect them, and the service is heavily involved in that. And we sort of sponsor the event at that service. And it's something that we're part of with the school and with the local community members year on year. This has been a great opportunity as families then come and talk to us about what is happening at home, we can use that information to think about how we use this for supervision for children.

Likewise, when we go out on excursions, everyone knows it is the Gowrie service coming out, and we have a good sense of connection with the local community. So, when we apply this element to aspects of supervision in OSHC, we can look at how we engage families and stakeholders including children in discussions about expectations procedures and policies in place. This is all around helping children keep children safe. So, talk to families about what gates we need to open or closed. We have some services that are in busy roads, and if we are talking to families and families are really involved in the community and is involved with that discussion, then things like when there was a gate that was left wide open and families know the expectation is that those gates are being closed, so we can then start to have that shared responsibility a little bit for, for those things.

How do older children in the program, especially our seniors, be empowered to role model in this process? And how do we ensure that families are supported in understanding practices and procedures related to, to that arrival and departure in and out of the program. So, think about how our partnerships with the school influence best practice as well as supervision. Do we know when the school is having work done? It could be works that are outside of our approved spaces but do does the school let us know or can we ask the school to let us know so that we can then tailor our supervision practices if that might impact lines of sight, for example. And so, it's really important to consider these things when we are thinking about transitions and parts of those transitions both in and out of the service, but within the program. So, we talked a little bit about that in topic 2, but it, it can really be important to think about those collaborative partnerships within those transitions. So, I am going to hand over Belinda now and she is going to talk about how these interplay with ‘My Time, Our Place’. We are talking about ‘My Time, Our Place’ version 2. So, while it is a relatively new document we are starting to use this with our own practices as well. Thanks Belinda.

Belinda: Thanks Meray. So, I've got a quote here from, directly from ‘My Time, Our Place’. ‘My Time, Our Place’ version 2 sees partnerships as foundational, which the children should be involved in. So, consider partnerships you have in your service with families, the school services such as the Inclusion Agency, Be You, and your local community. If you're a single service provider, think about your larger networks or if you are part of an organisation, think about your internal and external networks. So how are you valuing and respecting each other's perspectives and using this knowledge and expertise to support supervision practices in your service? And if you aren't currently doing that, what would it look like in practice for you?

So, on the following slide, we're going to look at their principle of partnerships. So, in the updated ‘My Time, Our Place’ framework for school aged care, their principle of partnerships has been strengthened to include working with diverse families, working in culturally safe spaces, and strengthening connections with child and family professionals and school communities. In this principle, it is essential that educators recognise the importance of connecting with all stakeholders, such as families, community members, schoolteachers, and other professionals. Effective communication builds a foundation of respect for perspectives, expectations, and strengths of each other's knowledge. And that the rich diversity of families that are part of the OSHC community, that families are the first and most influential teachers of children and young people. And we talk a lot about considering families as the experts, and it's really important both in medical management and supervision.

Content of the Revised ‘My Time, Our Place’ has also been expanded to include cultural safety educators, actively encouraging children and young people and families in decision making, forming ethical partnerships, assisting children and young people and families with eSafety and use of media popular culture and digital technologies. So, I'm just going to reference here the Daniel Morcombe Foundation have a new eSafety campaign at the moment. So, I strongly encourage you to access their website as well. Really opportune as it's currently running trauma-informed practices and engaging with other professionals to enhance the wellbeing of children and young people affected by trauma.

So, I want you to take a minute now to consider how these changes to the ‘My Time, Our Place’ framework can strengthen and improve your supervision practices within your service. Think about how you might go about implementing these changes. So, looking at the screen here. So, we are happy to explore what this might look like for you at your service at the end of this session if you would like to. So again, we encourage you just to put it in the chat box, and if we have time, we can absolutely come back to this slide. It's important to be aware of the pedagogical foundations of partnerships in our communities when approaching best practices of supervision. So, for example, when we are approaching communication with families and focused on forming trusting and strong partnerships, this will mean that our communication method and style may be different from family to family.

And if we look at our next slide in the ‘My Time, Our Place’ updated framework, the principle of partnerships, references, ecological systems theory. This is a theory established by Urie Bronfenbrenner. This theory emphasises how one's immediate family connections and relationships influence children's learning and development. Our development is influenced by a series of interrelated systems. So, the Microsystem, or the first layer of influence in Bronfenbrenner’s theory emphasises the substantial influence of families on children's learning and development. However, our role as partners with families is also emphasised in this theory. In the other aspect that speaks about the Mesosystem that links between, I really encourage you to look up Urie Bronfenbrenner’s theory and the visuals that surround it as well. It is important to remember that the relationships that support the child interweave and can become dynamic and complex. By working in partnership, educators, families and other stakeholders work to support each other and positively exchange information that supports the child. For this reason, it is essential that we are mindful and aware of the different stakeholders involved in the child's life and who take a role in supporting the child at this stage of development. So, think about the expertise you have access to in the form of the family and the school. These connections will have expertise about both individual children and groups of children, which you can then use to further strengthen your practices, as well as include in the creation of your supervision risk assessment and supervision plans, both of which we discussed in earlier toolbox topics is now going to explore the different stakeholders in your service. Thank you, Meray.

Meray: Thanks, Belinda. Okay, so who are the key stakeholders in your OSHC service? We have just explored ‘My Time, Our Place’, and touched on Bronfenbrenner’s theory with regards to supervision and partnerships. But every OSHC service will be situated in its own unique context. Yours will be even different from a service located in the adjacent community. There may be similarities and parallels, but there will be differences as well. So, as we go through the next slide, it's a great exercise to really do a bit of a stakeholder analysis. So just on a sheet of paper on, in a, on a notebook, start to jot down who are some of the stakeholders and ask ourselves, do we connect with all of them? Do we need to connect with all of them? And what type of connection also look like? So, we are going to look at that in more detail.

So as a starting point, there are obviously our families, our parents, our children, and the school site, perhaps the OSHC is on a church site. So, there might be a parish as well. In most schools there will also be a P&C committee. We also remember the extracurricular providers, whether it be before school care and after school care. There may also be other schools. Soo, for some of our services, we do pickups from, I think, 8 schools for one-off service. And so all of those 8 schools become a stakeholder as well. We also might have connections with health professionals, family support agencies and extra after-school care. I we mentioned extracurricular providers, but also community Elders from the First Nations community that you're located in. So, who else is in your community that you might want to connect with?

And when we build those strong collaborative partnerships, they become really effective for our supervision. So, when we unpack our supervision plan, we can think about what that means and start to gather some important information. So, over the next few slides, we're going to unpack some effective communication that may aid in building partnerships further. And when we build those strong collaborative partnerships, they become effective for our supervision. But these are some of the ones that we feel have a really positive impact on building the positives.

So, for effective communication, it might be regular meetings with schools or community groups exploring the possibilities of shared benefit as well. So, is there a playgroup that can use the space while we are out of session, for example? And that can be a really nice partnership with children as they're moving from before, before formal schooling into formal schooling as well. How do we exchange information? So many of our schools have a standing part or many of our services have a standing part in the school newsletter, for example, and vice versa. So, in our newsletter, we will add important messages that the school would like us to, to send out and do we participate with the orientation procedures for new students. So, some schools, lots of different schools will have different times of the year. Sometimes it's March, sometimes it's September when the new Kindergarten children will start their orientations. How do we leverage off that moment when we can then also provide families with information about our OSHC service, connection building through community events and advocacy, but also this concept of respect. So that can be for teachers, that could be for the school grounds people, and having mutual respect can really go a long way in building that partnership.

I want to talk a little bit about an example we've got from our Erskineville OSHC service. So, our Erskineville OSHC service is obviously in Erskineville inner city urban area. The school for many years has had an Erko Berserko sort of fate. So, it's like school fate, but it's quite big and it involves a lot of different community members. And so, we started connecting. So, the Gowrie service there started becoming part of that Erko Berserko school fate. And obviously the P&C committee is very heavily involved with that too. So, through that, the P&C committee and the OSHC service started to build some really great partnerships. And later, when there was some grant available for the design of the outdoor space, the P&C committee was involved in designing the outdoor space. So, they actually consulted because of those formed connections already. The P&C reached out to the OSHC service and asked them to review the outdoor landscaping and outdoor design, and we were able to provide some feedback on that outdoor design that really helped with our supervision. So, it really helped educators and the service effectively supervise create better lines of sight, create better arrival and departure processes. So, it's about building those relationships because those moments would not have happened if we weren't part of those school fates and part of that Erko Berserko community.

So, while at this point, we're going to really unpack a lot of this relationship building between and partnerships with the school, the school's probably our biggest stakeholder. So effective communication, really good interpersonal communication is really important with school leaders listening and understanding the diverse perspectives and needs of each party. So, I am just going to cough, and I don't need everyone to hear that it's the best timing, isn't it? So, with regular meetings, do we plan and schedule regular meetings throughout the year? So perhaps think about them for the next 12 months. What do formal meetings look like? What needs to be negotiated? Belinda, am I able to ask you to take over? I'm just going to give myself

Belinda: No worries. So, for more formal meetings, really ensuring we plan ahead of time with a negotiated agenda and implement a method to record the discussion and actions. So for example, if you're going to meet with your school principal, come prepared with stories of your successes as well as any questions you might have, any support you might have, it's really important that we set ourselves up as professionals because they don't really get an insight into our program unless a lot of the times through these meetings. So, use them as a platform to celebrate your successes as well. More informal meetings so they can take place on a day-to-day basis but are of benefit in building positive interpersonal relationships. So, it's really important to be considerate of the times of the day that may not be convenient for informal meetings and use judgment in planning for times to catch up.

So, for example, you might need to speak to a parent about a child's behaviour, ambushing them when they first come into the service at the end of the long day can be really confronting and it might kind of put them on the back foot. So how could you have that conversation with them? I know a lot of our services will text a family and say, can you spare a few moments too, I just want to talk to you about something. And then have that conversation in private away from others, ensuring the service is within ratio without you there. So that you can step into the office to have that conversation and use it as an opportunity. Look at it as strengths based. So you might have a concern about a child's supervision. They have been absconding or they're leaving the supervision areas regularly. You can talk to the parent and say, look we really want to support this child to be successful within our OSHC program. Let us know, you are the expert here. What can we be doing to support him to be successful in this program? I understand he's a free spirit, he loves to wander. What activities can we implement to engage him so that he's more likely to stay within this supervised space? Because his safety is our top priority. It's a really different way to frame it with the family, and they're going to be much more forthcoming to work with you than, oh, so and so left the supervision again, it's out of bounds and if he keeps doing that, he can't come anymore. So, it's how we communicate with families as well as knowing when to communicate.

Meray: Thank you. Sorry everyone. Of course, we just had a coughing attack in the middle of a session, so we'll keep going. So, exploring opportunities for this shared benefit. This is a really great concept that I find really important because sometimes when we're coming out, we're reaching out to communities it can feel like a little bit like take, take, take from the different communities. Having a think about how we can utilise each other's resources to promote better outcomes for children. A partnership approach to dealing with emergent issues can have many benefits such as ensuring children accessing school grounds safely for the entire day. And it's especially important for supervision planning and ensuring the school is aware of our needs and mandatory requirements for supervision as well.

Connection building, so especially thinking about that orientation stage. So, if a school has their orientation in March, then, the year before school starts, what touch points do we have with those new families so that we can build those connections even before our families start? A really easy way is to add them to your newsletter mailing list. That's a really easy way to start to build that connection. Families get to know the service, get to know expectations around supervision, and then we can mutually explore those opportunities to develop relationships as well. A strong working network of personnel. So across the school. So, it could be the cleaners, the teachers, the grounds people, ancillary staff, and parents on the P&C committee can support children across the entire day. I would use those connections to gain information, test ideas and consider a variety of perspectives.

And respect, we talk a little bit about respect, but really developing the climate of respect through open communication and strong supportive relationships. Try to try to think about when an issue needs to be considered from all perspectives and agree on a mutually agreed solution for that. So even though sometimes parties might not always agree, there must be an open climate for that respectful communication because then it keeps the door open for other communication that might be the next time people are more open to then reach out as well. I'm just going to hand it over now to Belinda to talk a little bit about what other stakeholders to think about also.

Belinda: Thanks, Meray. So, we've unpacked some key principles of working with the school in their previous slides and provided some strategies to consider that support effective supervision. These principles can equally be applied to our partnerships with other stakeholders such as parents and families in the wider community. Your networks and support services communication is especially fundamental to how we ensure safety of the children in our care when forming partnerships with parents, families, and others. It's important to establish these on a foundation of trust and respect. So, we keep coming back to those principles from ‘My Time, Our Place’.

We have a quote here from Clare Warden, which we feel is important for our discussion today about partnerships with all stakeholders in OSHC. When we think about the community that we work within, this quote reminds us that respectful partnerships are crucial for collaboration and working effectively. While the underlying focus of this webinar is to unpack supervision and the role that partnerships play in this, it is also important to consider how essential respectful partnerships with all stakeholders, including children underpin effective supervision practices.

So where to go next? If you haven't already, then I encourage you to add any questions or feedback you might have into the chat box. Now again, if anyone is interested in unpacking the changes to ‘My Time, Our Place’ version 2 in relation to partnerships as detailed on an earlier slide, feel free to let us know here too, and we can go back to this slide if we have time. So, I think if you have any questions, please ask them if you have suggestions even on how you have created strong partnerships within your local community. Share them with your peers on this forum. It's a really great way to share your expertise with others that we talked about.

So, we're going to as discussed earlier, sorry, we have supporting documents for this toolbox topic, which will be housed on the Department of Education website alongside this recorded webinar. We'll also be sending out the links after all of our sessions are completed. So, you'll have documentation, the recorded webinar. These are great opportunities to work with your team to critically reflect, to unpack your own practices. It's a great session for a team meeting. And then like we always say, whatever you take from here, you can transfer across to your self-assessment tool, as hopefully exceeding themes in the end. And we also have some further resources to guide your deeper thinking in relation to supervision and partnerships.

So, on the next slide, yep, we encourage you to explore this content further with your teams and critically reflect the document as discussed. The ACECQA resources are so engaging. We strongly encourage you to reference ‘My Time, Our Place’ version 2 and The Guide to the National Quality Standards. I think it has some really great reflective questions there as well.

And finally, thank you everyone for your time today. So, we do appreciate you taking the time out of your day, and we value your feedback and encourage you to participate in the feedback survey that you'll receive in your email to further improve our professional learning. We also encourage you to share feedback and questions in the chat box. Now, if you haven't already done as it is, question time, let me see no questions as yet. Does anyone have any questions for us?

Meray: I think Belinda, while people might be thinking about questions or not, but while we are going through that, I just wanted to add that those critical reflection packs are really great evidence for exceeding theme 2. So while we are talking a lot about Quality Area 2 and supervision some of those critical reflection questions if we are critically reflecting and we make a change to our service based on that critical reflection, that would be something that we could, you would definitely be encouraged to put in your self assessment because you can really start to build on that evidence for exceeding theme 2.

Belinda: Absolutely. Thanks, Meray. Thank you, Marina, for the lovely feedback. <Laugh>

Meray: Marina joined us on every session, so thank you.

Belinda: And we do appreciate the feedback, whether it be positive or constructive because that's how we can further tailor our learning approach to your needs. So, and I think that's the reason we included the opportunity here. If you would like us to step back to ‘My Time, Our Place’ partnerships, someone suggested on our session last night having a like a round table discussion, which can be quite challenging when you get really big numbers, but we have kind of tried to implement that into this session as well.

Meray: Julie has asked a question about if we've not registered, if you have not registered for the sessions, can you still view the recordings? Yes. So, the way that the recordings will be shared is through the department website, publicly available. It will be a link that is publicly available. We will send out a reminder of where that is and where that location is to anyone who's registered for any of the sessions. But also, the Department of Education will send it out as part of their sector development program. So, you should get some information from Gowrie. You may possibly get some from the Department of Education website, but even if you've registered for one session, they'll be housed all of them, same link.

Belinda: And Kylie said that she hasn't received the email with the information and links yet. Thank you, Kylie, for the feedback. We're just waiting for the department to provide the URL. So, once we complete these webinars, we provide the recorded webinar. They already have the other documentation, the deep diving documentation, so they'll be able to provide us with the URL and we'll share all of that information. So, you will receive it within the next 2 weeks. Yes, I can see someone said the session was breaking up quite a bit. Did anyone else have that same experience? Okay, so looking technology can be

Meray: And my coughing. Sorry guys about that.

Belinda: It's okay. I have myself on mute, so I had a little cough too.

Meray: Thanks, everyone, please feel free to ask any questions, but I do appreciate that people might have to get back to their day. So, if you, if you don't have anything to add or don't have anything to ask you are more than welcome to finish up as well. So don't feel like you have to wait around. Thanks everyone.

Belinda: Thank you for joining us. Like we said, feel free to share any ideas you might have as well. I think this one, it's not so regulatory driven, <laugh> this session as we talk about partnerships. So, it focuses more on the National Quality Framework in regard to the standards and the exceeding themes. So, I know some people can be quite interested in it can be daunting, some of the changes which is why we have included ‘My Time, Our Place’ updated version where you can reference, just so you are starting to engage and interact with it as well.

Meray: Enjoy the rest of your day guys. Thanks so much.

Belinda: Absolutely. I think we can stop recording now and if you do have questions, feel.