BELINDA

So good morning and welcome to our ECE Connect session, What to expect from your next assessment and rating.

So, you know we've held quite a few sessions over the last 12 months on A&R. Primarily that's been around self-assessment and our national improvements to A&R. And today's session, we really wanna touch on these areas as a bit of an update, but more so a general overview on what to expect during your next assessment and rating. So we've designed this session with new service leaders and those who've not had an A&R for some time particularly in mind. So we'll do a deep dive into the processes, opportunities and a refresh and what you can expect, including Self-Assessment and the Quality Improvement Planning Portal, and progress on the improvements to A&R that we've now implemented.

So I'll just start by acknowledging I'm hosting today's webinar from the lands of Dharawal people. I'd like to also pay my respects to the Traditional Custodians and the various lands on which you all work today, and any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people joining us for today's webinar. I pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging and celebrate the diversity of Aboriginal peoples and the ongoing cultures and connections to the lands and waterways of New South Wales.

So this presentation will provide an overview of A&R, and as I mentioned, including a recap of improvements to the processes we've implemented. And Vanessa Beck from our Continuous Improvement Team will be joining us to share with you how you and your team can prepare for A&R. And we'll also hear from one of our authorised officers, Nicole, about how the officers approach the visit and what you can expect on the day. We'll take a look at A&R reports and what opportunities there are for you to provide feedback on these prior to a final report and rating being issued. Jess, who leads our First Tier Review Panels, will be also joining us, and Jess will outline review options available to services under the National Law and Regulations.

And as always, we'll outline some resources available to support you and your team connect with an ongoing improvement journey, and of course that includes my favourite of all, the Self-Assessment and Quality Improvement Planning Portal.

So just a quick overview on A&R. So the assessment of service quality is applied across 7 quality areas under the National Quality Standard, which you can see all of those on the left hand side. And this is done through the assessment and rating process, and an overall rating outcome is then determined. The Regulatory Authority is responsible for assessing and awarding ratings between Significant Improvement Required and Exceeding, which you can see there on the right hand side. And where a service receives a rating of Exceeding in all 7 quality areas, they can apply to ACECQA to be further assessed for an Excellent rating.

The definition of high quality of service is one that meets the National Quality of Standard. This is a high benchmark and is a comprehensive regulatory tool that's applied nationally. The assessment and rating process determines the quality rating against the National Quality of Standard by looking at your service strengths or key practices which are confirmed through our assessment methods. And Nicole's gonna talk to you a little bit further about that today.

The compliance with the National Law and Regulations and knowledge and use of the approved learning frameworks, all this is done through an assessment and rating visit, which is conducted by our authorised officers. Our authorised officers undergo national officer training and rigorous testing that's conducted by ACECQA, which is an independent national authority that assist governments in administering National Quality Framework for children's early education and care. This ensures the officers apply a nationally consistent approach to the quality rating system, which is designed to indicate the level of quality within an ECEC service. It also supports families to make informed decisions about their child's early education and care, and is used to improve quality service practice with the intent of improving outcomes for children.

So just to give you a quick indication of how we are tracking in New South Wales, you'll see there on the screen, we have a bit of a pie chart, and the good news is that out of the 6000 odd services that we regulate in New South Wales, 5,630 have a published quality rating. Those who have not yet been assessed are our newer services who are working to establish their service and practice. 90% of the services who've been assessed and rated have achieved a rating of meeting or above the National Quality of Standard, which is fantastic and a real celebration and reflection on the great work that's occurring across the sector to uplift quality practice and improve outcomes for children, which is the intention.

So as communicated over the last 12 months, there have been some national improvements to assessment and rating, which have been implemented in the phased approach in New South Wales, starting with early adopters. So the aim of those improvements are to promote best practice and quality in services every day, provide families with reliable and up to date information about service quality, ensure assessment and rating is efficient and effective for providers and services, and ensures ratings reflect typical daily practice. So the first of those improvements was the increasing use of partial assessment and rating. So instead of all 7 quality areas being assessed, where services previously had a full A&R, we'd reassess 2 or 4 national quality areas. So full A&R will remain for our new services that I mentioned, and we'll also be using some other circumstances taking a risk-based approach. And we expect the use of partial reassessments will enable us to reduce the time between reassessment visits and ensure that we're spending most of our time in the areas of greatest risk.

Through that partial reassessment process, services can nominate a quality area that they would like to have assessed, and the officer will select the remaining quality areas based on a number of factors, including the last assessment visit, service compliance history, and sector trends. And the second improvement was the introduction of the 5 day notice period for A&R.

So previously, services received an email to notify them that an A&R will be conducted within a 12 week visit window, and that has now changed to a 5 day notice period. So that's in place from the 1st of July for all services. And that'll ensure A&R is a true reflection of quality that children experience every day. I think while we are talking about the improvements to A&R, it's also really important to call out what's not changed.

So A&R is a key component of your service continuous improvement journey, and really important to note that it's the component of the overall process. And we know that some services are apprehensive about preparing for A&R, and these improvements support that notion that A&R is not a standalone event that happens to a service every 3 to 4 years, but more a part of that continuous improvement journey. A self-assessment approach to quality improvement remains important, and we'll talk more about that throughout today's session. C

onnection and engagement with A&R remains critical for educators of all levels to be actively involved, and there remains multiple opportunities to connect and engage with authorised officers assigned to your visit. As I mentioned, Nicole will be joining us today, one of our authorised officers, who will share with you the A&R visit approach, which remains the same, albeit perhaps there might be a fewer quality areas assessed if you're undergoing a partial assessment and rating.

But before we get to the visit stage, I'm gonna hand you over to Vanessa Beck, who is our Continuous Improvement Team Coordinator, and Vanessa's going to talk to you about preparing for A&R. Morning Vanessa, thank you.

VANESSA

Good morning, good morning everyone. There are a range of things that you can do to prepare your service and staff before assessment and rating has been announced to your service, to build confidence in and engage with your team. So we are just going to go through some of those with you this morning.

So how can you prepare? One of the best ways you can be prepared is to consider your quality improvement planning and documentation ahead of time. We know that self-assessment is a key step in identifying your service strengths and areas for improvement, and that it supports that continuous improvement journey that lifts your service quality and improves those outcomes for children and their families. New South Wales offers the opportunity for you, for services to use self-assessment as that method to drive your ongoing quality improvement processes, and also feeding into the assessment and rating process.

So, how can you prepare? Here's a couple of little ways that will really help you. Make your process manageable by starting now and completing it in small parts or sections. Your self-assessment or quality improvement planning documents are not designed to be updated all in one go just at the time of assessment and rating. They're designed to support that continuous review of practices and ongoing improvements across the year in a really clear and manageable way. It's easy to add to, you can choose to focus on different aspects of your practice easily to bring that consistent change.

While we know it's tempting to put off that task, if you're sitting down to do it in one go, putting it off to a later time. Spending time starting now will see your document take shape and processes strengthen before you get that call for assessment and rating, resulting in much less stress for you at the time of that phone call when it comes to updating and pulling that document together.

The self-assessment process we've utilised in New South Wales presents an opportunity for a really manageable system to support that quality uplift, as well as guide your assessment and rating process. Connecting early will ease the pressure at the time of assessment and rating, and will allow you to create that meaningful record that guides your practice and your quality improvement. So in line with that, we have created the Self-Assessment and Quality Improvement Planning Portal, which is a user-friendly web-based system where you can really easily document your quality improvement journey at a time that suits you. And we're gonna talk more about this in a moment.

So start by reflecting on, how are you meeting the National Law and Regulations and how are your key practices build on those? From this, you'll be adding to your improvement plan so it's current and realistic, and your staff are aware of what you are working on and aiming to achieve. Take time to review your practices as part of your everyday practice.

What are the key things that you and your team are doing that show how you're meeting the National Quality Standard? These are your key practices that you'll hear us talking about a lot when it comes to self-assessment. Make it part of your every day. Now it's important to note, we know that for a quality improvement process to be ongoing and cyclical, it needs to be regular. So when we make the point about it being an everyday process, we don't mean literally carving out time in your literal everyday process, but it's more about being that part of your regular and normal routine to consider what you are doing and why you're doing it. Where are there opportunities to make small improvements to your practiCe? These sometimes small improvements build on each other and support the notion, the best outcomes for children are at the centre of what you are doing every day. And what's most important? Bring your staff along for the ride. Ensure your staff are engaged, ready, and reflective.

Feedback we've received from services has really highlighted that when they have been able to involve this staff in the process of identifying those key practices and/or reviewing those, staff are more confident to speak about what they do and why they do it when it comes to the assessment and rating process. It is a task that's shared and carried by the team with shared responsibility also in maintaining those practices. So engaging in this process early will result in a high level of confidence and less stress for all of your team. A little hint, get your team to review your key practices before you submit them. They're engaging in these every day, and they're the expert when it comes to looking to see whether these things are occurring in practice.

So here are some helpful tips from our officers. As we mentioned, your self-assessment or QIP is not designed to be updated just at the time of assessment and rating. They're designed for continuous improvement. So think about how often you're engaging, and make this a living document that reflects what's happening right now at your service and identifies those areas for improvement.

Involve your team in self-assessment or quality improvement planning, and embedding those regular conversations about what quality practice looks like can help make your QIP or self-assessment a live working document that's used often. It can also help your educators become confident in their knowledge and their understanding around the National Quality Standard and those approved learning frameworks. Embed regular conversation on what quality looks like with your staff in a range of opportunities through your everyday practice. Use these conversations to update your self-assessment or your QIP document, or form goals for uplift of practices. Make the conversation so common that it's comfortable and all of your staff are involved. Talk to your staff about what to expect during the visit. You can refer to our fact sheets for further details on what to expect when an authorised officer visits, and we are gonna share these links in the chat with you today.

Engage with support. You can work with our Continuous Improvement Team at any time. We provide one-to-one support, so you will be allocated a person, and that person will support you directly at any time to support your writing in your self-assessment document. Now with all services receiving 5 day notice now of assessment and rating, you'll receive a phone call on the first day of that 5 day cycle from the authorised officer who will be coming to do your visit. They're gonna introduce themselves, gather information about your service, talk to you about the visit, and ask you whether you're using the Self-Assessment and Quality Improvement Planning Portal to submit your information, because that will determine the links that are sent to you through your email.

You may like to consider which quality area you may like to nominate if you were scheduled for a partial assessment rating before this phone call takes place so that you're not thinking on the spot and you feel ready. This could be an area where you've initiated new practice since your last assessment and rating visit, and you'd like to have it considered for an uplift in quality, or perhaps it's an area you would like to showcase. When you're notified of your assessment and rating visit on that phone call, you'll have 2 days to submit your nominated quality area. So having an idea of the area you'd like to nominate ahead of time if you're having a partial, might make this process a bit easier for you at the time.

Another thing you can potentially consider ahead of time is are there questions that I would like to ask the officer before assessment and rating, so that you're prepared when that call comes, and not trying to think on your feet.

And finally, register and use the new Self-Assessment and Quality Improvement Planning Portal. The Self-Assessment Portal provides you access to your self-assessment at any time. So it's a great tool for supporting you to be ready for assessment and rating.

As Belinda mentioned earlier, we have over 6,000 services, and we know that over 3,300 services are already using the portal, which is exciting, and they've shared really positive feedback. And as we've said, our Continuous Improvement Team can help get you started in that Self-Assessment Portal. And we run regular information webinars, which we're going to share with you today as well.

So in summary, assessment and rating is an opportunity to open conversations about the quality of your programs and practices and gain valuable feedback. There are things you can be doing as part of your everyday practice, and regular contact with your teams promote good quality every day and also ensure your staff feel confident about your next assessment and rating visit.

Moving to a 5 day notice period is designed to help ensure that assessment and rating reflects your services' everyday practice, and early preparation will assist you in being ready. A big part of ensuring quality practice is embedded is making sure your quality improvement plan or self-assessment is a live working document that is used often. Support your educators to build on and become confident in their knowledge of the National Quality Standards, the relevant approved learning frameworks, and your self-assessment or quality improvement plan.

Hold regular meetings, reflective sessions, and if relevant, maybe professional development workshops to discuss these topics. Ongoing self-assessment against the National Quality Standard and related regulatory requirements drives that continuous improvement and is essential to providing quality outcomes for children. As part of your self-assessment, identify what an authorised officer may observe, discuss or sight about the quality of your service practices and programs.

We're gonna talk about that a little bit later in the session. So there are a number of options to support your services. We've talked about Continuous Improvement Team. CELA also offer professional development sessions and resources to help with assessment and rating. ACECQA have a number of resources on their website, and we also include tips in our e-news on the website in the emails that we send you. You can find articles with tips on meeting specific quality areas and fact sheets about what kind of documentation you should have ready during assessment and rating.

It's also important to remember that a big part of assessment and rating is observations during the visit. The assessing officer will observe practice, they'll talk to your staff, and when you haven't got documentation ready or available, there is opportunity to provide that following the visit. Register for our new Self-Assessment Portal. We've mentioned it already. Obviously I'm a little biased and passionate about it. It is such a great resource to support your practice and save you time. The portal is an online user-friendly system which provides you access to your self-assessment whenever is convenient to you. So it's a great tool for holding your quality improvement processes and supports you to be ready for assessment and rating at any time.

When you then receive the phone call from the authorised officer letting you know that your assessment and rating visit is approaching, you can really easily submit your self-assessment information through the Self-Assessment Portal by simply checking that information and clicking the Submit button. Really makes that process simple, and a copy of your service context and self-assessment forms will be emailed to you by the system, both to you and to us. If you start using that Self-Assessment Portal now, you've got the time to work through each area and meaningfully engage in the self-assessment process. And you're gonna reduce the stress at the time of the phone call that you and your team will be more confident in preparation for the process.

And lastly, with the increasing use of partial A&R, it's a really good idea to start thinking about what quality area you might like to put forward. Services will have 2 days from the time of their notification phone call to the submission deadline to submit their self-assessment or the quality improvement plan, and their nominated quality area. So have a think ahead. Is there an area you're particularly proud of, or that you feel, as I said before, that your practices have potentially changed since your last assessment and rating visit, and there may be that uplift in quality. Then you feel ready when this call happens and confident in your response.

So while I've talked a little already about the Self-Assessment Quality Improvement Planning Portal, just wanna share a little bit more information with you and the opportunity to engage.

So Self-Assessment and Quality Improvement Planning Portal was released at the beginning of this year and would provide you with a one-stop shop for you to enter your key self-assessment information, make any changes and update your key practices, monitoring your process against the law and regulations, and creating and updating that quality improvement planning. Some of the features that we've heard through feedback that are appreciated by services include of course the ability to have that information in one place, and that's accessible all the time. It's clear and simple to use processes within the portal to use the functions.

The ease to which you can update that information and create those summary documents that you can share with your stakeholders, your families, your staff. The ease of creating direct access for any people that you would like to be involved in using that portal, and access to previous assessment and rating documents and service certificates in the document session. And as I've said, probably one of the biggest things is at that time of assessment and rating, submitting your information is as simple as checking it over and clicking that button.

I could add so many more but it's a good time to share with you that we run regular online Self-Assessment Portal webinars through Humanitix that run for around an hour and explain everything, from signing in and creating your account, to using the portal and submitting your information at the time of assessment and rating.

So if you haven't had the opportunity to attend one of those sessions, please take a moment to take out your phone, scan the QR code on your screen. This will take you to the Humanitix website where you can select a session and book in. Now if when you are in there, the dates don't suit you, please keep checking because we do add new dates regularly. And we're also going to add the link to that website into the chat. So if you don't have the opportunity to do that now before we move on, you can always come back and save that link for later.

Now, there are a number of often perceptions about assessment and rating process that float around. So today we would like to check in on some of the most common questions that we are asked.

These are very simple, true and false answers so you can play along. Our first question, the first statement is that partial assessment and rating will be for every service, and this is false. While there is absolutely a greater use of partial assessment and rating and will always be used where appropriate, there are times where a full assessment and rating will be conducted, and that includes, for example, a new service who haven't been assessed under the National Quality Framework, or following the service transfer to a new provider.

Determination of a full or partial assessment takes a risk-based approach, and where there has been the last assessment and rating at the discretion of the Regulatory Authority.

Our next myth busting statement is that the Regulatory Authority staff can access our self-assessment in the portal at any time. This is false. All information entered into your Self-Assessment Portal is only accessible by the service, and services will be able to submit their information when notified of assessment and rating. But at no time do we come in and are we able to see that information. That is just protected for you.

The third statement, our service can nominate a quality area for partial reassessment visit. The answer to this one is true. Partial reassessments will typically assess and rate 2 or 4 quality areas, and those quality areas will be determined by a range of things such as your current rating, the recent history of compliance or time since the last assessment, and other data including sector trends. In addition, as I said, you will be able to nominate one of those quality areas to be assessed.

All right, number 4. It's harder to achieve an Exceeding rating where a partial assessment rating is conducted. This is false. An authorised officer can reassess 2 or 4 quality areas as we've said, with a Meeting and or an Exceeding rating. And a service can maintain that Exceeding rating in other quality areas that are not assessed. So the decision of which quality areas and the number of areas assessed remains with the Regulatory Authority, but services are able to select one quality area of their choice for assessment.

And the last statement is that notice periods for all assessment and rating visits will now be 5 business days. This is true except for a very small number of Aboriginal owned and operated services where there has been community engagement. As of the 1st of July this year just passed, all services scheduled for assessment and rating will now receive 5 days notice before their assessment and rating visit.

So we're now gonna be joined by Nicole Mackenzie who is an authorised officer, and she's gonna share with you what you can expect during your assessment and rating visit. Thanks, Nicole.

NICOLE

Thanks, Vanessa. Hello everyone, I'm Nicole Mackenzie and I'm a Senior Field Officer. I work in the southern metro area, and I'm here today to talk to you about how the cogs turn when we are planning and conducting your assessment and rating visit, and hopefully provide you with some clarity around the process.

So your visit essentially begins with your pre-visit phone call. This is where the officer will call to speak with the primary contact or the nominated supervisor to notify you of the visit and to confirm the key contact such as your approved provider, your nominated supervisor, educational leader, or any other key people we will need to speak with during the assessment and rating visit process. While most of the pre-visit phone call might seem like an administrative process, I highly encourage you to use the call to your advantage. This is your first opportunity to talk with the officer about your service and to give some insight into your service context. It's also a valuable opportunity to engage with the officer around planning and shaping your visit.

You may like to mention a specific part of your day or practice that you would really like to share with the officer. For example, you might have a regular outing or a community visit plan for the day of the visit and you can inform the officer of this so that we can accommodate this as part of the visit plan. The pre-visit phone call is a great starting point for these conversations.

You might also like to talk about key aspects of the day that might not be listed as part of the context form that you would like to discuss with the officer before the visit. These might include routines or other important aspects of your day.

Often I will talk with you about any key changes to your service such as new employees that might feel really nervous about the visit, and I can bear this in mind and consider this in my approach during the visit. We'll also confirm with you if your visit will be a full or a partial assessment and rating. If your service has been scheduled for a partial assessment and rating, you'll be able to nominate one quality area for assessment, as Vanessa mentioned, and we'll contact you again the day before the visit to confirm which quality areas will be assessed.

So what can you do to feel more confident and prepared for the day? Spend some time reviewing your self-assessment information or QIP for submission, and share this with your educators or other key contacts in preparation for the visit. We use your self-assessment, we use your self-assessment information or your QIP to get to know your service even before the visit. And we use this as a basis to plan for your discussions on the day.

It's important for your educators and staff members to be aware of what has been submitted to the Regulatory Authority, that way the officer, the information the officer's been provided about your service, and we can all be on the same page. Know what the officer will be looking for during the visit. Perhaps you might like to share a copy of your self-assessment or your QIP with your team for easy reference. You may like to talk with your educators and staff about the upcoming visit, talk through the plan for the day so that staff know what to expect.

We've recently published a couple of great information sheets aimed at educators specifically on what to expect during assessment and rating. These are available on our website, and we'll send a copy to you following today's session.

So what will I do? Once submitted, I'll review your service context and self-assessment information or your QIP. I'll review that in conjunction with your service philosophy and your improvement goals to become familiar with your service in your current context. As part of this process, I may also take a look at your service website, if you have one, or a Facebook page, and may peruse of the policies or key practices highlighted on this page to support my visit plan.

We also conduct what's called a desktop audit, which looks at the previous service visits, notifications and your service compliance history to better understand the current context of the service. For example, I can see if your nominated supervisor has only been employed at the service for a matter of weeks or months. And this will support my approach with evidence collection during the visit.

So talking about evidence collection, if you're familiar with the guide to the National Quality Framework, you'll know that we use these evidence collection methods, we use 3 evidence collection methods. We use observe, sight, and discuss. All officers use a balance of these methods to bring the evidence together to confirm your key practices.

We use a variety of collection methods, as some evidence is best collected through multiple avenues. A good example is where we might sight your program and then an educator explains how the cycle of planning works or why a specific experience or learning activity was planned. An officer might sight service policies or procedures and confirm with educators how these are applied in their practice. When sharing examples of practice or evidence with the officer, consider if the practice is consistently occurring at the service or if it is a one-off.

An example of family engagement of a picnic held at the service in 2021 might not be as strong as the discussion about the daily interactions and engagement educators have with families in relation to Quality Area 6. Some evidence is best collected through observation, such as interactions with children and families, or discussions might be the best way to clarify how educators have reflected on a routine or a transition.

It's the balance of these 3 collection methods that allows the officer to capture a holistic picture of your service and your practice. I'd also really like to assure you that if we ask you a question and you're not sure how to answer, it's okay to ask the officer to rephrase if you didn't understand or take some time to gather your thoughts. We appreciate when you ask us questions or to seek clarification, as it's a really great way to engage and work together through the assessment process.

Some practical aspects of the visit might include a partial versus a full assessment and rating. The world of partial A&Rs is quite new for many services. We understand this as AOs, and work with you during your visit. The most part, you'll see minimal variation between a full or a partial assessment and rating visit. The key distinction with a partial is a focus on 2 or 4 quality areas, and possibly the length of the visit may be slightly shorter. But this will vary from service to service.

While during a full assessment and rating visit, the collection of evidence might be a little more fluid as we move in and out of quality areas, as we discuss, sight, and observe. The officer might be a little more focused in their questioning to allow you the opportunity to fully showcase the key practice of the selected quality areas. We love hearing about quality practice across all the quality areas.

During a partial assessment and rating, we might ask more directed questions that allows us to focus our discussion on the specific quality areas that are being assessed. The self-assessment and the QIP forms the basis of your visit, are discussion points and helps to guide the officer on where we might need to be at certain times of the day based on key practices included, and supports us to balance that collection of evidence.

As officers, we respect that we are entering your service and very, very mindful of having minimal impact on your daily routines. As such, we take a flexible approach to the visit and are happy to be led by you. We acknowledge that the children, families and routines come first. We can return to conversations with educators at any time if educators are required to be elsewhere or to attend to the needs of children or families and can sight records at times that are most convenient for you in your service.

This is your assessment and rating visit, so take the lead. We really encourage you. Being able to share your key practice and improvements is the primary focus of an assessment and rating visit. As officers, we are not living the day-to-day practice of your service and we want to be led by you. Guide us to the specific times of the day that you would like us to be part of, and empower your educators to approach us and say, 'hey, can I show you this record of a project we've been working on?' Point us towards the aspects of your service that are most important to you. This might be a policy, program, routines, group time, transition, or some team meeting minutes you'd like to share with us. When you provide direction, it allows us to focus on those key practices that really shape educator practice and be best placed to capture that holistic perspective of your service.

This is your assessment and rating. The visit is all about your service and we want to provide you with the best opportunity to showcase your service and your quality practice.

I'm gonna hand back to Vanessa now who's joining us and we'll share with you what you can expect after the assessment and rating visit.

VANESSA

Thank you. So after the busyness of your assessment and rating visit and the time that you've spent focusing and showcasing your practices, it's reasonable to wonder what happens next. This next section, we're gonna talk through what happens after your assessment and rating visit, what are the key things you need to know, and opportunities that are in place for you to continue to be involved in your process. Now assessment and rating is designed to be a cooperative process with opportunities for providers and services to provide their input. This includes submitting feedback on your draft Assessment and Rating Report delivered by the ECEC Regulatory Authority.

Now following your assessment and rating visit, there are a number of key processes that take place before your report is completed and service rating awarded to your service.

Firstly, we have that post-visit survey. This will arrive the day after your visit in an email containing a link to the survey for you to complete. It includes questions about the visit process, and survey responses are shared with our leadership team for reflection and improvements on our processes. It is really worth noting here that the surveys are not shared with officers during this time. If there are reasons for your survey response to be further pursued, this will take place after your final report has been sent to the service.

Our recent data is compelling and tells us that services are mostly satisfied with their A&R visits. Now the draft report completion is the next stage, and during this part of the process, the authorised officer will revisit and consider all of the evidence that they've observed and collected at the time of the visit, including your self-assessment or quality improvement planning notes that they will have confirmed during the visit. From this evidence that they have also collected, they'll identify whether each element is met and determine the rating for that standard. Once the officer has worked through each quality area, the combination of these ratings will result in an overall rating being determined for your service. This draft report is then shared with an independent officer for review and feedback, which is also then considered and incorporated into the report.

And finally the report is reviewed and approved by that person's, that authorised officer's hub coordinator, their manager, and any relevant changes from their input are also entered into that draft report, which at that point is sent to your service. So when you receive that draft report, it will come in an email as 2 separate PDF documents, the Assessment Evidence Summary and the Rating Outcome Summary.

Now while we know it's very tempting just to jump to the Rating Outcome Summary to see what your final rating is, it's really important that you consider these 2 documents together, because together they tell you a story. Keep in mind, sorry, the Evidence Summary Report clearly displays the evidence that was observed, sighted or discussed by the officer while at your visit, as we've talked about earlier. Keep in mind it isn't possible for the officer to write every single thing down that they see or that they talk to you about while at the actual service. It's not possible.

So the evidence that they have collected highlights the typical or consistent practice that's happening at your service that led to the decisions that have been made. You can also see in this report whether you've met the law and regulations relevant to that area. And all of that together will form why your rating decision has been made.

Now if you open the Rating Outcome Summary document alongside, you will see that the rating has been given to the standard and there are some additional features in here to help you understand why that decision was made. So the analysis notes is a summary of what led the officer to their decision and can be a helpful place to start to see why those decisions were made.

Also, at the end of each quality area in the Rating Report, there are some suggested quality improvement planning notes which are suggestions made by the officer for consideration and might help you move forward with your practice and quality uplift. These can be a useful way to consider goals and your ongoing plans through your quality improvement document.

Following, there are also suggestions of resources which are a great place to start, easily accessible to help you with that process. So having spoken about those processes, this is what your reports will look like when they arrive both at draft and final stages.

On the left you can see the Evidence Summary Report, which contains all of that evidence collected and confirmed during your visit, including the law and regulations. The Rating Outcome Summary on the right hand side contains the ratings given to each area, the analysis notes, quality improvement planning notes and resources that I was just talking with you about. So it's really important that you read both reports together. Open the same quality area in both of the reports, have them side by side. First read through your self-assessment or QIP notes, and any information added by the authorised officer at the top section of that page. Consider the regulations in the section under that, and finally the evidence for the quality area sitting at the base of the page on the Evidence Summary Report, because together, these 3 sections will form the full picture of the practices observed, sighted and discussed. Then have a look at the Outcome Summary Report.

For the same quality area, read the analysis notes for that standard for an explanation of why that rating decision was made for that standard. And at the end of the quality area and that Rating Outcome Summary, as we've said, you can see those 2 additional boxes with the suggested planning notes and resources. These will often be related to the evidence collected or come as a result of observations made by the officer while they're at your service, and they're a great place to start to consider actions or areas that you may want to review moving forward following your visits.

So once you have read through all the information for that quality area, you can move through the other areas in exactly the same way, creating that full picture that led to the decisions that have been made for your service during the rating. Now, following getting that draft report, you'll have 10 days, 10 business days for the opportunity to provide feedback to your draft report.

You can give feedback on any factual inaccuracies you feel are in the report, and evidence to support feedback. Sorry, and providing that evidence to support your feedback. There is no need to include evidence that was already documented within your report. This is about that new evidence that may not have been able to be reviewed at the time. The authorised officer will consider all of the evidence you provide through your service response to draft feedback to determine if it was reviewed at the visit or if it's additional and may contribute to a change of rating. They will determine if a change of rating is applicable and make a final recommendation to their manager, the hub coordinator, to review.And following this, your final report is issued.

So when you're thinking about the feedback that you're gonna provide, it needs to be evidence-based and submitted through eSAM, which the link for that will be provided to you on that email with your draft report.

Importantly, additional evidence should include information about the practice that was occurring at the service during the assessment and rating visit, but may not have been able to be provided for a range of reasons or observed or sighted.

Please note this feedback is about the draft report evidence and the draft rating itself. If you have feedback on assessment rating process or on the authorised officer, you can share this separately, either through that post survey email that we talked about earlier, or through an email sent through to us.

Now if there was compliance identified during your visit, then as part of the assessment and rating, you may send evidence if the officer asks of how you've addressed these breaches as part of your feedback to the draft report, unless instructed by your officer to do otherwise.

Non-compliance that is not appropriately addressed will result in a compliance action, and this will identify what was observed and the law and regulations that have been breached. You are required to respond to this action within the time given in the letter, providing evidence of how you've rectified that practice. This is really important and it's a key part of the assessment and rating visit.

Okay, the final part is your final report. And following consideration of service feedback, like I said, the authorised officer makes that final recommendation to their manager, and the manager reviews that in line with your feedback and will approve that recommendation and send the final report to the service.

Once you receive that final report, 14 days following its issue, ACECQA is going to publish the rating of your service on their website. So that 14 days becomes the window that you are able to apply for a First Tier Review within that time. Jess is gonna talk to you a bit more about that today, but you will have that 14 days after that is issued if you then would like to pursue a First Tier Review.

So I'm gonna hand over to Jess who's gonna come in, Jess Dias who manages our First Tier space and she's gonna have a chat with you about First Tier Review. Thanks, Jess.

JESS

Thanks, Vanessa. Good morning everyone. As Vanessa said, my name is Jess and I'm going to go through the options that services have following the release of their final report.

So approved providers can request a review of their service's final rating against the National Quality Standard, and this is referred to as a First Tier Review in the Guide to the NQF, which is conducted by the Regulatory Authority. So Division 3 of the National Law refers to First Tier Review as a Review of Ratings by the Regulatory Authority.

So as I mentioned, this gives service providers to request a review of the service's rating based on the available evidence. So on the slide that you can see, are the grounds in which a First Tier Review may be relevant. So if you receive your report and you feel there is something missing or you have additional evidence that was not considered during the visit that would contribute to a higher rating, this would be an appropriate pathway for you to take.

So to ensure a consistent and efficient and transparent process, the review is conducted by a review panel of 2 authorised officers that were not involved in the assessment and rating, together with a hub coordinator or state operations manager as the final decision maker. So they will meet, we'll convene as a panel and go through the evidence, available evidence to determine your rating.

So as Vanessa mentioned, First Tier Review applications must be submitted within 14 days of receiving your assessment and rating report. This needs to be done via the NQAITS Portal by completing an SA11 form. So similar to providing feedback to the draft report, it's important that any additional evidence or any additional information, I should say, is evidence-based.

So there is no need to resubmit any evidence that's already reflected in your assessment and rating report, and or feedback to the draft report because the First Tier Review panel will have access to this and will review that anyway. So the First Tier Review panel can take into consideration new information. However, this information must relate to practice that was already in place during the visit. So this does not include anything that was changed or implemented after or as a result of a visit. Now it's a common misconception, so it's important to note that First Tier Review is not a reassessment. If changes have been made at the service since the rating's assessment that might improve the services quality, and therefore rating levels, the provider should not apply for a First Tier Review.

Instead, you should consider whether to apply for a reassessment and re-rating under Section 139 of the National Law. So this includes where breaches may have been identified and the service has since made changes to address these breaches. As you can see on the right hand side there, a list of what the First Tier Review panel will look at during their review. And if after reflection on all this documentation, if you feel that there is still more evidence to provide, you can include that as part of your application at First Tier.

So to ensure your application is effective, there are a few key things to keep in mind. So firstly, use the Guide to the NQF document to guide your thinking as you reflect on what evidence to share. The panel use this document to assist in measuring the quality practices considered when confirming or amending a rating.

Secondly, set out your intentions in a clear format for each element or theme. You can consider a short summary that includes your claims of why you think you meet the element or theme. And to support these claims, submit an annexure to show factual evidence which demonstrates what the claims look like in practice.

For example, if your claims discuss consultation with families when developing the service menu or policies and procedures, supporting annexures should show actual contributions made from families such as, but not limited to meeting minutes or emails and evidence of how these have influenced the practice. Also be mindful of the currency of supporting information and documents provided to ensure that the evidence is reflective of current practices.

Now the panel are mindful that practices evolve over time, sometimes years, but your evidence should be able to demonstrate how this is relating back to and shaping current practice. There is also no specified format in which to lay out your claims and evidence, however, clearly labelled attachments that align to the element or theme for review is a good way to share that information. And it's generally preferred that one attachment per element or theme under review with all relevant information and evidence aligned to that theme is submitted as opposed to multiple individual attachments.

Now on the next 2 slides, you'll see examples of what to do and what not to do when you are addressing an element or an exceeding theme. So firstly you want to identify within your report, the element or theme where you wish to have the rating reviewed and considered. So you'll find this in your final Rating Summary Report that Vanessa mentioned earlier. So make sure that the theme and element you want reviewed is clear in your application.

Secondly, you want to reflect on the content from the report that you want to have reviewed. You want to ensure that you include factual and succinct reasons on how your service practice aligned to the element or theme at the time of the visit. And as I mentioned before, attach clearly labeled evidence aligned to that element or theme that demonstrates the practice.

So again, just to I guess summarise what to do and not to do, clear descriptions of practice. So not what you do, but how you do it. And supporting evidence that shows the practice, sorry, what to do. And again, preferably one attachment per element or theme. So consider combining the evidence into the one attachment just to ensure clarity.

Also keep in mind it's not about quantity, it's about quality. We want to be able to see how your practices align to the indicators in the guide when we are reviewing the ratings for your service. So you want to really avoid broad and general statements.

So your statements that, you know, your we believe, we aim, all of those sort of broad statements, practices are embedded, that doesn't actually describe your practice. We wanna see evidence of how you do those things, how it's evident in your day to day. So ensure any images and documents provided have context as well. We often get just images of children playing in, you know, different settings with no context as to what those relate to. So make sure anything like that has context so we know what you are aiming to highlight to us. And also as previously discussed, don't include practices that was included or implemented after the visit. So that's essentially your First Tier Review.

So after the review panel meet, you will receive your decision notice, which will outline the outcome of your review. And if following that you are still not satisfied with the rating that has been awarded, you can apply for a Second Tier Review. So if you are, as I said, if you're still not happy with your rating, then you can apply for a Second Tier Review to ACECQA. And this is referred to as a Review of Ratings by a Ratings Review Panel in Division 4 of the National Law. So applications to ACECQA must be received within 14 days from receiving your First Tier Review decision notice via email or post. And information about that can be found on the ACECQA website.

So just like in your feedback and First Tier Review submission, ensure anything provided is evidence-based. Again, there is no need to resubmit any evidence that has already been included in any of your submissions, because the Second Tier Review panel will have access to all of that as well. And again, similar to your First Tier Review application, Second Tier Review is not a reassessment, it is just a review of the available evidence related to that current assessment and rating. So what the Second Tier Review panel have a look at when they're conducting their review of ratings? They look at all the same information that was reviewed by the First Tier Review panel with the additional outcome and decision notice of the First Tier Review. And they also request additional information from the Regulatory Authority such as a compliance history report. You will also have the opportunity to provide additional evidence at that Second Tier Review stage.

However, again, it must relate to practice that was in place at the time of the visit. So I'll now pass you back to Belinda to go through a few more myth busters about the assessment and rating process.

BELINDA

Thank you so much, Jess. That's fantastic. That's really, really helpful information that you have all shared. As mentioned, I'm just going to talk about a couple of available supports that you might like to access.

So if you might not have already seen, you have a new ECEC Resource Library, which features a range of resources for service providers and educators, and they can be easily filtered by a topic or quality area and resource type. The Guide to the National Quality Framework, we've mentioned a few times. If you haven't already seen, ACECQA have updated the online guide with a new look webpage, which is really easy to navigate as well.

Vanessa's mentioned the Continuous Improvement Team this morning as well. If you haven't already connected with the team, please reach out and do so. I know my team are just gonna pop some resources and links in the chat, so I'll encourage you to access these here. And while we do that in the background,

I'm just gonna move on to our Menti because I'm really keen to get your ideas on further supports that you might find helpful. So just coming up on your screen there, you'll see a QR code, and if you are able to pop your phone out or go online and use that Menti code there and just share with us what other supports you think would be really useful. Super keen to hear from you on that.

As mentioned throughout today's session, there have been a number of new resources that we have shared. Please access those in the chat that's been provided. But if you have any other suggestions, thank you for jumping into our Menti, and taking a quick look and providing your suggestions. I'll just leave that up there for a moment. I might just move on to the next slide. Hopefully you've already got that. If someone from my team wouldn't mind to pop the Menti code into the chat for people who haven't been able to grab that access code.

I'm just gonna move on to our key contact details. So these are the contacts for the Continuous Improvement Team, which I mentioned. Please, well, reach out at any time, as Vanessa mentioned earlier. And there's also details on there around technical support. If you need any technical support with the Self-Assessment Portal or if you've got any additional questions around that, you can call through our Information and Enquiries line and they'll be able to support you. I was hoping to have some time at the end for Q&As.

It looks like we've actually been able to answer quite a few of those questions throughout today's session through that Q&A function, which is fantastic, and through the content in which we've shared. Just a couple I really wanna come back to that have not yet been answered.

Christine, you asked about, you've got a smaller preschool operating a few days a week, and so I just wanted to respond to that to say yes, absolutely. Operational hours and days of services are taken into consideration in our planning, and so that phone call is a really great time to share what that looks like, as is keeping NQAITS Information Portal up to date with your current operating hours and days just to help with that planning process.

There was a really great question that was popped up there around quality ratings and a lift in the high quality benchmark under the National Quality Standard. And I think this is a really great opportunity to share information with families about the quality rating system, and ideally engage them in that process. We do have some of information and resources actually available on our website that might be helpful. So again, I think someone from my team will be popping a link into our website there, and this is really something that is on our radar, and as always, welcome feedback and suggestions on how we can improve on our role as a regulator. So I hope that's helpful, but as always, feel free to reach out to the team if there's something we can assist with further.

And Melody asked about assessing services if they were last assessed in 2018 or '19. Again, Melody, that's one of those considerations I mentioned that will be taken into account when determining a full or partial A&R. And the last visit date is one of those considerations. But rest assured, when your officer gets in touch with you, they will absolutely be very clear with you about whether you've been scheduled for a partial or a full A&R. So mindful of time, I'm just going to move along to our final slide, which is an opportunity for you to provide us with feedback on today's session and any other feedback that you'd like to share with us.

So we have a QR code that's available up on the screen for you. I just wanna thank everyone for their time in joining us in today's session, and I really hope that you are walking away feeling confident about what you can expect at your next assessment and rating visit and that you feel well equipped with some of the resources and access to our team. Should you have any further questions, please reach out to us as well. So I'll just leave that up there for people to take a moment. Very much value your feedback. And we are right on time, so that's fantastic.

Great, thanks for joining everyone, and have a fantastic day.

LAUREN ANDERSON

Thanks for joining our webinar on the Health and Development Participation Grant this afternoon. My name is Lauren Anderson and I'm the director for the half of this team the Department of Education side of things for the Health and Development Check program.

I would of course like to start the webinar by acknowledging the various lands that we're all joining from today. I'm here on the lands of the Dharug people out at Parramatta of the Eora Nation, and I'd like to pay my respect to Elders past and present. I'd also like to acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are joining us on the call today, and recognise the important contribution that this program can make to supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the early years. And also a shout out to those Aboriginal ECE services, many of which have been running health and development check programs like our own for many, many years.

In today's presentation, we'll start with an overview of the health and development checks in ECEC program, followed by an overview of the Health and Development Participation Grant. We've had lots of inquiries about how services can use their grant, so we're going to share with you all some great examples today. So let's start by looking at what health and development checks are. Health and development checks are very important. They help track how children are growing and developing by looking at how they play, learn, speak, act, and move.

A lot of people will be familiar with the blue book that all parents receive when a child is born in New South Wales, also known as My Personal Health Record. The blue book has regular scheduled checks that are designed to help families check a child's health and development against milestones for their age. Having health professionals regularly check your child's health and development in their early years will also help find what support they might need and when they need it. Regular health and development checks can be accessed by families through their local doctor or child and family health nurse, or their local Aboriginal medical service. We know many children in New South Wales are not getting their 4-year-old health and development check, and we also know that about 45% of children are developmentally at risk or vulnerable before they start school. And this increases for our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children across New South Wales. As a response to this, we've rolled out health and development checks in ECEC program, which is a partnership between New South Wales Health and the Department of Education.

So far, the HDC program has been working closely with ECE services, health practitioners, New South Wales families, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to bring 4-year-old health and development checks into ECEC services. The HDC and ECEC program began rolling out in September last year and it's now available across 14 local health districts in New South Wales, with the remaining district, Northern New South Wales preparing for implementation before the end of the year. Each district is at a slightly different stage of implementation and they have built their teams and models to best serve the needs of their communities. While each district is tailoring their implementation approach, there are some common elements that may be included in the check.

The local health district teams will contact services to let them know that they are available to offer the health and development check. They will work with services to find a time that is convenient for them to receive the check. You do not need to arrange your own health professionals to deliver the check. Your local health district will provide this as part of the program. Participation in this program is a requirement of receiving grant funding. If you have any concerns about booking a check or further questions, please feel free to contact the team on their email address on the screen, and we'll also put the email address in the chat.

As mentioned, the local health district team will contact services to schedule a time for the checks to take place. They will provide services with posters, information sheets, and the forms families need to complete to participate in the program. Health professionals from the district will liaise with services throughout the process, including talking to services about anything they want to highlight going into the checks. On the day of the check, health professionals from New South Wales Health from the local health districts will check children's health and development. This may include checking children's listening and talking skills, gross and fine motor skills, learning, thinking, and problem solving skills, how their bodies are growing, such as their height, weight, and teeth. They will complete the check and provide families with a report after the check with referrals being provided if required. Each district manages their referral pathways, so depending on where your service is located, this might look slightly different. Health professionals may also provide a service summary. This summary outlines the areas where children at your service may require additional support at a cohort level. A link to the service summary is being added to the chat now.

Before the check, teachers and educators will be asked to assist with setting a date for the checks, providing families with the information they need, collating completed forms and preparing children on the day. On the day, teachers and educators will need to ensure there is a suitable space, ensuring child-educator ratios are being met, follow regulations on working with children checks, and support the checks at all times. They can also assist with providing feedback to families. After the check, teachers and educators can encourage families to share information about their child's health and development to assist with supporting them in the service.

A checklist has been developed to assist services with preparation for the visit and what to do when the visit is completed. Links to these documents are being added to the chat now.

For children to participate in the program, families need to complete and return consent forms and pre-check questionnaires. Families do not need to have access to Medicare to have the check. Families do not need to attend the check if their child regularly attends on the day of the visit. Families can share the results of the check with teachers and educators at the service, if they wish.

On the screen, you can see a map of the local health districts, which will give you an idea of which district your ECEC service is in. If you are still unsure, you can visit the map's webpage, which allows you to search your location and find your local health district.

Follow the link or use the QR code provided and we'll add the link to the chat now. We want to share with you a video that South West Sydney LHD has put together of their health and development checks in ECEC services to help children to understand what will happen on the day of the checks.

Narrator

The Brighter Beginnings team will be coming to your preschool to see how big you are growing. This is what they look like. You will hop on this little box, and then you'll stand up straight to show how much you've grown. Then you will make some funny faces with them to show them all your teeth. They'll look at your teeth with a torch like this. They will see how big and strong your teeth are. Then they will say goodbye.

LAUREN ANDERSON

I'll now go on to the Health and Development Participation Grant. And just a reminder, I saw there was a hand up in the chat. Feel free to add any questions to the Q&A chat function in the link, and my team are on standby at the moment to answer questions.

So on the grant, as you know, as part of the HDC program, we've developed a one-off grant for services to help overcome some of the barriers to participating in and engaging with the Health and Development Checks program. This slide is a visual representation of the number of services who were successful in their grant applications. We have had 881 services successful in their grant applications, including 254 community preschools.

Successful services for the grant include not-for-profit community preschools and long day care services, for profit standalone long day care services, ACCOs and public preschools. The Health and Development Participation Grant provides $7,500 to eligible services to support the implementation of the program. The grant is available to be used across 3 categories and 1 or more of the 3 categories which are listed on this slide. Services do not need to wait to have their health and development check visit their service to start spending their grant funding.

So let's have a closer look at what the grant can be used to support.

So category 1, ECEC services may use funding in this category to provide relief for educators, teachers taking time off the floor to participate in activities related to the program. Eligible activities under this category include undertaking administrative duties, such as collating consent forms and liaising with parents and New South Wales Health teams, assisting families completing pre-assessment questionnaires, supporting children during the check, engaging in professional learning to build capacity to support children's learning and development needs.

For category 2, under this category, funding may be used to repurpose or refurbish an existing space to establish a suitable space for conducting health and development checks. Any refurbishment or repurposing must enable participation in the program, and services should consider how this space may be used following the visit to support children's health and development. Services may also use funding to purchase functional or educational resources to support children's learning and development needs, following the health and development check. Purchasing of resources must directly relate to the outcome of the checks.

We have some examples later in our session today of how individual services are using the grant in this way. Before undertaking refurbishment or purchasing resources, it is recommended to contact your local health district to discuss the requirements. Services may also request a service summary form to understand how best to support the group of children in their care. This summary is completed by the local health district staff following your health and development check visit, and outlines the areas where children at your service may require additional support at a cohort level.

Category 3 funding can be used to access training, capacity building of teachers and educators to support all children's health and development. If we remember the checks cover listening and talking skills, gross and fine motor skills, learning, thinking and problem solving skills, and how their bodies are growing, such as their height, weight, and teeth. So any capability uplift that falls into any of these areas can be included.

Preexisting professional development around child's health and development. Arranging allied health professionals to provide up skilling for ECEC educators and teachers and support strategies. Arranging for an allied health worker to support educators and teachers to develop suitable strategies to embed in their curriculum.

More examples can be found on our webpage and links for this are being added to the chat now.

So this section will go through some of the examples that are coming out of services that have received the grant. So Bomaderry Preschool is located in the Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District. Their LHD team have already completed the health and development checks with all of their 4 year olds. Bomaderry Preschool chose to spend their grant across all 3 categories.

They employed casual staff, so that their primary team could assist with admin before the checks, to assist the health professionals on the day of the checks, and to complete any additional paperwork after checks were completed. They also employed an Aboriginal educator to provide support to Aboriginal families and children that attend their service. Some of the staff at Bomaderry Preschool will also be attending the Early Childhood Association Conference in September this year as part of their professional learning.

Next up, we have Captains Flat Preschool is located in Southern New South Wales. It is a smaller preschool that only opens 3 days a week. Captain's Flat have already had their checks completed by Southern New South Wales, LHD, and found the program helpful in identifying the additional supports that children at their service need before they go to school next year. The checks highlighted the need for both speech and OT support for the majority of the children attending.

The local health district team were able to provide recommendations to teachers and educators at Captains Flat, and from this they purchased resources they can use in the classroom to assist in the uplift of children's speech and language. They have also an OT attending the preschool to run small group activities with all of the children.

Next up, we've got Kids' Early Learning Blacktown City Council. It's located in Western Sydney Local Health District. The council manages 24 ECEC services in the Blacktown LGA. All services were successful in receiving a grant and the team at Western Sydney Local Health District has started completing checks at some of their services. Since they manage a large number of services, they're completing a professional development needs analysis so they can cater the training to their staff and children's needs. So far, they have started to organise training around trauma-informed practice and speech and language programs.

Alongside this, the funding will be utilised at each service to support families prepare for the checks. Casual staff will be employed so that teachers and educators can take the time to explain the benefits and process to families, and assist families when needed to complete the forms required.

We've then got Queanbeyan and District Preschool Association. They manage 4 preschools in Southern New South Wales Local Health District. The local health district has started completing the checks at their services, and the others are scheduled for terms 2 and 3 this year. One of their services is using their grant money to complete minor renovations and refurbishment of an office space to make it a suitable environment for health and development checks to take place, and to ensure that children feel comfortable and safe throughout this process. They're also sending some of their staff to the upcoming ECA conference to form part of their professional development, and have participated in training sessions run by the local health district teams on developing fine motor skills for children, which was identified as a need in their services.

So next step, we'll go through some of the future requirements for the grant. So to finish off today and then we'll then have a look at some of the questions in the chat. And if anyone else has questions, a quick reminder that services have until the 31st of May, 2025, to participate in health and development checks with their district and to use their funding.

You should know that the teams across Department of Education and New South Wales Health are working with local health districts to understand exactly how many services who received grants they have booked in at the moment. There is no need to wait until you've had your check to spend the money that you've received as part of the grant. The team at DOE will check in with your service around November to see how you are progressing, and all acquittals need to be completed by the end of June next year.

That concludes our session today. I hope it's been useful and answered some of the questions that people have had about the program and the grants. Feel free to add extra questions in the chat. And as I said, we've got members of the team from New South Wales Health and Department of Education on standby to answer questions. And also you'll see we shared our email at the start of the chat.

Please do email if you have any questions. We are in the the first year and a bit of rolling out this program at the moment, and there's new issues all the time, and we appreciate you all taking the time to take on this program in your services. If you have any, as I said, if you have any further questions, please do reach out.

AMY

My name is Amy Birungi I work for the New South Wales Department of Education as the Director Centre for Excellence in Early Childhood Quality and Transitions. And it's my pleasure to open the session today and to welcome our presenters. I would like to start today by Acknowledging Country. I'm joining you today from the land of the Burramattagal people of the Dharug Nation. And I'd like to pay respect to traditional custodians of the many lands that people are joining from to attend this session today. I'd like to pay respects to Elders past and present as teachers of knowledge, songlines and stories and thank them for their continuity of care of land, sky, and waterways for over 60,000 years. And as a department, we are committed to ensuring that all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learners achieve their potential through education.

So we are very happy to bring you this session today. I'd like to take a moment before I hand over to our presenters to introduce them and then I will enjoy the session with you. So today you're going to be hearing from 3 of our colleagues from Macquarie University. So Sheila Degotardi is a professor of early childhood education and the Director of the Centre for Research in Early Childhood Education at Macquarie University. Sheila specialises in infant toddler pedagogies and learning in early childhood education centres. She investigates the nature of children's social interactions with their educators and peers with the aim of understanding how these interactions promote learning.

Emilia Djonov is an associate professor in language and literacy education at the Macquarie School of Education and also a member of the Centre for Research in Early Childhood Education. Emilia is an educational linguist with expertise and interest in language and literacy learning in early childhood multilingualism and multimodal communication in diverse educational contexts.

Dr. Natalie Brand is a postdoctoral fellow and a casual academic at Macquarie School of Education and a member of the Centre for Research in Early Childhood Education. Her research examines the dynamics of toddler educator interactions and their potential to create learning opportunities for children.

In this webinar, Sheila, Emilia and Natalie will present the key outcomes of MQ Toddler TaLK, a project that was funded by the New South Wales Department of Education in which they focused on examining the emergence and use of learning oriented or academic talk between the ages of 2 and a half to 3 and a half years in children from early childhood centres in urban and regional New South Wales.

So really pleased to have the 3 of you online and I'm going to hand over to you now to share your learnings with us. Thank you.

SHEILA

Thanks so much, Amy, for that introduction. So I would also like to start by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which Macquarie University sits. We sit on the lands of the Wallumattagal Clan of the Dharug Nation in our beautiful campus here at Macquarie. So I'd like to acknowledge the cultures and the customs of those people that have nurtured and continue to nurture this land since time immemorial. So we pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging. So Macquarie University some time ago was funded by the Department of Education to conduct this project that we've called MQ Talk.

So MQ talk is looking at learning oriented talk that is produced by children from the age of 2 and a half to 3 and a half years. So you've been introduced to 2 members of the team, Natalie and Emilia. But I also need to acknowledge before I start the contribution of Naomi Sweller, who's a developmental psychologist and a statistician who is also on the team.

So to introduce, why do we need to think about language? Language, is said in this quote here, we often use language unconsciously. We use it to get things done. We use it with a focus on what we're trying to achieve rather than actually what we're saying itself. So it's only when we are prompted to be careful about what we say, that we start to watch our words. However, as teachers and educators, there's a really good reason for us to be conscious and to raise consciousness about what we say. And this is because words have immense power. Words are powerful because children grow up and learn language in a social interactive context.

The kinds of language that children are exposed to and that they hear and the kinds of interactions that they participate with has incredible power to shape the way that they learn not only new words and new phrases, but the way that they learn to use those words and phrases. And what we know is that when children develop strong language skills, that is one of the best predictors for their success in their current learning, but also the success they have when they go to school and beyond, not only in language and literacy, but also in cognitive development. And this is really important because this highlights another reason why language is powerful.

And this reason is summed up by this quote here from Catherine Nelson. "Conversations constitute situations in which language is linked to content in which knowledge structures are built and elaborated," in other words our words and our phrases that we use the language choices that we make, communicate knowledge and understandings and thoughts. So each word and phrase communicates ideas to the listener that allows the listener to build concepts and ways of thinking. And it's through this back and forth conversation that better brains are built. So I'll hand over to Emilia to unpack that a little bit further. You're on mute, Emilia.

EMILIA

So the project that we are presenting on today explored learning oriented talk. So before we can tell you more about how we did that, let us first look at what is learning oriented talk. Learning oriented talk is talk that allows children to learn both by demonstrating the knowledge they already have and by extending their knowledge, building on their knowledge. And we've identified a few different features of learning oriented talk that we think are particularly important and start to develop early on before children reach the preschool years. So these include asking questions to seek information and to ask for explanations. Talk about different curriculum areas about maths, about literacy and other learning areas.

Also talk that extends the topic of the conversation by including more detail about it. And this is particularly impressive when we see children add on to what they're trying to share with us without being prompted. Another aspect of learning oriented talk is talk that allows children to engage in reasoning, in explaining, in hypothesising through language. And that also is often closely related to talk that allows children to talk about and consider what others are thinking and feeling as well as their own perspectives, their own thoughts and feelings. This is what we call cognitive or mental stage talk. Talk that allows children to share with us information about past events as well as to talk about future events or what we call past and future talk is another feature of learning oriented talk. And finally, we also have what we call free talk, which in some ways is broader than all of the different types that I've mentioned so far. Free talk is talk about people, places and activities that are outside of the immediate surrounding setting in which a conversation takes place. So it might start from something that children and educators are currently engaged in, an activity that they're engaged in but then goes beyond what they can touch, feel, hear, observe right around them. So this is the kind of talk that we talk about as being learning oriented talk. So why should we care about learning oriented talk? What we already know about these kinds of language features or learning oriented talk is that it is critical for success in school and well beyond. And also we know that from research that has focused on, sometimes it's called academic talk as well that has focused on learning oriented talk, but primarily in schools or in the year prior to school.

So what we set out to find out in this project is the area where we have a gap. So what are we yet to learn about learning oriented talk? And what we are yet to learn about learning oriented talk is how learning oriented or academic talk is used in early childhood settings and especially how it is used before children reach the age of 4. So we know that by age 4 many children are quite proficient in using some of those language features that I mentioned before. But knowledge about how that talk emerges and how it develops in the toddler years is very limited, especially when it comes in the context of early childhood centres. So now I'll hand over to Natalie who is going to talk to us about Toddler TaLK and what we did in this project to explore learning oriented talk and how toddlers use it in early childhood centres.

NATALIE

Thank you, Emilia. So as we established, the aim of Toddler TaLK project was to examine how children use their language to learn about the world around them. In other words, we wanted to understand whether and how toddlers learn during their normal everyday interactions in the centre. We asked 5 early childhood services in Sydney and regional New South Wales to help us with the data collection. And if anyone from these centres are joining us today, we would like to say a huge thank you to you all for help. We invited 27 children to participate in the study and at the time of our first visit, all our focused children were as young as 2 and a half years of age or 30 months. In order to capture spontaneous and rich conversations, we filmed each child for 90 minutes during one visit.

To make sure we are covering most of the children's activities, we recorded each toddler for one and a half hours nonstop during their free play and 15 minutes during lunch or any other mealtime. Because we wanted to see how the learning oriented language emerged and developed across one year we recorded each child 5 times every 3 months. The centre visits commence 3 years ago and that was the time of the pandemic. The plan was to ask the educators to record the children and send the video to us. However, the senders were going through the shortage of staff and other issues and this is why in many cases I had to go and record the children myself.

Consequently, in some examples that we will look at today, you will hear my voice, but I believe this alteration did not change much because I'm a university trained ECT with 8 years of experience. So the centre teachers and myself managed to record many amazing conversations. Then I watched all the videos, transcribed the conversations and started the qualitative analysis and quantitative as well. The challenge was to find whether the toddlers learn anything from their interactions with others. And we know that learning, just like language is a fast developing, fleeting and life phenomenon. This is why it was very important to give some tangible definition to learning.

We decided to look at each line of children's conversations and decide whether the children are doing one of 2 things, whether they demonstrate their knowledge or create new knowledge. Doing so, we noticed that to express what the children have already learned or propose a new perspective and possibly create new knowledge, the children use specific language devices or language features. Examining these language features allowed achieving 2 goals, noticing how the number of this features grows over the age and noticing that total stock that features this language devices becomes more and more sophisticated. Now I invite you to look at one of the interactions that we have recorded and think whether we can notice some learning here. The situation is as follows, the focus child is Jayden and he is 3 and a half years. Jayden and his educator are sitting at the craft table. Jayden is drawing the world map and an aeroplane. And to describe this drawing is a bunch of colourful dots. In a second we will play this conversation. Of course it's not the video due to ethics reasons, but the sound.

Educator

Where's the aeroplane again?

Jayden

This one from Singapore.

Educator

Singapore is not far from Australia. Or is it very far?

Jayden

Singapore is very far from Australia And you need to sit in an aeroplane. You need to drive to where aeroplanes live so you can sit on an aeroplane to go up to the sky.

Educator

Yeah, you need to fly across the sea. What about if you go by boat? Possible?

Jayden

There will be big waves and you will be stuck. And you will be seasick. And you can go under the water. That's why you need to go on an aeroplane.

Educator

How many hours do you need to fly in the aeroplane?

Jayden

I don't know, a big day. Did you go to Singapore?

Educator

I've been to Singapore once. What do you usually do in Singapore? You to to the playground, to the swimming pool. What else do you do?

Jayden

I do. Once I was in Singapore and I got lost in the lift.

Educator

What happened?

Jayden

Once the lift stopped, the door opened and nobody walking around. I was alone and I pressed the button to go down so I can see my mummy and daddy.

NATALIE

Next slide please. Thank you. So the highlighted sentence on this slide is one of the most obvious and easily recognisable feature of learning oriented talk through which the child is creating new knowledge or seeking new information is a question. So Jayden is asking his educator a question and once again, questions are the simplest way for children to build new knowledge about the world around them.

So we looked at how Jayden created new knowledge by seeking information and through asking a question. And now let's look at how he demonstrated his existing knowledge. Here Jayden expressed his understanding of how different things look like or how they work. And here Jayden is using, so-called domain language, particularly he's using the words that describe mathematical concepts such as space, direction, and size. Here we are coming back to Jayden's expressing his existing knowledge.

He wants to share with the educator what else he knows or what he had previously learned concerning this topic. Jayden is listing his ideas using a conjunction, and, at the beginning of his utterances to add information or to extend the topic. Note how Jayden does it voluntarily with no questions or no other prompts from the educator. And this practice of free self-expression is important because it promotes understanding that knowledge is not just a bunch of ideas, but the ideas should be connected in some sort of system. And to create such system we apply both the conventional logic and personal associations. In this example, Jayden is offering explanations of how things work and why.

These utterances are easy to identify as they can take contain conjunctions so that introduce explanation or consequence. So these words are, so, because, why, and that's why. And by discussing a reason, children create new ways of looking at things and most likely they create new knowledge about these things. The sentence highlighted in red contains the word, no, and it is an important feature of learning oriented talk. And when children start to use words such as no, remember, realise and understand, thing, guess, pretend, imagine, they open their inner world for discussion. We call this cognitive state talk.

And such talk helps children to become more aware of how they know and how they learn and also how others know and learn. And cognitive talk creates opportunities for children to take control of their own learning and also contribute to the learning of others. Let's look at this example, Jayden tells us a rather dramatic story of how he got locked and found himself alone and lost in Singapore. He managed to share this story in a way that we could perfectly understand it without any prior knowledge about these events. Jayden had to overcome 2 challenges here and I'm talking about sharing the story not being lost in the lift.

So first he had to rely on his memory and language skills and he had to build a logical narrative all by himself. Also, some highlighted utterances here are showing Jayden talking about the events in the future and talking about future events are also not connected to here and now, therefore they require similar language and cognitive skills. Usually it is very easy to observe young children talk about what they are playing with or what they can see. But in this example we have highlighted in blue Jayden's utterances that are not related to here and now.

And one of the examples of such talk is talking about future and past events that we have already discussed. But this sort of talk can revolve not only around the events but also it can be about any topic and take any direction. And the talk that is free from the immediate context, we call it free talk. And free talk can be easily recognised in the situation when children are sitting on the couch or at a table and they chat and they do nothing else or they do something that is not related to their talk. So this was an overview of the key features of learning oriented talk that we have identified in this study. And by recognising these features in children's utterances, we can most certainly say that children either demonstrate the existing knowledge or they create new knowledge.

EMILIA

Okay, so one of the features that we'd like to now talk about is children's use of questions. And first of all, what do we know from the literature? Natalie mentioned that children, when they ask questions, that's a powerful tool through which they can support their learning, they can ask for new information. So we know that children use questions to request information and in this way they can learn from others. And when they receive answers, children build knowledge from that information that others have provided. And in this way their curiosity may be sparked and they may ask more questions. So this is really an important feature of learning oriented talk questions are really an important feature of learning oriented talk. We recognise different forms or types of questions. First of all, we have the questions that are just seeking for confirmation. What we might know as closed questions or yes no questions. With yes no questions, we also might want to distinguish between the instrumental questions that are just requesting goods and services or just requesting permission. Can I eat this? Compared to the questions that are actually seeking information.

Did you go to Singapore or have you been to Singapore? Then another type of question is what we call WH questions. These are questions that request specific information, what, who, which, when and where they seek answers in the form of a very specific label or a specific fact. And perhaps the questions that require a more extended response usually are the questions that are also most open in some ways, these are the why and how questions, the explanation seeking questions. They ask for reasons and explanations of let's say how things work or why someone feels a particular way and so on.

So children ask questions very early on and they use all 3 types, quite proficiently, by the time they reach the year prior to school. So what did we find from our observations in the Toddler TaLK project? We found that the use of questions again, was very clear and all of the children actually used some sort of questions from the very first observations that we did. And you notice for example here, the WH questions were the ones that were most prominent when children were 2 years and 2 years and 6 months of age. So about 75% of the children used those questions. These questions typically were in the form of, what's this?

So asking for labels, asking for what things are called. And this is very important for children to be able to develop their vocabulary. And this is really important for knowledge. There's a lot of research that talks about children's vocabulary and its significance for knowledge building. We have about 25% of the children used yes, no information seeking questions. I should explain that we only looked at the yes, no information seeking questions here because they're the ones that can get new information and can help children build on their knowledge. We did not look at the yes, no instrumental kind of questions because they're more about asking for permission or asking to be given something. And not surprisingly, the smallest number of children who use why questions seeking explanations in that early stage was quite low. We only had 5% of the children use why questions. But as you can see over time the use of all of these 3 types of questions increased. And something that's interesting and we'll notice that in the example that we'll look at in a second, is you might wonder why for example, yes, no information seeking questions were not more prominent.

We had about 25, a quarter of children using them when they were 2 and a half years of age. Now if you think about it, to ask a yes, no questions grammatically requires you to make a statement that's asking for a simple yes or no answer. So it's actually in terms of the language that is needed to be able to formulate a yes, no question such as have you been to Singapore before? Is actually quite complex. So they're a little bit harder to actually formulate and ask. So if we were to look at some of the examples from our data, let's listen to this one. This is Aaron, 2 years and 9 months of age and Karen, 2 years and 8 months and some other children having lunch.

Aaron

What's this?

Educator

It's a bean.

Aaron

A bean.

Educator

A kidney bean.

Aaron

What's this?

Karen

It's another bean. I eat it in my tummy.

Educator

It is another bean indeed.

Aaron

What's this?

Educator

It's a bean.

Karen

Is it a piece of tomato?

Educator

It's a piece of tomato, yes.

Aaron

What's this?

Educator

Oh, it is a chickpea.

EMILIA

Okay, so as you can see here, we have an example of that early use of these information seeking WH questions, what's this? Children are asking for different things that they can observe in front of them to be labelled. And indeed, you know this mealtime interaction provides such a good opportunity for children to relate the new words that they're learning to objects that they can see in front of them. In this case the bean, the kidney bean, the tomato and so on.

And this develops their vocabulary and also allows them to get a sense of what does a bean mean for example. So they can then classify and categorise things later on once they develop that vocabulary. In an example from a later stage we see one of the children, here is Aaron again. So here he's 3 years and 6 months of age his friend Jack, the same age and some other children having lunch. You can see some more complex questions here.

So Aaron, "Why did you come back?" And the educator says, "Because I need to record children." Aaron then says, "You stay here and then you're going home?" And the educator says, "No, I'm going to my office afterwards." Jack then says, "Where is your office?" The educator explains, "My office is in the university." And then Jack says, "My office is at Little Star," which is the early childhood centre, "What's in your office?" And the educator responds, "There are a few desks, a few computers because I'm sharing my office with other teachers as well." Jack, "How do you get there?" The educator, " I just walk there, I live nearby."

And Jack then says, "I live in one of those towers," and then he points to the high rises scene from the centre and the educator says, "Me too, we are neighbours." So you can see here that there's a wider variety of questions that the children are able to ask. So we have both the WH questions asking for specific information, where is your office? We also have some that are just asking for a confirmation, are you going home? But also ones that are asking for a more extended response, why did you come back? And you can see the educator responding with because, giving an explanation. And through this interaction, through the questions that children are asking here, they can build their knowledge about things and events and concepts that they cannot really observe in their immediate environment around them. They are asking questions that allow the educator to provide more information about her office, which they cannot see. And to also introduce a new concept, perhaps for some of these children, the concept of being neighbours. What does it mean to be neighbours? I hope that gives you an idea of how the use of questions, both how we observed the early use of questions when children were around 2 and a half years of age. And also how these questions that they used became more complex and also a wider variety of questions was being used to help children build on their knowledge.

SHEILA

Okay, so it's back to me. A second type of learning oriented talk that we're going to go through today is that of cognitive state talk. Now, as Natalie identified earlier, children use cognitive state talk to open up their mental world for discussion. So what we think, what we know, what we understand, that's very internal to us and the only way that we can communicate that effectively to other people and the only way that other people can know what we think, and and know and understand is by using appropriate language.

And so that's where cognitive talk comes in. It opens up that internal world for discussion as Natalie explained earlier. And it's a really important device because when they're able to use these types of words, not only are they able to share the knowledge and understanding with others, but also it opens that up for discussion and it encourages other children or other adults to also use these types of words. So it makes learning and thinking and knowing very explicit. We have 2 different types of cognitive state words. The first ones are the words that specifically refer to knowing and thinking. And so the examples on the slide, there are no think, remember, realise, mean, and there's others that you can probably think of as well. And there's also then talk about imaginary states like pretend, imagine and dream. So the literature tells us that in home context, cognitive state talk tends to emerge between the age of 2 and 3. It's quite rare before children turn two. And sometimes children use these in genuine ways and sometimes in formulaic ways, which I'll explain a little bit in a moment. Talk about imaginary states tends to emerge a little bit later because it is more abstract tends to emerge around about the age of 4. So in Toddler TaLK we found this similar pattern in the early childhood centre. You'll see here from the graph, the blue line is the talk about knowledge and thinking.

And approximately 20% of our children at the age of 2 and a half were using these terms when they were interacting with others. But by the time they got to 3 and a half, nearly 75% of the children were using these words. The imaginary states, as I said, were less common and we expected that. If you think about words like pretend, and that's the most common imaginary state that children use for obvious reasons because they engage in pretend play quite a lot. But other words like dream and imagine they're very, very abstract.

Children are really talking about an understanding of what is in their head that is simply in their head and it may not be evident to other people. So to go through some examples to show the change, and this example that I've got on the slide here, it illustrates what I'm talking about when I say that children sometimes use these words in formulaic ways and we know that this happens relatively early on when they start to use the words. So the example here is Elliot who's having lunch and the educator says, "Hey Elliot, how many blueberries are in your bowl?" To which Elliot responds, "I don't know." And so the educator then responds with the, well "Let's count, one, two, 3, 4, 5." We don't know if Elliot is using that word, no, to really refer to his knowledge. I know from my example with young children that young children often say, "I don't know," or, "I can't remember," when really they're almost using it in a formulaic way it's a formulaic response. And sometimes it's a response that says, "I actually don't want to answer." They've learned that they can use this word to stop the conversation.

Now of course we don't know that with Elliot, but this type of use of mental state words early on is very, very typical. It is though important because even if the child doesn't understand the actual meaning of the word to know, but they're using it, it prompts the people that they are talking to, to actually respond and to provide more information and often to respond with a mental state word themselves. If the child says, "I don't know," the educator might say, "I think you do, remember we did this yesterday?" And so they're actually modelling back more terms which will help the child to develop a more mature understanding of the word. Let's have a look a little bit later. So this is Lucy at the age of 3 and a half and Jessica who's about the same age and they're playing with blocks. And I've got this one on a sound file so we can listen to what they say.

Lucy

I know what to do.

Jessica

What?

Lucy

We can make a big tower and let it stand. There, good.

Jessica

Okay.

Lucy

Let's make a business, a business means, at business we have to, I know, we have to work hard so we can think.

SHEILA

So you'll hear from that example not only are children using these mental state words in more sophisticated ways, but they're also using a much greater variety of these mental state words. There's much more evidence that they are using them in genuine ways. "I know what to do," the child isn't just saying, "I know," they're saying, "I know what to do." That's the proposition I know and I know something, I know what to do.

A business means, that's quite a sophisticated use of the word, even though she didn't then go on to explain what a business means. But there's that emerging understanding again of what something means to mean. And we have to think. She's starting to talk about the actual process of information building that in order to know something and in order to work something else, there's this internal process of thinking. So I'm going to hand over to Natalie now because we've gone through a couple of particular devices. But now, what can educators do to support this type of talk in early childhood centres? So over to you Natalie.

NATALIE

So as we discussed earlier at the beginning of the presentation that very often young children talk is taken for granted and there is a very popular metaphor that children chat and absorb the language like a sponge. And this is fine, this is fair, but only when we are talking about casual language or instrumental language that is used to achieve some practical goals. When we are talking about learning oriented language that is used to build systematic knowledge, the approach should be different. Thoughtless learning oriented language is a predecessor of school language or academic language.

And we know from the literature that this type of talk is developed only when children are exposed to such language. This is why the role of educator is very important. We are using the same example about Jayden's travel to Singapore. And in this example we are going to discuss that the educator is modelling the key features of learning oriented talk. And on this slide we highlighted the cases when the educator adds to what had already been said and she extends the topic and then she encourages Jayden to do the same by asking him what else did you do on holidays? And here we can see that the educator is asking a lot of questions and they are various types of questions. And if children hear or ask questions themselves, we know that they learn something. Here the educator is using the talk about past events.

Notice how the educator is not only modelling the past talk, but she's actually supporting this talk by answering the child's question about the events that took place in the past. Here the educator is modelling and supporting maths talk by navigating the topic and embedding the concepts of time, size, and direction. As early childhood practitioners, we know that the actual opportunity to have one-to-one time with a child doesn't happen very often. And when we have this chance, we need to make most out of it and we should encourage conversations that are rich in opportunities for children to both express their knowledge and to demonstrate the existing knowledge and create new knowledge.

We have discussed a few strategies that promote the features of learning oriented talk, but of course the genuine strategies such as introducing a challenging concept, discussing an abstract idea or provocation would work as well. In this example, the educator keeps this rich conversation going by discussing an opportunity to go to Singapore and not only by plane but also by boat. Flying in an aeroplane is obviously a familiar context for the child and the educator encourages him also to recall his experience of taking a boat trip or a cruise ship journey to create new knowledge by thinking about the adventures that might be waiting for the people who travel all the way to Singapore by sea. And this was a brief overview of supporting strategies aiming to develop young children's learning oriented talk and now Sheila is going to bring all the information together.

SHEILA

Thank you. So, as Natalie said, there are a lot of strategies that you can use and modelling and provoking and prompting is a really good strategy. None of these are going to work though, unless children are engaging in sustained reciprocal interactions. So in early childhood education we often hear the term sustained shared thinking, which is a model of interactive learning, which is reliant on back and forth conversations. Sustained shared thinking involves the exchange of information where one idea builds on the previous one. And in this way understandings are extended. Educators can use the strategies that we've just identified to encourage this to happen.

Now with very young children, the concept, you may have heard also of the concept of serve and return. And because it's become very popular in helping adults to encourage conversations and interactions with infants and toddlers. An adult perceives the infants serve, which is their communicative overture or they notice something that the child is curious about or interested in. And then the adult returns the serve by commenting on this point of interest and the focus of attention. This is a really important model to have this serve and return. But the team here, we all believe that if you're going to engage in sustained reciprocal interactions with young children, we have to go beyond that. So this model here gives you an extended model of the serve and return interaction. The observe at the beginning is about noticing the curiosities and interests of the child or the communicative gesture and tuning into it.

Then the next stage is to talk. That's the return to the child's serve. Labelling and describing objects and actions, putting things in words, but then inviting a response, either inviting the response through a question which even very young children respond to questions or saying something and pausing and waiting for the child to respond. So that's then next part of this particular model. So you encourage and acknowledge the response and then encourage again and extend the interaction by adding more detail by using some of the strategies that Natalie just identified. So I'm very aware that we are running out of time.

So I think I hand over now to Emilia. I was going to say very briefly, we also need to recognise in early childhood context that different activity contexts have different opportunities. There's no way you can embed all of these different types of learning oriented talk into one particular context. Mealtimes are fantastic for past or future talk and for free talk, just having a chat. Playtime is great for that imaginative talk. Scientific and maths experiences are obviously great for those kind of conceptual domain specific language, but also for talking about thinking and learning as well.

So remembering that across the day there are many, many opportunities to embed learning oriented talk into the interactions, but each context will have different opportunities to do so.

EMILIA

So we have tried to give you a bit of a taster of all the different types of learning oriented talk that we have explored and looked at how children develop their use of these different types or aspects of learning oriented talk. And Natalie has highlighted, the very rich ways in which sometimes in one interaction you might see both the child using different types of learning oriented talk and also the educator promoting that through a range of different strategies. But of course there is a lot more than we could show in a brief presentation.

So we encourage you to visit our Toddler TaLK website and there, what you would find, is for each type of learning oriented talk as well as for learning oriented talk more generally an introduction. And for each type you would find what we presented here about questions and cognitive talk. So you would find these information sheets, which is just 2 to 3 pages long and what you'll find is a definition of the particular feature, what we have found about how children's use of that feature develops over time. Examples from earlier stages and later stages in children's development in the use of that feature. In this case, we are using questions and an example as well as interpretations of these examples. And also some ideas for how educators can support the use of these features of learning oriented talk in children and promote that and how this relates to important suggestions and outcomes in the earliest learning framework. As well as some of the school curriculum documents for early stage one.

So moving on, what we also developed in addition to these resources for educators, an important resource that we developed is an observation tool and practice plan. This is very practical, just a form that allows you to notice these features because, as Sheila said at the beginning, our use of language is often quite fleeting. And so we need to develop the skills to notice it when children are asking different questions for example, or when they're using cognitive state language and so on.

So we developed an observation tool to help you with that and support your planning as well. So over to Sheila to wrap up.

AMY

Sheila, you're on mute.

SHEILA

Thank you. I knew I would do that at some point. I'm juggling all the slides and everything. I was just about to say we've got a few minutes left if there are any questions. Somebody has asked if the slides will be available, I'm very happy to make the slides available, maybe through Amy and the team if people would like to have them. But are there any other questions or comments. Can people ask them live Amy or can they go into-

AMY

They can use chat to pop their questions in and so far that's the only question. I guess the other thing to add as well, since this session's being recorded, is that we will publish this recording on our website so people will have access. And I think what would be great as well, you had a link to your resources, maybe if you could put the link that you had in the chat so people could access today. I'm sure they'd love to be able to get into that.

SHEILA

I'm doing that right now.

AMY

Oh good, because I can't remember it.

SHEILA

Thanks Emilia. Yeah, please do jump online and have a look at those resources and we would certainly welcome your feedback as well about the resources and have a go with that observation tool that we've developed and start really listening to the children in your group 'cause I think the more you listen, the more you become aware of the different devices that they're using and how powerful they are in their learning.

AMY

Thank you so much Sheila, Emilia, and Natalie. I have really enjoyed hearing this presentation today as I'm sure we had just over 100 people online throughout the session, so that's fantastic to see. We do have a short survey and there's a link to that survey that's just popped into the chat that we'd love participants to complete to provide feedback on this session so that we can know how we can continue to provide you with great information to support you in your work, but also any opportunities for us to improve. But I'd just once again like to thank our colleagues from Macquarie for this fantastic work and for sharing that with us today and wish everyone a very happy day. Thanks everyone.

MELISA GILES

Welcome to this morning session on the Quality Support Program in partnership with ACECQA. My name is Melisa Giles and I'm the manager for Early Childhood Practice Excellence within the Early Childhood Outcomes Division in the Department of Education. I'm joined today with my colleagues from ACECQA, Carolyn Cousins, who is the senior manager for Quality and Compliance Programs, and Sofie Sega who is the manager of the Quality Support Program.

We're just going to start by acknowledging Country. We recognise the ongoing custodians of the lands and waterways where we work and live. We pay respect to elders past and present as ongoing teachers of knowledge, songlines and stories. We strive to ensure every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learner in New South Wales achieves their potential through education.

So before we start our session today, we're just going to do a little bit of housekeeping. We'd just like to let you know that your microphone, video, and chat functions will be disabled during the webinar. The Q&A function will be available, if you have any questions throughout the session. We will respond to these during the session as we can. You can choose to ask your questions anonymously if you would prefer. Automated closed captions have been enabled during this session for accessibility. And this session will also be recorded. Okay.

The Quality Support Program.

The Quality Support Program, or as we affectionately call it, the QSP, is a program that we have been managing since 2018 in New South Wales. The quality support Program, as we know, support services to lift their quality after assessment and ratings. As you know, services are assessed and rated under the National Quality Standard, and that is the mechanism that we have to support services to lift and improve their quality. This Program is facilitated by ACECQA and it is available for services that have been rated working towards the National Quality Standard or that may have repeated compliance concerns.

There are 2 pathways to the Quality Support Program, the Meeting National Quality Standard Program, and the Compliance Support Pathway. We are just going to start our session today with some Mentis. And I would just like to ask you to scan this QR code and the questions will appear or you can join at Menti.com with the code 1224 4387. And the first question that we are going to ask you is, what region of New South Wales are you joining us from today? It's good to see that we do have a variety of regions joining us. That's fantastic. Lots of people in Sydney, but I can see that we have people in the Illawarra, North Coast, Central Coast, New England/North West. That's great. Thank you everyone for taking the time this morning to join us today.

Okay. Alright, next question. What part of the education and care sector do you work with? It's good to see that. We have people joining us from family daycare, from outside school hours care, as well as our colleagues from preschool, mobile preschool. We've got one there that's fantastic. Any vacation care that might be covered in outside-school-hours care. Thank you. It's good to see that.

And last question, what do you know about the Quality Support Program? Has your service previously engaged with the Quality Support Program? Are you aware of the program for a little while or is this the first time that you've heard about the program? Okay, that's really good to see. So I'm sure that you're going to find this session really informative today. So thank you for answering those questions.

I'm just going to start by outlining a little bit of background to the Quality Support Program. And as some of you may know, this program has been implemented since 2018, but in 2023, an external review was conducted of the QSP. And this review included feedback from early childhood services, from sector stakeholders, from ACECQA and from the New South Wales Regulatory Authority as well as program data and stage reports. They were all considered as part of this review. And the purpose of this review was to inform future decisions about the program to examine the program's effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability and accessibility, and along with the program's approach to cultural safety.

So what do we hear in that review and what have we done to act upon that review? So you'll see on this next slide all of the things that we have changed just recently. So the first thing that we've changed is the name of the 'Quality Support Pathway' to 'Meeting National Quality Standard Pathway.' And that was just for clarity because we've got the Quality Support Program and we had the Quality Support Pathway and that was a little bit confusing. We've also extended the program duration. So the Meeting National Quality Standard Pathway has been extended from 14 weeks to 21 weeks. And the Compliance Support Pathway has been extended from 6 weeks and up to 10 weeks depending upon the needs of the service.

We've increased the face-to-face visits for each participating service in the Meeting NQS Pathway that's been extended from 1 service visit to two and we've also resourced one face-to-face visit in the Compliance Support Pathway for up to 75% of the services participating. We've also increased and improved our data collection to better evaluate the program and to allow for continuous improvement in the program response. Currently ACECQA is recruiting an Aboriginal facilitator to support cultural safety within the Quality Support Program.

A review of the eLearning modules has occurred to reflect current evidence on effective practices and contemporary approaches to adult learning. And the next slide you will see the two pathways clearly defined. And you can see that the Meeting NQS Pathway is support for services rating working towards the National Quality Standard to improve the quality of their practice and meet the National Quality Standard. This is now a 21 week program with 2 rounds per year with 75 available places, meaning that 150 services each year have the opportunity to engage in this pathway. We have 2 face-to-face visits within this pathway, and following the participation in this pathway, services will be scheduled for assessment and rating. This may be a partial or full assessment.

And the New South Wales Regulatory Authority aims to schedule assessment and rating for participating services within 12 months of completing that Meeting NQS Pathway, and on the other side of the screen you can see the Compliance Support Pathway and this is support for services who have previously received several non-compliance notices in Quality Areas 2 and 7 to better understand, apply and comply, with the National Law and Regulations. This is a 10 week program now, dependent upon the services needs and there's 4 rounds of this pathway each year with 50 available places, meaning 200 services can access this pathway each year and 75% of those services receive a face-to-face visit.

And on the next slide, how do we participate? How can your service participate in the Quality Support Program? So you can do this by self nomination. You can nominate yourself for either pathway, the Meeting NQS and the Compliance Support Pathway, via an expression of interest on the ACECQA website.

To apply, you will need your service approval number, service details as well as contact details for your approved provider. You may also be directly referred into either pathway. And the New South Wales Regulatory Authority provides a list of services who meet the eligibility criteria and may be interested in the program to ACECQA. ACECQA will then make contact by phone to see if the approved provider and the service are interested in participating and provide support to onboard the services in the program.

Okay, next slide. So I'm going to hand over to Carolyn Cousins now from ACECQA, and Carolyn is going to speak in a lot more detail about the Quality Support Program and what it looks like for services. Thanks Carolyn.

CAROLYN COUSINS

Thanks Melisa. We are really, really excited to be here. So thank you for having us today to talk about the Quality Support Program. In a moment, my colleague Sofie and I are going to talk you through a little bit more detail about both the pathways. And we've got some animations and some videos for you to watch. So both the animations are a little bit similar, but they obviously talk about the two different pathways. And a little bit later on in the presentation we'll be able to share with you a link to the ACECQA website where you can go and watch these animations again or perhaps you might like to share them with other people in your leadership team.

But to start with, I just wanted to give you a couple of pieces of data that we have around the success of the program, because as Melissa has said, it's been running since March, 2018. So since that time there's been 1,234 services complete the program. So that's just really great to see that there's been so much engagement in this program across those years. I know that it's now really well known in the sector and that it gets talked a lot about across the education care sector here in New South Wales. And just from a success perspective, did you know that 84% of services who participate in the Compliance Pathway actually say that they've been able to increase their ability to implement management systems and compliance across their whole service, and that 91% of services who participate in the meeting and QS pathway have increased the number of elements they've met at their next assessment and rating visit. So there's some really great success stories there to really lean into if you're considering participating in this wonderful program.

So I'm going to flick over now to the first animation video, which is going to be around the Meeting NQS Pathway, and then Sofie's going to step us through a little diagram we have.

NARRATOR

Welcome to the Quality Support Program, Meeting NQS Pathway, an initiative of the New South Wales Department of Education in partnership with the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority to support ongoing quality improvement for New South Wales Education and Care services.

The Meeting NQS Pathway will span over a 6 month period. By participating in the pathway, your service will benefit from support and professional learning designed to further extend your knowledge and understanding of the National Quality Standard, quality improvement plans and support ongoing confidence with embedding quality practice.

A dedicated ACECQA Support Facilitator will spend the time to understand your goals, what makes your service unique, and the areas your team has identified for improvement. Taking a whole service approach is a fundamental building block to implementing meaningful changes in your service. We encourage you to engage all members of your team in these professional development opportunities. We're excited to have you on board and invite you to make the most of this opportunity by immersing your service in the Program.

CAROLYN COUSINS

So I'm going to hand over to Sofie now who's just going to talk us through this diagram here around the stages of the Meeting National Quality Standard Pathway.

SOFIE SEGA

Thanks Carolyn. Hi everyone, my name is Sofie Sega and I'm one of the 2 managers of the Quality Support Program and I work alongside Phillippa Hargraves.

Let's start by having a look at the Meeting NQS Pathway Program Guide. As you can see here, there are 7 stages of the pathway. We'll start with stage 1. During stage 1 of the program, your support facilitator will connect with your service to introduce themselves and welcome you and your service into the program. The service will also receive a welcome email confirming that your service has been accepted into the program. At this stage, you'll also be asked to complete a survey about your unique service needs. This provides your facilitator an opportunity to start learning about your services context. Also, at stage 1, we will hold an online introductory workshop. This is an opportunity for your service leaders to learn more about the program and what to expect over the next 21 weeks.

At stage 2, your support facilitator will take the time to connect with you to identify a plan and unpack your services unique needs and improvement your priorities that align with the NQS. You will work with your support facilitator to co-design 3 to 5 quality improvement goals based on your chosen areas of support. You'll also receive your first service visit at this stage. This is a good opportunity for your support facilitator to introduce themselves to your service, your team, and your community context.

During stage 3, your leadership team will continue to connect regularly online with your support facilitator to explore and discover improvement strategies, including ways to support positive change. You'll also participate in online professional learning opportunities such as workshops and professional conversations, which are designed to build leadership capabilities. Services at this stage also get access to resources such as learning modules and a toolkit. These can be used at a team level to promote reflection, learning, and professional development.

During stage 4, this is an opportunity to begin to share, learn, and implement your improvement goals and change strategies. As you continue to connect with your support facilitator, there will be opportunities for shared tailored professional learning with your team and bring them on the journey to change as you share and learn from each other.

During stage 5, you will continue to reflect and revisit your improvement plans with your facilitator. This is an opportunity to continue to unpack your key practices and reflect on change. At this stage, you'll also receive a second visit from your facilitator where you can unpack the changes and learning that has occurred during previous weeks.

At stage 6, as we head towards the last weeks of the program, you'll be asked to complete a survey, reflect on your achievements and work with your support facilitator to consider how you will continue to embed changes and your improvement goals. Our hope is that as we wrap up the program, services will be confident in their capability to articulate practice, which will support them to meet or exceed the National Quality Standards. And as Melisa stated earlier, following on the participation in the program.

So, stage 7, the New South Wales Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Authority will schedule your service for assessment and rating revisit. This may be a partial or a full assessment and the regulatory authority will aim to schedule these within 12 months of the program. Thank you. Thanks. I think, back to you Carolyn.

CAROLYN COUSINS

Thanks Sofie. Thank you Sofie. We are going to head now straight into the Compliance Pathway animation. I guess the biggest difference with this pathway is that it's only 10 weeks and that it's got a very different focus to the quality pathway. So we're going to press play on that animation now.

NARRATOR

Welcome to the Quality Support Program, Compliance Support Pathway, an initiative of the New South Wales Department of Education and Partnership with the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority to support ongoing quality improvement for New South Wales Education and Care services.

The Compliance Support Pathway will span over 10 weeks by participating in the pathway. Your service will benefit from support and professional learning design to support services to better understand the National Law and Regulations. The underlying cause of non-compliance and to co-design implementation plans processes and management systems that support children's health and safety as well as governance and leadership. This pathway aims to build your capability to ensure a sustained approach to compliance that will result in better outcomes for children's services and providers.

A dedicated ACECQA support facilitator will spend the time to understand what makes your service unique and the areas your team has identified for improvement. Taking a whole service approach is a fundamental building block to implementing meaningful changes in your service.

We encourage you to engage all members of your team in these professional development opportunities. We're excited to have you on board and invite you to make the most of this opportunity by immersing your service in the program.

CAROLYN COUSINS

I'm going to hand back over to Sofie now who's going to talk us through the program guide for the Compliance Pathway. And just a reminder that we have all these available on our website. So if you wanna go and have another look and get some more detail about the programs, you can head there and have another look later. Thank you Sofie.

SOFIE SEGA

Thanks Carolyn. As you can see here, the main difference here at this, there are 6 stages within this program guide where the Meeting NQS Pathway has 7.

In stage 1, very similar to the other pathway. You will receive a phone call and an email welcoming you into the program. You're also asked to complete a survey and your facilitator will send you a copy of a workbook that will support you to reflect on current practices and any changes you might like to consider. These reflections can be unpacked with your facilitator in weekly support calls over the 10 weeks.

As we move into stage 2, which is the identify and plan. During this time, your support facilitator will take the time to connect with you and your service and learn about your services unique context. We also unpack your services recent compliance history and identify the underlying cause of non-compliance instances. You will then work with your support facilitator to co-design up to three improvement goals to bring about a sustained approach to compliance. During this time, you may also receive a visit from your facilitator where you can introduce them to your team, your service, and your community context. This is a great opportunity to show your support facilitator your current practices.

As we move into stage 3, your leadership team will be connecting regularly online with your support facilitator, and will be exploring improvement strategies. This will also include ways to support positive change as this is an important part to bring your team along on the journey. At this point in the program, services will also be able to access an online learning module that explores Quality Area 2 and 7, and how to support a whole service approach to compliance management.

In stage 4, you'll begin to implement your improvement goals and change strategy, and your support facilitator will support you through this process. This is a great opportunity to explore any bumps that you may have in the road, and how you can navigate those as a service leader.

As the Program comes into the final stages, so stage 5 and 6, you begin to reflect, revisit, embed, and evaluate on the past weeks with your facilitator. You'll continue to reflect on your improvement goals and the implementation and how taking a proactive approach on compliance supports the National Quality Framework In your final week, you'll also be asked to complete a short survey and reflect on how a whole service approach to compliance builds capacity in the team and embeds safety and quality across the service.

So the there are some similarities across both pathways, but there are definitely some things that are very different as you can see in the program guides. I'm going to pass back over to Carolyn.

CAROLYN COUSINS

Thank you Sofie. So you've heard Sofie mention a few times our support facilitators, so we wanted to bring them along today so we could introduce them to you. Our team are wonderful and amazing, and a lot of them have been doing this work for a long time. And something we really wanted you to know is that they've walked in your shoes. They've all been working in the sector for a very, very long time. And when we recruit quality support facilitators for this team, we work really hard to make sure we have a mix of experiences, particularly across service types.

So we have team members who have been experienced in leading and managing family daycare settings, out of school hours care, vacation care, early learning settings, preschools, mobile preschools, occasional care settings. So these people really know what it is like to be operating and managing and leading an early education and care or an outside school hours setting. So we just wanted to introduce them. We've actually now got a little video that we captured of the team. So we have Tamika and Clinton going to be doing a little bit of an overview for you of what you might expect by working alongside 1 of our quality support facilitators.

CLINTON

We offer the Program over a number of weeks depending on the Program that the services in. So a typical week may involve a support call with a facilitator such as myself. We do service visits as well and we provide a lot of customised resources for the services to support the issues that they're identifying. Probably a core part of our support is support calls with a support facilitator such as myself.

We take a coaching approach. So we'll ask a lot of why questions, why do you think that it's an issue? What are some of the needs that you're identifying there? And as we start to identify some of those issues, then we can work together to put some strategies in place to support those issues that the services are identifying. So that support can take a variety of different forms. Probably a key part of it is our support calls, which tend to happen weekly. And then we love to come out to the service as well so we can understand the context of the service within the environment that it operates in. And then we also have a range of different resources. So depending on the needs of the service, we can really help the services find those resources whether they're ACECQA resources or out there in the sector to support the conversations that we're having.

TAMIKA

So what I like to do when supporting my services is always reach out, let you know that I'm your facilitator and I always like to go in with the approach that you are the experts in your service.

So I'll get a bit of context from your perspective, you know, what are you doing really well, are there any challenges that you're experiencing at the moment? And what's your goal for our time together? So once we have all of that foundational information, then we'll jump straight into our support around the National Quality Standard.

CLINTON

These programs are an opportunity for services and service leaders to articulate their Practices and just by doing that it can build their confidence and their ability to articulate and understand their practices and that supports them in the conversations that they might have with their children, with their families, with an authorised officer and with their community.

So those weekly support sessions that they have with us are a chance to reflect on their practices, to articulate them and to really identify their strengths. We do take a strength-based approach. So a lot of our conversations are not about issues that the services are identifying, but actually what they're doing really well.

And we really like to celebrate that with services to hone in on their key practices that they're doing well. And when they do identify issues, then we'll support them by reflecting on some strategies to support those issues. And those strategies will often make their way to the services Quality Improvement Plan. So over the course of the program, they're working on those improvement goals and developing some key practices that they can then add as quality practices in their Quality Improvement Plan.

CAROLYN COUSINS

Thank you everyone. I think it was a little bit delayed there, but I think you were able to hear from the facilitators around the approaches they take when they're going to be working with your service.

So our next little slide is just over viewing some of the other professional learning opportunities that you get access to whilst participating in the Program.

You would've heard Tamika and Clinton mentioned a few of these. So both pathways get access to a quality support facilitator where you are really focusing on coaching and mentoring you to consider what your improvement journey needs to look like and then looking at those actions and those goals that you want to achieve.

The meeting, National Quality Standard Pathway has either an online or a face-to-face workshop. We do deliver face-to-face workshops in the ACECQA office in Sydney for those who are in the metro area. And then we also have some online options for those who are further afield. In the meeting, NQS Pathway services get 2 service visits, which as Melisa had said, that's one of the new changes that's come about, which is fantastic to see. There's a whole range of online e-learning, specifically focused around each of the standards from the National Quality Standard. You also get access to our learning management system, which is where all of our e-learning courses are stored. But you also get access to our resource library so there's other access to other materials and things there. And your support facilitator will actually guide you and lead you to some of those things that are relevant to the tailored support that you were looking for. There is also some online communities of learners. We really engage in these conversations because we really believe that learning from and with each other is a valuable learning opportunity.

So hearing from other service leaders around the journey they're on and the quality improvements that they've made and particularly other services might be doing things really differently to you. So it's great to hear what other people are doing because it can give you some inspiration and some ideas to then tailor for your own individual context. And we also have a hard and a soft copy of the recently reviewed QSP toolkit, which is a great resource that is in hard copy and we deliver that to all of the services in the meeting in QS pathway. Over on the compliance pathway side, we have a recorded webinar, which is really helping services understand how to link the national law and regulations with the guide to the National Quality standard. And really considering those compliance Practices in our services and what the expectations are of the law and the regulations.

Again, like I've said, the personal coaching and mentoring, 75% of the services get a service visit in this pathway. There's a workbook that we have and there's a whole range of little activities to do in there that your facilitator will be able to guide you to really depending upon the compliance support that your service is needing. Again, you'll have access to our resource library and we've got a collection of e-learning modules to support you in thinking about a whole service approach to compliance.

Now our next little component of our presentation is we have a video from a service we thought you might like to also hear, rather than just from us, you might like to hear from a service who has recently completed the program. So we're going to hear from Shae and Shae is from Jenny's Kindergarten. So we're just going to have a quick listen to her journey and her story.

SHAE

My name's Shae. I'm the director here at Jenny's Kindergarten in Riverwood. Our beautiful service has been in this community for the last 19 years and as a result we've obviously made some beautiful community ties. Our service is nice and spacious. It caters for 79 children a day across 5 beautiful playrooms.

So actually I was only director here for 2 weeks before we went through our first A&R. And whilst we were doing that, we did receive a working towards in 1 of our quality areas. And I really felt that having conversations with industry leaders and communicating with other directors would be a fantastic way to learn and grow and sort of bring changes into the services that would benefit all of our stakeholders. The Quality Support Program is by far the best learning program that I've ever participated in. I've learned so much as a leader. I've learned so much as an individual who works in industry and as a team, we've been able to implement so many changes all because of this program and the way that it functions.

Personally, one of my biggest learnings was to make sure that every change we made was to suit our service with our families, our children, our staff. Not to do something just because it made us look good on paper or because another service was doing it, but rather because it was going to benefit all of our stakeholders. So we've made multiple changes, but we try to make the changes one at a time.

One of our changes that we've made recently is incorporating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives. We've joined the Shirley Powell Program, which is where we receive a monthly letter from a little indigenous child called Shirley Powell. She talks to us about culture and traditions and the children have been loving this so much that we've actually joined up with one of our Aboriginal Torres Strait educators and we're making a book about the land that we play on and learn on and we're really excited to see how that turns out. I think the children have benefited most by having their voices displayed everywhere across the service. They have educators that know them inside and out, and we've got a learning environment that caters to all of their needs. And I think this has also been fantastic for families to see as well because they know that their child well and truly belongs at this service.

CAROLYN COUSINS

I would like to thank Shae, because I think it's really brave of her to step up and share with us her journey. So if you are online today, Shae, thank you so much for sharing your story. We really, really appreciate it. I'm going to hand back now to our colleague Melisa, so thank you Melisa.

MELISA GILES

Thanks Carolyn. Thank you very much. Very, very helpful presentation. And I'm sure that many of you feel encouraged that this program is about supporting your continual improvement.

We are here to support you with this quality journey that we are all on in early childhood education. I would just like to ask you to scan this code again, this QR code or join at Menti.com. 1224 4387 with one final question for today. So are you considering expressing interest in the Quality Support Program, either in the meeting, National Quality Standard Pathway or the Compliance Support Pathway, or perhaps even both? Or is it something that you are thinking about in the future? I think it's important to note that both pathways provide services with opportunities to seek clarification and feel encouraged to shift to sustained and embedded improved practice, build your knowledge and your skills with the targeted support, engage in self and critical reflection as well as the continuous improvement that will come. And as ACECQA have explained to us today, they provide a facilitator to each service. And this is important because this means that the Program is a tailored Program. It's not simply a course either the meeting NQS Pathway or the Compliance Support Pathway.

They're not a course that you participate in. It's actually unpacking what a service needs and working with your service in that specific context. So I would really consider you to jump onto the ACECQA website and have a look at the resources. There's some more videos there, there's lots more information that's really helpful to assist your thinking around engaging and participating in this program.

So the next slide just shows us the intakes for these pathways across the year. You can see that both round one of meeting National Quality Standard Pathway and the Compliance Pathway are underway. And there's the dates on there for the next one. So as we said, meeting National Quality Standard is a 21 week program. So that will commence on the 3rd of February in 2025. But would be really great if you could express interest before the end of this year on the 18th of November. That would be really great. So we can start the background planning and of course for the Compliance Support Pathway, the next one will start on the 14th of October. So by the end of next week if you would like to participate in that program, if you could express interest there.

And then the next slide just shows us the contact details for ACECQA. So qualitysupportprogram@acecqa.gov.au. And don't forget that on the ACECQA website, there's a link there that you can express interest in either of those pathways.

So I just would like to thank you all for taking the time this morning. I know it's a very busy life in an early childhood and outside school hours care service. And so thank you for giving quality this time so you can reflect upon that and think about all of your service practices and perhaps would you like to receive some additional support, a free additional support program that's available for your service, tailored to support your service through our quality support program. So have a great day. It's a beautiful day outside. It's a great day for lots of outdoor learning. So thank you everyone once again for joining us.

Have a great day. Thank you.

LOUISA

Thank you as always for taking time out of your busy days to be with us. I would like to start today by acknowledging the traditional custodians of all the lands on which we live, work, and come together today, including the unceded lands of the Burramattagal clan of the Darug nation where I'm presenting from. We extend our respect to Elders past and present, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples with us today. Thank you for your enduring care of the lands, waterways, and skies for countless years. They have always been and always will be yours. For millennia, indigenous communities have lived in harmony with and thoughtfully cared for the land, a practice deeply rooted in connection to country.

We acknowledge and honour the ancient traditions surrounding governance that's integral to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leadership and self-determination. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples have had systems in place to lead and govern for thousands of generations. These are unique and driven by culture and community priorities. Knowing and valuing indigenous practices is important in recognising and respecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and peoples as decision-makers for their own futures. The 2024 NAIDOC theme, "Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud" celebrated the unyielding spirit of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and invited us all to stand in solidarity with the fire representing the enduring strengths and vitality of indigenous cultures. This is passed down through generations despite all the challenges faced with ongoing truth telling needed to recognise the impact of this. In recognition of this, today we gather inspired by their wisdom, recognising the importance of empowering the early childhood sector to understand and implement effective and contextual governance and risk management processes.

As a responsible regulator for the early childhood sector, we come together to share information and work towards our collective goals, which include supporting the best outcomes for children, educators, providers, and for our sector so that all children can thrive in safe and high-quality early childhood services. My name is Louisa Coussens. I manage a team within the New South Wales Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Authority here at the Department of Education. My team is called the Quality Practice and Regulatory Support Team, and my team provides educational tools and guidance to help you understand and apply the National Quality Framework in your day-to-day work. Before we get into the content of this session, I'm going to just do a little bit of housekeeping. The microphone, camera, and chat functions have been disabled for this presentation. However, we do encourage you to ask us questions using the Q&A function. We'll do our best to answer any of your questions that you raise today. There may be some questions that we aren't able to get to today, but please do keep them coming in. I have a team of people behind the scenes ready with their keyboards to answer your questions. And all the questions that we do receive obviously help us in the Regulatory Authority to understand your situation, the things that are on your mind, and to structure our advice and support for you. If you have any service-specific questions, we just ask that you contact our Information and Enquiries team with those either by email or phone. We will also be introducing you today to the Governance and Risk Management Program, which the department is delivering in collaboration with Early Childhood Australia.

If you need support registering for that program, please address your enquiries to ECA. We'll share their details at the end of the presentation as well as the links to the program itself. Once the presentation is finished, you'll be sent a survey so please spare a few moments to complete the survey, again so that we can continue to develop content that meets your specific needs. We'll be using Kahoot! at the end of this session, so stick around and have your phones at the ready. The session is also being recorded and will be published on the Department of Education's website. We're bringing you some interesting information today that we hope will support you in your role as approved providers, Persons in Management and Control, nominated supervisors, or as educators who are interested in moving into service leadership. Governance provides leadership and direction to the service. It's vital that services have comprehensive governance and risk management systems that enable them to meet the requirements of the National Law and Regulations and ensure that children in your care are safe and protected at all times.

First of all, I'm going to hand you over to Rebecca Kanis. Rebecca is a policy officer in the Quality Practice and Regulatory Support Team, and she'll take you through some information about governance and early childhood. After that, we'll welcome a special guest from Early Childhood Australia to share some exciting news about our new Governance and Risk Management program. And to end, we will check your knowledge with a bit of fun and interactivity with a Kahoot! quiz. So to start with, I will pass you over to Rebecca.

REBECCA

Thanks Louisa and thank you to everyone for joining us. Yesterday was Early Childhood Educators Day, which recognises and celebrates the work of all of Australia's educators in early childhood services for the important role that they play in supporting children's wellbeing, learning, and development. I hope you got to spend some time acknowledging the important work you all do. Now let's take a look at the governance systems that support everyone. Governance refers to a framework of systems, relationships, and policies that guide the management of an organisation. For early childhood services, it involves approved providers and Persons in Management Control developing systems and processes to ensure that your service operates effectively, ethically, and in line with legislation and best practice guidance.

Approved providers of early childhood education and care services have a legislated responsibility to ensure that children are safe and that risks are effectively managed. On the slide here, we have highlighted a few of the key laws and regulations that come under Quality Area 7. Section 51 outlines the requirement for approved services to operate in a way that ensures the safety, health, and wellbeing of children and meets their educational and developmental needs. An effective governance framework includes things like a statement of philosophy based on the services, beliefs, values, and aims that underpin the educational framework used at the service. An effective management system including policies, procedures, and administrative systems that are consistent with the principles underlying the National Law, National Regulations, and National Quality Standards. A responsive complaint management process that is easily understandable, inclusive, and child-focused, and an approach to continuous improvement that considers the educational program and service operations.

As an approved provider or service leader, the way these systems work together is your governance framework. A strong governance framework builds a culture of continuous improvement and leads to an effective risk management and safety. ACECQA outlines that there are 6 key steps to supporting your educators to follow policies and procedures, and the strategies also enhance the culture you develop. Accessibility. Make sure that your policies are readily available to everyone. Induction and training. Prioritising your inductions to support educators from their very first day. This sets them up for success. Following this up with regular touchpoints, training, and connecting this to your professional development helps them continue to grow.

Quality assurance and governance. Regularly review, update, and maintain your policies and procedures to ensure they're compliant and reflect the needs of your services and families. Monitor and audit compliance. How do you check that practices are being implemented and provide support where it's needed? Audits of practice can support you to be confident that everyone knows what to do. Reformative action. There may be times where you'll need to address non-compliance with policies promptly. Resourcing and support.

How do you know that you have adequate resources and time for educators to comply with policies? And this can look different across the sector, but you can see high-quality practice comes from everyone feeling confident in their role and having the time to do it properly. Today's session is a call to action. How do you as an approved provider support your educators to engage in safe and high-quality care every day? Or if you're a new service leader or someone who's aspiring to this role, what do your responsibilities look like? We have a fantastic resource coming up shortly to help you, but first, we want to support you to understand why this is so important. To put this all into context for you, Louisa and I will share some common scenarios and situations that you may encounter as part of service operation.

LOUISA

Thanks, Rebecca. Each of the scenarios that we are sharing with you today is set in a particular service type, but many of the practices that you'll hear about are transferable across all service types. In this first scenario, a large outside school hours care service provides care for 200 children aged between 5 and 12. It's located on the site of the local school. They have a dedicated OSHC room at the back of the school and they use the school hall for some activities. Children arrived to the OSHC room through a separate entrance to the school in the morning. And in the afternoon, educators select children at two points near the classrooms. OSHC educators set the hall space up in the afternoon for busy activities, while the smaller OSHC room is used for quieter activities.

The fixed equipment and oval space are used for active play and games. Once the roster is completed, educators are allocated to spaces and activities to support active supervision to occur throughout the session. Safety checks are conducted before each session, making sure that resources and equipment are safe and in good repair.

Today, Vi is coming from a casual agency to the service. On arrival, Vi was shown where to sign in, where the policies are, and the children who have medical conditions. They were then encouraged to sit with children engaging in activities. While the usual safety check is done by educators, Vi notices that in the halls, some of the non-slip flooring on the wooden stairs has worn and has actually peeled off in several places. They wonder how the maintenance reporting processes work at this service, but before they can say anything, they're asked for help by a child and their attention is pulled away. Later on in the session, a child slips on these same stairs and bumps their head. The child is given medical attention immediately. The family is contacted, and an incident report is written.

Following this, the child who has a bit of a bump on their head is taken for medical attention by the parents as a precaution based on the service's policy about injuries involving the head. After everything is settled, Vi discusses this situation with the service coordinator. Together, they reflect and find that if they had had a casual staff induction checklist which shared more information about essential processes, this situation could possibly have been avoided. Vi shared some of her experiences from other services that she felt did this particularly well. The service learned from this experience and Vi's feedback and went on to develop an induction checklist for casuals. It included what to do if you notice a hazard that needs addressing, mandatory reporting responsibilities, and key information from policies that set casual educators up for success. So Rebecca, what do you think are some of the strengths with how the service responded in this scenario?

REBECCA

The service responded to the injured child immediately and took the steps they needed to to support them, as well as making sure they followed their policies and procedures. They have an incident management procedure that connects all the moving parts. The service showed that they had some governance processes in place to support casual educators by making sure that they're able to clearly communicate the ways in which they can be aware of children with medical conditions as well. One of their strengths was that they took this situation and used the new information that they had gained to really look closely at those processes for supporting casual educators, and reviewing and strengthening this supports risk minimisation.

Regulation 170, policies and procedures to be followed, mandates that approved providers must take reasonable steps to ensure that nominated supervisors and staff members, and this includes casuals and volunteers, follow service policies and procedures under Regulation 168. Your induction processes for everyone are a key tool in this. Shared spaces can make maintenance processes a little different, but clear processes and steps for this to happen make things simpler for everyone. This means that hazards can be managed and information is communicated in a timely manner for anything further that needs to be done. This situation shows how supporting everyone who works at your service in the short and the long term to give their best will help you to uplift your compliance and quality practices.

LOUISA

Absolutely. And how about how can the service follow up from this to support families and children?

REBECCA

The approved provider, nominated supervisor, and their team of educators should first consider if the situation is one that needs to be notified through NQAITS. They could review the child safe environment policy and procedures and any risk assessments that they have about the service environments to see what risks they can consider and how this could be strengthened such as through using different supervision strategies. They may also want to connect with the school and review any communication processes to ensure that they're relevant and effective. Complaints can also be a great source of reflection and a springboard for continuous improvement, taking steps to support the family in line with your complaints policy and ensuring that this is child-focused. Communicate any outcomes to the family involved. But if there are changes that have come about as part of this process that are important for all families to know, like changes to policies, then communicating this in an accessible way.

LOUISA

Right, thanks, Rebecca. In this second scenario, a family day care educator who cares for four preschool-aged children in her home has invited some extended family members to stay at her home. These family members include two adults and they intend on staying for about 12 months. Ali remembers from her induction and follow-up meetings that she needed to take actions before these family members arrive. She's also undertaken several policy reviews recently and provided some feedback, and she remembered that she needed to notify her family day care coordinator of all adults who are residing in the home, and that there was a specific form she needed to complete to assess what other steps were needed in ensuring that her family day care children were safe and that she was following service policies.

Ali works with her coordinator and nominated supervisor in advance of her family arriving to complete the required paperwork. She provides working with children checks and any other documentation the service needs. They also work out a regular schedule for checking in, once after her family arrived to make sure everything is going okay, and also close to when her family may be leaving so that Ali can advise her service leadership team if their leaving date has changed. The nominated supervisor asks Ali to share her experiences and knowledge at the next meeting so that they can reflect on this process and see if any improvements are needed. The nominated supervisor acknowledges Ali's excellent understanding of the service policies and how this contributed to the service operating effectively. Rebecca, what would you say makes the governance processes effective in this situation?

REBECCA

The governance processes appear to be embedded in their everyday practice. The educator had a strong induction, regular check-ins, and was supported by her service leadership. She was also provided policies to review and educators giving feedback helps to make sure that it does actually reflect the practice at your service. The service leadership team works collaboratively with their educators to provide them with the support that they need depending on the situation. So in this case, they recognised that Ali may need some additional support just after her family arrived. It shows the effective culture of governance and risk management that they have built. They then share experiences and reflect on what that might mean for their ongoing continuous improvement journey.

LOUISA

Thanks, Rebecca. That's an interesting scenario, but I hope some of you can pick up some things from that that you can apply to your own service context. This third scenario takes place in a long day care service that provides care for 25 children aged birth to 6. One of the families has a 5 year-old child. They've been enrolled at the service since they were one-year-old. Since then, the close family friends who were originally listed as authorised nominees have moved, so there've been changes to who is authorised to collect Aang and when. Sometimes at this service, when staff are away, the nominated supervisor steps in to support the education and care of children. In all the busyness, they found it challenging to keep on top of ensuring that enrolment records remain current and accurate.

One morning, Aang is dropped off to the service and is a little quieter than usual, seeming lethargic, but not actually showing symptoms of illness. Part way through the morning while an educator sits with the child, the nominated supervisor attempts to contact the parent who dropped Aang off to check in and see if there's anything that would be useful for them to know to be able to support the child. Unfortunately, they do not have current contact information for the child's parents and so they're unable to reach them. After continuing to observe Aang with no changes and no contact with the parents, the educator decides to contact the authorised nominees. The authorised nominees advised that they now live three hours away and are no longer able to act as authorised nominees because they can't get to the service in a reasonable timeframe. Luckily, however, they were able to provide current contact details for Aang's parents.

Following this conversation, the nominated supervisor successfully reaches the parents who provide some information about how to support Aang. The nominated supervisor then contact the approved provider to seek support with staffing. This enables them to make sure that all of the enrolment record templates and information are up to date for everyone. The management team fortunately recognises the risk in this situation, and that being able to contact family and authorised nominees is vital. So Rebecca, what's your impression of how the service handled this situation?

REBECCA

The educators recognised that the child was acting out of character. They assessed the situation and they were responsive to their needs, while they were trying to seek some more information. Illness and injury are not the only times that children may need additional support, and connecting with families can be the most effective way to do this.

Thank goodness the authorised nominees were able to provide the current contact details for the family though. These records contain essential information that helped services safeguard children. In this situation, had the child been diagnosed with a medical condition after they had enrolled at the service or there was a change to the family situation that meant that a court order is now in place, the consequences of not having accurate information in the enrolment record could have been much more serious. Enrollment records are a prescribed record under Regulation 177. And under Subsection 2 of this regulation, approved providers must take reasonable steps to ensure that the record itself and the content from families is accurate. Regulations 160 to 162 outline what needs to be in the enrolment records. And sometimes these regulations are updated with new provisions or with amendments to the wording to make sure that it covers everything that services need. So it's important to regularly review the template and the content to make sure that everything is there.

LOUISA

Okay, so having a governance process that supports service leaders to know why, when, and how this information is going to be reviewed must really be a key priority.

REBECCA

Yes, most certainly. Governance and risk management processes are a key component of Quality Area 7 as we've talked about previously and they underpin everything. While it's important to recognise that services do have a lot of administrative processes, the things that relate to children's safety and wellbeing are essential to keep on top of. In relation to enrolment records, this means having clear policies and processes that outline how you manage confidential information, how it's stored, how often it's reviewed, and what updated information is collected. This is an essential part of meeting the National Laws and Regulations. It also contributes to high-quality practice as educators know that they can rely on this information to base their decisions on. Approved providers and their management teams reflecting with educators to consider and assess governance processes helps everybody to feel empowered and to complete their roles and responsibilities effectively.

LOUISA

Thanks, Rebecca. Thanks so much for your valuable insights into how the governance and risk management processes impact on daily practice within early childhood services.

REBECCA

No problems.

LOUISA

As we mentioned earlier, we all want the best outcomes for children, families, educators, providers, and our sector. To support the early childhood sector in their understanding of governance and how this supports high-quality practice, the New South Wales Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Authority has partnered with Early Childhood Australia to deliver a free tailored training program as part of the Safety and Quality Practice program. The aim of this program is to equip approved providers and service leaders with the tools and knowledge to improve governance and risk management in early childhood services. To take us through this program, I'm delighted to introduce you to Shae Haylen, Early Childhood Australia's General Manager of Professional Learning. Welcome, Shae.

SHAE

Thank you, Louisa, and thank you so much for having me here today. It's a absolute privilege to join today's session and wonderful to see so many people online with us today. Before we launch into talking about the program, I'd like to acknowledge that I'm joining today virtually from the land of the Ngunnawal People here at ECA's national office in Canberra. Really thrilled to be talking to you about the program today. It's a fantastic resource that's available freely and it's designed to support managers, approved providers, nominated supervisors, and Persons with Management or Control, or PMCs, in New South Wales to understand and implement best practice principles of governance, risk management, and service practice across key areas of the National Regulations and the National Quality Standard.

Now, the program has quite a few inclusions. It's been developed quite holistically. You can dip in and out as you'd like. And it includes four self-paced online learning courses that delve into various aspects of Quality Areas 2, 3, 4, and 7, exploring risk and regulatory requirements as they relate to these quality standard areas. The courses cover key topics to support your understanding of risk management and its place in governance and leadership, and unpacking and exploring the different roles that service leaders play in risk identification, risk minimisation, and ensuring compliance and quality.

The program has practical scenarios and strategies relating to risk assessment and management with particular focuses in on active supervision, safe sleep and rest, safe transportation, child protection and child safe environments. So in the program, you'll find 4 online learning courses, which I'll dive into a little bit in a moment. 4 fact sheets, and a curated selection of resources and tools from reputable authorities which are accessible from inside the e-learning platform, but also accessible through the modules and freely available through those links. We also have a pre and post-learning survey and we're gonna give you a little bit of insight into some of the findings that have come through that survey and a completion certificate that's available to you once you've completed all four learning courses.

So as I mentioned, we're gonna go into each of the courses in a little bit of detail so you understand what's there. You can complete these courses in whichever order you would like. So as soon as you've completed the pre-learning survey, it will unlock all four courses and all of the downloadable fact sheets as well as that curated library of resources. So module one is called Effective Policy Implementation and this focuses on enhancing your understanding of and your compliance with Regulation 170 of the Education and Care Services National Regulations through being confident with your roles and responsibility, really understanding what you are responsible for. It's got practical ideas to help you effectively implement policies to inform practice. And this is through identifying strengths and areas of improvement and considering how your policies, induction, professional development processes, all connect so that educators are supported in their roles.

There are opportunities to reflect along the way on things like continuous improvement processes and what that can look like. It's a highly practical course and one that's certainly important if you do hold a leadership role in any service type to understand how you can enact Regulation 170. The second course is Understanding and Managing Risk. Now, this course is designed to increase your understanding of risk in education and care settings by providing insights into the legal and ethical responsibilities of a service leader. It unpacks hazards and risks and how to adapt and apply risk assessment and management strategies in diverse service types and environments. The course has its scenarios that are used to help you consider what kinds of risk management strategies would work in your service and highlights in case studies how meaningful engagement with risk management can help you embed a culture of safety.

A culture of safety does not mean we avoid things like adventurous play that encourages and challenges children. It just means that we've critically assessed the things that we need to before educators and children get started. And we know the importance of reviewing risk assessments when things change. The third course in the program is Safe Environments and Responding to Incidents. And here, we explore the laws and regulations that apply to health and safety. As you work through the course, you'll unpack and explore practical examples of managing risk, responding to incidents, and safeguarding children from harm and hazard. You then move into strategies for best practice in relation to child safe environments.

The course gives you opportunities to explore scenarios relating to excursions, supervision, and ways to prevent risk of harm as a whole service approach. Now last but not least, and as I mentioned, you can complete these in any order you would like, but last but not least, we've got Leading for Impact. So the final course in the program is designed to give leaders the skills and knowledge to drive meaningful change and what this can look like in different roles such as approved providers, nominated supervisors, and educational leaders. Leadership in early childhood can present challenges as you navigate relationships with educators, families, children, manage complaints, have difficult conversations with families, and collaboration and shared leadership can create opportunities for reflection, growth and continuous improvement as you learn about how inductions and staffing can support a strength-based approach through a blend of prompt practical examples and key information about leadership responsibilities and legal obligations. So that's the sort of deep dive into what you might expect out of each of those courses. And the program is available for enrolment now at no cost to you, and you can enrol in the program through the ECA Learning Hub.

So I believe the team are sharing a helpful information sheet with you through the chat that will give you all the information you need on where you can enrol. And as Louisa mentioned earlier on, if you are having any trouble or need some assistance with that, please feel free to reach out to my team here at ECA and we can help you access the program. The QR code is here on the slide and this QR code will take you straight to the course page and all of the information can be found on the course page or in the information sheet that the team have shared with you today.

LOUISA

Thanks, Shae. It's such a great course. I'm very excited to be sharing it with you all today. And Shae, don't go anywhere. I hope you don't mind, but I've tried to put my sector hat on for a moment and think about a few questions that people might be mulling over. So if I can just steal you for a couple more minutes and ask you a few questions, that would be great. Thank you. So if I were a new provider, Shae, or maybe someone who's thinking about stepping into a leadership role for the first time, how would this program help me?

SHAE

Oh, that's a great question, Louisa. Look, new providers or nominated supervisors will really benefit from this program, and I really encourage you if that is the role that you're in to take up this great opportunity because it will support you to understand your journey to knowing key information about the National Regulations and the National Quality Standard, as well as best practice principles of governance, risk management, and service practice. As a new provider, you'll gain great ways that you can empower your nominated supervisors and support your team of educators to deliver high-quality practice. New nominated supervisors will get great tips and strategies and it can really help you to feel confident in your role and your ability to support educators to deliver that high-quality practice. I think really, if that is you, please, please enrol.

LOUISA

Absolutely. On that note, I know the sector really values all of the professional learning that yourselves and we provide to them and recognise the importance of professional learning, but as always, the challenge is finding the time to fit it into a busy day.

SHAE

Absolutely. Look, we know there are competing priorities, very busy roles and, you know, online learning is a really fantastic way to support jumping into professional learning that's relevant to you. And for this program particularly, as I mentioned, you can do things in different orders, but each course only takes about 40 minutes to complete. And you can do this at your own pace. You can stop and start, you can come back to it if you do need to if you get called away. And the fact sheets are a fantastic resource to support this because it summarises the key learnings, really short, sharp, and bite-size information. And it's great to be able to share that with your team along with the reflective questions and the related resources, so you can use those to support your own and your team's continuous improvement journey. So we've really tried to chunk that up and make it really bite-size and easy to fit into a very busy schedule.

LOUISA

Fabulous. And you mentioned that you may already have some insights. I think this program's been live to the sector since the end of July. So do you have anything you can share from people who have already completed the modules?

SHAE

Absolutely, so we have seen unprecedented uptake of these modules. It's fantastic. I'm so pleased that so many of you have already enrolled. And from the pre and post learning survey, we can see that service leaders are sharing that they're feeling that completing these courses is increasing their governance knowledge and skills, and there's been really positive feedback that the practical ideas are helpful to support the areas that they can bring back to their team or the policies and procedures they can review to make sure that it's best practice. So we're really seeing that these are practical, increasing confidence, and that people are finding them useful.

LOUISA

Fantastic. Thank you so much, Shae. Thanks for joining us today.

SHAE

Thank you, Louisa.

LOUISA

So we encourage you all to engage with this fantastic professional learning opportunity. Share it amongst your network. Let us know what you think. We're always interested in your feedback. So if you started the modules, if you've already finished them, you have something to share with us, or if you have questions, please let us know your thoughts. Now, I promised a bit of interactivity, so here is Rebecca to take you through a quiz, a bit of fun for your working day, and letting you test your knowledge of some aspects of the National Quality Framework. Thanks, Rebecca.

REBECCA

Thanks, Louisa. So we do have a game to finalise the session to review some of the key learnings from today. So grab your phones and I think we're gonna switch over to Kahoot! in just a second and that will have the QR code, which you can use directly to jump in or you can use the pin as well. And I think that will be coming up just shortly. It's just thinking for a little minute. Wonderful. We'll just give everybody a little bit of time to start jumping in there.

LOUISA

Great. Can see lots of names. Cara. Camilla. Trish. Bron. Welcome. Welcome.

REBECCA

It's lovely to see so many people jumping in and joining us.

LOUISA

I love a bit of a quiz. Yeah, if you haven't played Kahoot! before, it's not just about do you get the right answer, it's about how quick your finger is on the buzzer.

REBECCA

Exactly. So keep your fingers moving. I can still see that we've got lots of people joining in, so we'll just give it a little bit longer before we get started. Steve, Annie, thank you to everyone for jumping in.

LOUISA

Should we make a start then, Rebecca?

REBECCA

Yes, I think that sounds good and as well, if we can pop the pin in the chat so if anyone else wants to join in as we're travelling along too, that would be fantastic. Because if you're on your computer, you can jump into the Kahoot! website as well too. Okay, question one. Most of children's brain development happens in the first 2,000 days of their life, so by the time that they're five years old. True or false?

LOUISA

Whoa, some people were really quick.

REBECCA

Yes. We do just have a little bit of time to make sure that everybody's got the opportunity to get their answers in too. But don't forget, those fast fingers can really help. Fantastic. True. Lots of people have got that one correct. The early childhood sector knows that access to high-quality education is so important for all children and it shapes what we do every day. Approved providers and nominated supervisors establish the framework that enables this to occur at their services. Ashleigh, Brick, and Steve, congratulations. We've got lots of people on our leaderboard. Okay. Quality Area 7 of the National Quality Standard relates to: relationships with children, staffing arrangements, governance and leadership, or the physical environment? Lots of answers. Almost 150 so far. Fantastic. The answer is governance and leadership. And don't forget those fast and correct answers gives you bonus points. Well, we've got some new people on the leaderboard. We've got GU and Paula and Steve and Sarah. Oh, and Renee's coming up quickly too. Okay. Question three. An effective governance framework includes these things: a statement of philosophy, an effective management system, a responsive complaints management process, an approach to continuous improvement, or all the above?

LOUISA

I think maybe we should have made these harder, Rebecca.

REBECCA

I think so. It's fantastic to see everybody doing so well with them. The answer is all the above, and congratulations to everyone who got that correct. Well, we have Renee and Steve and Sarah on the top of the leaderboard. Question four. What regulations outline the policies and procedures that services, including family day care, are required to have in place? So Regulation 97, Regulation 168 and 169, Regulations 167 and 170, or Regulation 170 on its own? The answer is Regulation 168 and 169. Congratulations to everyone. Steve's now on top and Ashleigh. Got lots of people jumping up the leaderboard. Question five. By building a positive culture of governance and risk management, we can create high-quality environments for children. True or false? Lots of people answering. Fantastic to see them coming in. The answer is true. We still have Steve on top. Ashleigh and Paula are coming up.

LOUISA

I think Steve's pretty competitive.

REBECCA

Yep. How many steps does ACECQA have about supporting your staff to follow policies and procedures? 6, 3, 2, or 4? And no, the steps in the image don't give you a hint. Oh, fantastic. There were six, and there is more information on those steps when you sign up to complete the modules as well too. Steve and Paula, Ashleigh, and we've got Rachel as a newcomer on the board too.

LOUISA

Fantastic.

REBECCA

Why do enrolment records need to contain current and accurate information? It's prescribed by Regulation 177? Services need this information for the health, safety, and wellbeing of each child? It allows families to provide relevant information including about their children's interest, or all of the above? Fantastic. We've got lots of people all on the right track, which is absolutely wonderful to see.

LOUISA

Have you got a curly question, Rebecca, to really get people's brains going today? I think they're all a bit too easy, aren't they?

REBECCA

I think so. Well actually, that's really fantastic to see though.

LOUISA

It is good to see. It is good to see.

REBECCA

Okay. Professional development is essential to providing high-quality service to children and families. True or false? I think there might be a trend with some of the answers. It's fantastic to see. Everyone can see that that one's true. Professional development is key to empowering your educators to grow and achieve their best. And some of you in here might be aspiring to service leadership, and we're all excited to see that happening. Ashleigh, Dani, Rachel, Paula, and Roz is a newcomer on the leaderboard as well. Just a couple more questions. Question nine. The Governance and Risk Management program includes: e-learning modules, fact sheets, and resources? Just e-learning modules? Just fact sheets? Or resources and fact sheets? Let's see what people remember from what Shae was talking about earlier. Fantastic, the answer is e-learning modules, fact sheets, and resources. Well, we've now got Rachel in the top spot. Just a couple more questions to go. Keep your fingers moving. Question 10. Module 4 of the Governance and Risk Management program talks about the impact of leadership. The leaders in services are: approved providers, Persons in Management Control, nominated supervisors, educational leaders, or all the above? Fantastic. We've got all the above. And each of these roles are vital, defined in legislation and hold key responsibilities. While we haven't talked as much about educational leaders in the session today, they do feature in module 4 of our program as they are an essential part of championing leadership and supporting their teams. Well, let's see. Well, we've got Rachel on the top of the leaderboard. Ashleigh's coming up quickly, and Bubble is coming up as well. Last question. How can I register for the Governance and Risk Management program? On the Early Childhood Australia Learning Hub? Through the direct link on the department website? Or through the PDF in the chat that we've received today? Or all the above? Oh, fantastic. All the above. And let's have a look whose on our podium. In third place, we have Bubble. Fantastic job. It's been wonderful to have you. Second is Ashleigh, wonderful. And in first place is Rachel. Congratulations!

LOUISA

Congratulations.

REBECCA

Thank you to everyone for playing.

LOUISA

Thanks for playing along with that. That was great fun. Thanks, Rebecca.

REBECCA

No problems. Louisa, I'll hand over to you to wrap up.

LOUISA

Thank you. Well, thank you so much to everyone for joining us for this session. I hope that you've come away with some information that you didn't know before and some strategies that you can take back to your service and implement in your daily practices. We'd love for you to enrol in the Governance and Risk Management program, and please share this information with other service providers and leaders in your network so that together we can affect positive change for all children across our sector. Thank you once again. It's been lovely to have you, and enjoy the rest of your day.

KAITLIN DOHERTY

Thank you very much again for joining us today. I'm pleased to be joined by Craig Thacker for this session from the New South Wales Office of the Children's Guardian who will be presenting this session for you today. So, today, we will be speaking to you about keeping children safe and we will be focusing on the ways that you can identify risk across different service types and why it is so important to know how to identify and respond to child safe risks in your environment.

So I'd like to start today's session by respectfully acknowledging the ongoing custodians of the lands and waterways of which we live, work on, and come together online today, including the lands of the Burramattagal clan of the Dharug nation where I'm presenting from this afternoon. We extend our respects to Elders past and present and as well as to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals with us today.

So my name is Kaitlin Doherty and I'm a senior policy officer at the New South Wales Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Authority here at the New South Wales Department of Education. Our team provides educational tools and resources to help you apply the national quality framework. Before we get into the content of this session, I'll just do a little bit of housekeeping. So you will have noticed that the microphone and camera functions have been disabled for this presentation. However, we encourage you to ask us questions using the Q&A function. And resources will be posted in the chat. We'll try to answer all the questions that are raised. There may be some questions that we won't be able to get to today. However, please be assured that the questions we receive help us in the regulatory authority to structure our advice and support for you. If you have any service-specific questions, please contact our information and inquiries team either via phone or email for guidance. This team is equipped to assist you and ensure that you get the right advice for your service context. Once the presentation is finished, you will be sent a survey. We'd really appreciate if you could take a couple of minutes to complete the survey so that we can continue to develop content that's beneficial for the sector's needs. And I know this question often comes up during our sessions. I'm pleased to confirm that this session will also be recorded and published on the New South Wales Department of Education website.

So, I would now like to introduce our presenter, Craig from the New South Wales Office of the Children's Guardian. Some of you may know Craig already. Craig is an experienced child safe training officer at the OCG and presents training sessions for the early childhood and outside school hours care sector. Over to you, Craig.

CRAIG THACKER

Thank you, Kaitlin. Welcome everybody. And hopefully some of you have recognised me before from some sort of training that you've turned up at the OCG, either online or face-to-face. What we're going to talk about today is the child safe standards in regard to risk and around grooming in the early childhood space as well.

So, I would also like to add my acknowledgement of country to the traditional custodians of the land from which we are each on today. Personally, I'm on the land of the Dharawal people and pay my respects to Elders past and present. And a special welcome to any First Nations people who have joined us today.

Just a bit of warning about the content. What we're talking about is the prevention of child abuse, and in particular, child sexual abuse, but other abuses as well. So if anything does make you feel uncomfortable or ill at ease, please feel free to step away from the screen and take good care of yourself and get in touch with one of those helplines or a trusted colleague or friend.

So what we're looking at today is understanding how risk fits in with the child safe scheme, what the reported harm and abuse from the reportable conduct scheme is telling us about the ECEC sector. We're going to look at a little bit of grooming behaviours and how to identify and respond to those and some resources, training, and support that we can offer in this joint venture. So if we're thinking about risk where is mentioned in the child safe standards, which came about through the Royal Commission into the institutional response to child sexual abuse, there are 10 standards. And if you look through them as syllabus dot points, for example, you might notice in standard one, talks about having a risk management plan that focuses on identifying, lowering, preventing and lowering risks to children and leaders incorporating that management plan into their practice. Standard 2 talks about risk management strategies that identify practices that are currently disempowering children, and we want to address those. Standard 4 looks at children who might have additional vulnerabilities and how to risk manage for them. In standard 5, using your risk management plans in regular supervision. So workers meeting with their supervisors to make sure the risk management plans are being followed and being able to raise any concerns about them. Standard 6, addressing any faults in the reporting for children and for others as well and making sure those risks are removed or reduced. And in standard 7, for those of you who are working with children with additional needs, that you are provided the training, and also those of you who are fresh, you get your onboarding training as well and your continual improvement training. Standard 8 talks about identifying risks in both the online and face-to-face environment. Standard 9, if you have a critical incident, making sure your risk management plans are updated. And standard 10 is talking about your policies and procedures, in particular, risk management, but also your codes of conduct and reporting procedures. So you can see, risk management actually falls within the majority of the standards. So it's a really crucial space to be thinking through.

What I'd like to do is just address the fact that we don't know who might be a person who might cause harm to children. So we've got 4 examples. So the first one is a 24-year-old high school teacher who was convicted of having 3 counts of aggravated sexual intercourse with a 14-year-old student from their class. We also have the UK's worst female paedophile, was a mother of 2 sentenced to serve minimum of 7 years after filming herself working in a nursery. And so the female offenders are still present so we don't want to neglect that. We have young, healthy swim coaches who have multiple images of child abuse on their personal devices who have been convicted.

And so what we're going to think about today is what came out of the Royal Commission into the institutional response to child sexual abuse in the research that was carried out by Parkinson and Cashmore. So this is from the data that came from the Royal Commission, and what they identified was 4 key dimensions of risk. And so we're going to think about those different dimensions of risk and where they might be present in our own services and how do we address those risk factors. So the first one being situational risk or environmental risks, could be both the physical and online environments. So wherever a child is alone with an adult or educator, either online or face-to-face, that is an increased situational risk. Where there's opportunity to create emotional closeness, so physical affection or sharing of deep emotional stories, can lead to that as well. Being in closed environments where there's not others around as well, so no clear lines of sight. And also, where the environment is either modifiable or unmodifiable, which means if there is not clear lines of sight, can you remove obstacles so that you can see clearly wherever people are working with children, or if there is areas that can't be modified, can you rearrange the way that supervision is laid out or can you section off areas so they're not accessible because you might not be able to change that particular situation? Vulnerability risk is talking about the characteristics of the child. And so it's determined by the age of the child whether the child might have a disability and might require additional assistance when it comes to changing or washing or communication or even understanding. Where there's a history or currently happening a breakdown in the family home, this can lead to out of character behaviour of the children. And we are all trained to look out for out of character behaviour in our mandatory reporting training. However, people who are determined to offend against children will look out for those particular children and target them and blame the change of behaviour on what's happening at home instead of what's actually being caused by them. So where they are increased chance of being harmed. And then also children who might have a history of maltreatment or even generational maltreatment by people who are in authority. And so we see this in refugee-type people who have to fled to countries due to the authorities being abusive or also First Nations families who have had either themselves or grandparents who have been taken away by the authorities. And so those, if you have an experience like that, you often have a distrust of authorities. So speaking up to get help from them is something that those sort of children might be reluctant to do and are more often targeted. Propensity is about the worker and staffing profile.

So we have 3 different types of people who offend against children. There is the determined offender who might also be referred to as a paedophile or someone who is actively attracted to children and seeks ways to have access to them out of sight of others. Then there's the opportunistic offender who is someone who might not be particularly attracted to children, but has a disregard for rules in general. And if they see an opportunity, they don't think the rules apply to them specifically and are quite willing to overstep and will assess whether it is worth their while to take that attempt. And if they get caught, then they get, no, I probably won't want to attempt that. But if it's something they think they can get away with, then it is something that they might attempt. And then there's situational offenders who are usually low-risk takers, They're not attracted to children in particular, but will find themselves in an emotional state where they're seeking comfort or some sort of other satisfying relationship that's because of the stress at home or in the workplace and they're seeking that in the relationship with children, which is also inappropriate. So we want to be mindful that these are the ones that we need to be looking out for.

So organisational risks, this to do with policy and procedure of your organisation. Is it adequate enough to deal with actual situations where you have close knit relationships between staff, which is often the case in healthy staff relationships? People might be hesitant to speak up and report the behaviours of a colleague if they are close friends for fear of jeopardising that friendship. And so there's a culture of not reporting in those types of environments. Where the policies aren't adequate, which I mentioned just a second ago, where there's a culture that dissuades complaints. So if we see someone raise a complaint and then they get shouted down, then that might dissuade people from speaking up in the future. Where the policies and procedures on how to raise concerns or the codes of conduct around behavioural that is appropriate are not easily accessible or talked about. Then people are often ignorant about what shouldn't be going on and don't know how to speak up about it. And also, if there's a culture of not listening to children and respecting their opinions and they we're not actually given opportunity for them to raise their concerns and respond to them.

So there's 4 dimensions of risks and I'm going to provide a scenario now and I want you to think through where those different dimensions of risk fit in this scenario. And so when you're doing your own risk management plans, I want you to think through not just the situational risk, but those 4 different dimensions. So I'll just read out the story in case it's on a small screen for you. But here we have Suzy has been working at the early learning centre for about 3 months. She's really engaging to listen to when reading to the preschool room children. Now Suzy has started to take an interest in one of the 4-year-old boys as she heard that his parents recently separated, Suzy arranged with the mother to look after the boy after preschool on Fridays and take him to the park for a few hours before dropping him home. The other educators were aware of the arrangement and have some concerns, but don't say anything because her position was very hard to fill and they don't want to risk her leaving. So, normally, I would have a poll at this point, but I don't know how to do that on this particular platform. So we're going to think through the different dimensions of risk as we go. And so situationally, thinking about where is the interaction taking place where the child might be out of sight with one educator and not others. And we can see that going to the park is where that out of sight interaction was taking place. So there's your situational risk. The vulnerability is about the child, and what do we know about the child? Well he's recently been through a disturbed home life where the parents have separated and that could be something that could mask other behaviours that might be out of character. So there's your vulnerability risk. Propensity is about the worker. So what do we know about the worker? Well, she's only been there for 3 months, so we actually don't know if she's a good character or not. She's fairly recent to everybody. And organizationally, what is the policy, procedure, or culture in the organisation that might be of concern? And we look down the bottom there, there isn't a culture of reporting if they see a breach of code of conduct. If the code of conduct mentions that you shouldn't be extending relationships outside the role, but people are concerned about that, but don't speak up about it. Then the culture is letting down the safety of this particular child. So you can see in this one scenario, there's 4 dimensions of risk that really need to be addressed in our risk management plans.

So if you do see a worker has created a situation where they have done some reportable conduct, so I do encourage you to do reportable conduct E-learning and training to make sure you're aware of the different categories. But there is a contact number and email address. If you are unsure, you can call 'em up or email them with your scenario without names and ask them, does this meet the reportable conduct threshold at the Office of the Children's Guardian for a worker? And if so, then they'll lead you through the next steps. And if not, you go back to your other reporting procedures.

Now in the reportable conduct scheme, there are multiple categories that constitute reportable conduct. So there's assault, neglect, ill treatment. Offences under 43B and 316A of the Crimes Act are fairly recent additions. So 43B is where you have the power to reduce or remove a known risk to children, and fail to do so, that is a breach of that particular act. And then also 316A, is if you are aware, any adult in New South Wales, if you are aware of a child abuse crime, you must report that to the authorities. And failure to do so is a criminal offence. And those not only need to be reported to the police, but also to the reportable conduct team. Then there's psychological or emotional abuse and sexual misconduct or assault. So misconduct might not be a criminal offence and maybe some sort of grooming behaviours, but assault definitely is criminal offences. So there's the different categories that need to be reported. And looking at the data through the reportable conduct team annual reports, you'll see we've got 3 annual reports up here already. This is because the New South Wales ombudsman used to be where the reportable conduct team was sitting up until the end of 2019. They joined the OCG in 2020. And so we have 3 annual reports since they have been with us. You might look at the top of and go adoption services don't have any reports, they must be very safe. That's just because they joined in after our closing of the annual report period. So we imagine they'll get some data from the next annual report. But if we look at the different sectors that are represented there, you might see yours as the approved education and care services. And if we have a closer look, oops, I pressed the wrong button. If you have a closer look, you'll see in 2020, there was 263 cases reported to the reportable conduct team across New South Wales. We had a dip in numbers in '21 due to lockdowns and less interaction between workers and children in that period. And then we're back to pre- pandemic numbers at 277 for your sector. And this is just in New South Wales. So what types of categories are being reported, particularly for the early childhood education and care sector? We can see that the large number of cases there, biggest being assault at 686 in the last financial year, and down the bottom there, you might see misconduct around the sexual nature is, if you total them together, is around the 500s. Now a lot of the misconduct around sexual misconduct and sexual offences is for children older than your sector, but in your sector, what you'll find is assault, ill treatment, and neglect the majority of cases that are being reported to the reportable conduct team. So we need to be really thinking through how do we address these in our risk management plans. And if we break up the different categories of where the reports are coming from, centre-based care is providing 90% of the cases that are reported to the OCG, and then afterschool care program, 7%, in family daycare, 3%. It doesn't mean those other areas are safer. It just means they are taking up less of the the pool of where the services are provided.

So what other factors that increase the risk in the early childhood education care services area around reportable conduct? Some of the areas that were identified is that there's a higher turnover of staff than other sectors, there's sometimes conflicts of interest where people are hiring friends or relatives and are not feeling like they can report them, and challenging physical layout. So sometimes your environment doesn't lead easily to continued lines of sight. So if we think about centre-based services, reportable conduct allegations of assault, the biggest area that we are receiving, so involves grabbing, dragging, kicking, sitting on a child, punching, hitting, slapping, throwing an object to children, or biting them to show them that biting other kids is painful so don't do it, which also constitutes an assault. And also, in centre-based areas, we get poor management of allergies. So we are getting reports of anaphylaxis being handled poorly and then inadequate supervision. And so we have got reports of leaving children at the service and locking up or harmed by a person harmed by another child, children in unauthorised areas, so the areas that shouldn't be accessed by children, they're getting access to. Being left on buses or losing a child on an excursion or unsafe sleep environments. So these are some of the areas that are of concern that have been reported to the OCG.

And then what I'd like us to think through is out of this list here, should I go through with you one by one? What child safe practices would prevent these types of reportable conduct in centre-based services? So we think about thorough induction of staff, then, yes, that would actually help. If we make sure we are not only screening them, but also making sure that they have been trained in their codes of conduct and in their procedures. Having ongoing training, not just doing it upon induction would help also. Having clear policies and procedures upon, sorry, on supervision of practice. So making sure this is something that is talked about when people are meeting with their supervisors. What is not such a good example is where you make out that this person has a really poor practice, so you broadcast that to the rest of the staff. What you're doing there is actually dissuading a culture of reporting. So we don't encourage that. Where codes of conduct with clear guidelines, unexpected interactions available and trained in people and so people understand and know how to access them is very helpful. And, unfortunately, having a cleared working with children check only prevents people who have been reported in the past from being in your service. So making sure you have those other things in place is very important because we do get about 2,000 bars per year of people who have cleared checks. So having cleared check doesn't make them a safe person. It just means they haven't been caught yet. So think of that as you're doing your risk management. When it comes to out of hours care, some of the reportable conduct scenarios are hurting a child while wrestling with them, so having roughhousing, throwing, or pushing, or shoving a child with significant force and threatening to punch a child. Now when it comes to being alone, there has been allegations of sexual touching or sexual misconduct. And where there's poor boundaries, we have children leaving service unnoticed and ending up in dangerous situations. So let's have a think about this one. I've accidentally left a little blue dot on there. But let's think about what safe practices could prevent these types of reportable conduct in an after school, after hours care. So we have clear codes of conduct that describe expectations of an educator when they're interacting with children. Yes. A good induction on ongoing training of educators. Excellent, yeah. Ensuring educators know what grooming looks like. Indeed. Training on reportable obligations, yes. Only hiring safe people who you know personally. And this would be a concern because this is where the conflicts of interest come in. And if you are hiring someone who you personally know, you may not be likely to, they call that a bias in their. And so you may think they're better than what they are because you have seen them in other contexts. However, you might let your guard be down. Where it comes to guidelines on how and what areas educators need to supervise, very helpful. And responding immediately to educators who breach codes of conduct instead of saving those up for a monthly report. So, yes, there's are lots of areas that you can be working on to reduce reportable conduct incidents. When it comes to family daycare where the scenarios of other adults or persons in the home seems to be a common area of complaints, so children have alleged to have been sexually assaulted by educator's partner or their adult children. Supporting children with diverse needs, so we have had educators either slapping, pinching, or pulling and throwing children when they are unable to control them. And so they're not using proper practice there. And where there's a pool in the home, there have been times where the children have been in the pool area unsupervised. So there's some areas that we need to be thinking through when it comes to risk management.

Now what do I need to do when my report doesn't meet the threshold? So here's some things to think through and I'll do a bit of a poll here. Which of these behaviours would meet the reportable conduct threshold? So thinking about reportable conduct, we saw the categories earlier. So an educator showing a child photos on their phone may be a breach of code of conduct. However, that is not something that automatically becomes a reportable conduct depending on the images though, right? Secretly babysitting children from the service, that may be a breach of code of conduct, but it's not necessarily reportable conduct unless there's something happening while they're babysitting. Smacking a child in the face after they bit the worker, that actually constitutes physical assault. And so, yes, that one would be reportable conduct. Thinking about an educator requesting hugs and kisses from the children, could be grooming behaviours. So it could be a breach of code of conduct, but not necessarily constituting a sexual misconduct unless they actually do get the hugs and kisses, and then that might be. So requesting is not there, not be quite there yet. And then locking a child in the cleaning cupboard until they calm down, then that could actually constitute neglect or ill treatment or even psychological harm. And so all of these fall into a misconduct which need to be addressed, but only some of them fall into reportable conduct. And so we want to know the difference and be trained and identify what those differences are. If you have a phone on you, there is a responding to incidents disclosures and suspicions of child abuse flow chart. It has 5 steps in it. I find it very helpful. Talks about how to respond with the sense of urgency. So the most urgent thing to do down to the least urgent, but all of them are essential. So we want to make sure we're following that kind of procedure and it's up on the walls around the service so that people know and provide it so it's accessible to the families as well so they know what you are following. You might notice in step 3, very important that contacting parents and carers to let them know their child has been harmed is an important step. However, it's only after reporting to the authorities. So this will be sent to you in the handouts as well, I believe. What leads to harmful or offending behaviour? So there is a few hurdles to overcome when someone wants to harm a child, particularly determined offenders. So there's an internal motivation, they really have to want to harm a child, then they have to overcome those inhibitions to doing that. And so there is natural inhibitions to harming someone, like will they get caught. And then overcoming those external impediments, so this is where grooming behaviours come into play. We convince the people who are protecting the child to let their guard down and give that person access to the child. And then overcoming the child's, their own resistance to being touched or looked at inappropriately. And so there's multiple levels for a person to or hurdles for a person to get through. And when they get through them all, that is when the harm is taking place. But hopefully we can prevent many of those in our risk management from getting to the step 4. So the types of offender, we've mentioned a little briefly, but we have committed offenders or determined offenders, sometimes they're referred to. And these are people who actively seeking out to harm children and they're looking for organisations like yours to have easy access to children. Where there's opportunistic vendors, we've seen earlier as well. These people are sometimes looking for opportunities, not particularly attractive to children, but they're seeking opportunity where they can do self-gratifying behaviours and sometimes that involves a child. And then situational offenders are also not particularly attracted to children, but are stimulated to offend because of the opportunities they're given on a repeated basis. So our screening at the beginning is going to help screen out people who have been reported before. So our community offenders, but not all of them. Our opportunistic offenders and our situational offenders, we really need to have lots of risk management in place in order to prevent the harm from taking place. And those opportunistic vendors, you might even be able to flag those in the interviewing process where you're following up referees and asking them interview questions about how they might handle a risky situation with a child. When it comes to grooming, we have complex incremental processes. So this is quite a deep process that they go through. There are 3 main stages. Gaining access to the victim, intimidating and maintaining abuse, so making sure they don't speak up, and then concealing that abuse and so that others don't find out as well. So part of agreeing behaviour includes targeting the adults who are there to provide safety for that child in order to help them give them access. It doesn't always lead to sexual abuse, but sometimes it does. And so that's why we need to be mindful of those behaviours that might lead to that. When it comes to behaviours of concern that may indicate grooming, this is some of the things we need to look out for. So having non-professional or pre-existing relationships with the children in your service, so if they've known them beforehand, excessive self-disclosure, so talking about things in their own personal life with children to being over familiar with them, over involvement in the care of the child, so if they're seeking to care for them with nappy changes and stuff more often than they should, secret behaviour that they're not letting on, preferential treatment, so favouritism towards particular children where they're keeping information from the boss, but are only talking about it with other colleagues where they're embarrassed by what sort of behaviours they're doing, where they're flirting with children, poor documentation about the child's records so when things are happening, they're not being recorded, where there's social media contact. And so this is broader than just early childhood, but it includes them as well. And engaging in play that enables lots of physical contact, so such as water play. And engaging in play that enables the isolating of a child so that they're no longer in a line of sight of other workers. So there's some behaviours that we have noticed will lead to sexual abuses and they can be considered grooming behaviours. So if you want to create a safe environment for children, there's a simple formula that we can follow. And if you increase the effort of someone who wants to harm a child and then increase the risk of them getting caught and remove all excuses for that harmful behaviour, then what you are doing is reducing the chance of harm taking place. And the way you do that, you increase the effort by your policies, your risk management, your codes of conduct, careful recruitment. The way you increase chance of getting caught is by increasing lines of sight, having that situational prevention, having a healthy culture of reporting and training the children to know how to raise concerns and removing excuses will be in your codes of conduct and in your disciplinary policy about professional behaviour. And when it's breached, there won't be any tolerance towards that. And that's what defines a child-safe organisation.

So these are some of the other resources that we have. There's, it's from the OCG. So we have the child safe standards and overview, we have the risk management handbook, which I think would be really nice to go through after this session. You have codes of conduct, empowerment participation, which are about hearing from children and having their input in the way your organisation operates to give them confidence to know how to speak up. If you're the policy writer, there's the child safe policies. Reporting obligations and processes is really helpful. And if you're the person who does the hiring, interviewing, advertising, following referees and compliance checks, the recruitment handbook is for you. Now there's online training for each, well, most of those handbooks if you would like extra assistance in understanding the steps forward with those resources. We also provide video resources. Our resource team has been working very hard. And if you notice the top row there, they're all videos that are shorter than 3 minutes. So they're excellent to meet with your teams and your team meetings, have a discussion about what are these 2 and a half minute long videos and keep child safety on the agenda. And then those bottom ones, they are a little bit longer, a little bit more in depth and looking about recognising abuse, responding to it, and understanding grooming behaviours. And if you would like to do some E-learning, our education people here have worked very closely with the OCG, Department of Ed has worked very close with the OCG to create the most up-to-date E-learning that we have in line with the child safe standards. So for early childhood, the first 3 modules are currently available. The fourth one for leaders is on the way, but the first 3 are for everyone. And that's free. You can do it in your own pace and you'll get a confirmation email after each module that you have completed. And if you would like some posters or flyers, there are lots of resources on our website and we'll put links to those in your handouts. And the Child Safe Self-Assessment Tool. We're encouraging all senior staff in each of the services to complete the Child Safe Self-Assessment Tool. You'll find a link to that on our website. We can take a screenshot of that particular link there. But what it does, it actually gives you a report of how you're going in relation to each of the standards. If you look on the right-hand side there, you'll see how your organization's going in relation to the standards. Your green ones will be your strengths, sort of the apricot ones are where you're doing okay, and then the areas to focus on will be the red ones. And so it'll see, give you a report of where you're up to, and it'll link to the resources and training that can help you strengthen the areas that are of most need.

So if you have any questions, I'm going to hand back to our facilitators today, Kaitlin and others. And if there's any questions, I'll hang around, but we'll see what comes through.

KAITLIN DOHERTY

Thank you very much, Craig. That was a fantastic presentation. You've covered a lot of information in the time that we've had today, so I hope that everyone who has participated today has found the information helpful and you've been able to take away some tips to strengthen your child safeguarding practices at your service. I think we've managed to get around to answering all of the questions that have come through in the chat. So I might, if we move on to the next slide, Craig, I'll just share. So these are the details. If you'd like to get in touch with the Office of the Children's Guardian at all, these are the details for you to get in touch. We have Craig's details there as well. In particular, some key learnings that I hope you can take away from this session are that children's safety is everyone's responsibility and we're all mandatory reporters. And if you see something that doesn't seem right, you must tell someone about it. So Craig has shared a number of resources during today's presentation and we've just added a resource document into the chat that you can download. We will also send this resource document out to all participants following the session today as well. This resource document has all the links to the resources that were mentioned during the session. In particular, if you're finding it difficult to understand what needs to be reported and when, I really encourage you to access module 3 of our E-learning series that Craig just mentioned. This E-learning module is on reporting for service staff, and we have separate modules for centre-based services, like long daycare and preschool family daycare services and outside school hours care services. And please keep an eye out for module 4 coming out in the next few weeks on reporting for leaders in services. Another helpful resource, ACECQA has also recently released a national decision tree to assist approved providers to notify incidents, complaints, and updated information at your service. We've got a link to that also in the resource document that was shared. So, thank you, everyone.

LOUISA

Thank you very much for joining us for this session, "Exploring Effective Supervision Practice."

I'd like to start today by acknowledging the ongoing custodians of all the lands and waterways on which we live, work, and come together today, including the lands of the Darkinjung people where I'm joining you from today.

For many thousands of years, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have lived in harmony with and carefully managed the country for which they have a deep spiritual connection. I'd like to pay my respect to Elders past and present as ongoing teachers of knowledge, songlines, and stories, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples with us today.

Thank you for your enduring care of the lands, waterways, and skies for countless years. They have always been and always will be yours. For millennia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities have worked together to raise children. Elders are the holders of knowledge and culture.

However, children navigate the future. They come first and are prioritised within the community as they take on the responsibility for continuing and sharing culture for years to come. The role of carers is to be sensitive, observant, and responsive to the needs of children, and it's the responsibility of the whole community.

Elders walk with children, effectively supervising and educating them as life happens. Children are always near other community members with supervision, focusing more on being with the children, interacting with them, and responding to their cues and the specific environment they're in. As we explore effective supervision today, let's us be inspired by this wisdom to ensure all children are kept safe, and all Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander learners in New South Wales achieve their potential through education.

My name is Louisa Coussens, and I manage a team called the Quality Practice and Regulatory Support Team at the New South Wales Early Childhood Education and Care Regulatory Authority here at the Department of Education. My team provides educational tools and resources to help you in the sector apply the National Quality Framework, and that's what we're here for today. Before we get into the content, I'll just do a little bit of housekeeping.

We understand that there are a range of ways to learn and absorb information. So if you would like to turn on captions, please go to the top bar of your Teams meeting screen, select More, then select Language and Speech, and then select Show Live Captions, and that should make captions appear at the bottom of your screen. We'd also post these instructions in the Q&A section and pin to the top, so you can turn them on and off as needed throughout the webinar. The microphone and camera functions have been disabled for this presentation.

However, as always, we encourage you to ask questions using the Q&A function. Resources will be posted in the chat. There's a team of experts behind the scenes ready to answer your questions. If you have any service-specific questions though, we just ask that you contact the Information and Enquiries Team with those, either via email or phone. This team is equipped to assist you and ensure you get the right advice. And if we don't get to your question, your live question today, again, please reach out to our Information and Enquiries Team.

Once the presentation is complete, you'll be sent a survey. So we ask that you just take a few moments to complete the survey. It helps us to continue to develop content that is useful for you working in New South Wales services. This session will also be recorded and published on the Department of Education's website. I'm delighted to bring you this session today on effective supervision practices in early childhood education and care services. Effective supervision is a crucial element of what you all do on a daily basis.

We have some of the most vulnerable people in our care every day, with all their eagerness to explore, adventure, and learn. But with this exploration comes risk as children learn to navigate safe and unsafe behaviour and environments. The support, guidance, and supervision that you provide contributes immensely to the experience, learning, and safety of each child.

In our ECE Connect on the road sessions earlier this year, we looked at the Child Safety Review and the 16 recommendations to strengthen existing or consider further safeguards in ECEC to keep children safe. The RA takes the health, safety, and wellbeing of children very seriously, and we're committed to sharing learnings to minimise future risk of harm to children.

We collaborate with law enforcement agencies, the Office of the Children's Guardian, and the Department of Communities and Justice. Through these collaborations, we've identified effective supervision as crucial in enhancing children's safety within a service. Our investigations have shown that incidents occur where supervision has not been adequate. So we're taking this opportunity today to share some scenarios with you to reflect on and relate back to your own supervision practices and those of your service. Effective supervision goes beyond supervising children.

It also includes supervision of staff. Approved providers, persons with management or control, nominated supervisors, and educational leaders have a responsibility to supervise and support staff to ensure a child safe culture within a service. At the end of the session, we'll provide further resources to support your ongoing work to improve supervision practice at your service. Under the national law, supervision is the responsibility of the approved provider, nominated supervisor, and family daycare educator. Effective supervision is key to ensuring children's safety at all times within the service environment. This includes sleep and rest times, excursions, and transportation provided or arranged by the service. So what is effective supervision?

Meeting ratio doesn't automatically mean supervision is adequate or effective. Supervision at its most basic level is simply standing around watching what is happening. Adequate supervision is the minimum legislated expectation, taking into consideration children's health and safety and ensuring all children are supervised at all times through the implementation of policies, procedures, and processes. In practice, it means that an educator knows where children are at all times as they monitor their activities actively and diligently, and can respond immediately, particularly when a child is distressed or in a hazardous situation.

The National Policy Framework outlines that adequate supervision occurs when children are being supervised in all areas of the service by being in sight or hearing of an educator at all times, including during toileting, sleep and rest, and transition routines. Adequate supervision also includes children being unable to access unsupervised or unsafe areas in the service, and only leaving the premises with an educator, coordinator, nominated supervisor, parent or authorised nominee. Clear daily processes for supervision during meal times to proactively manage risks related to food allergies and anaphylaxis are also essential.

Adequate supervision should be active. The Queensland government has developed 6 easy steps to support services with active supervision.

Let's take a look. The first of the 6 steps is set up the environment, maximise visibility, access, and furniture. Consider furniture height, children's use of equipment, its location and the risk level of experiences.

Step 2 is position educators. Educators should try and face the majority of the children. Consider supervision points before an experience begins, including other staff members in the environment to reduce risks. Stay close to children who need more help or those engaging in higher risk activities.

Step 3 is scan and count. Continually scan the environment. Be aware of where everyone is and what they're doing. Look for hazards, develop a system for regular headcounts. Also, make sure that records are accessible and up to date with who is authorised or not authorised to pick up each child.

Step 4 is listen. Listen for signs of potential danger, such as splashing water, crying, choking, or silence.

Step 5 is anticipate children's behaviour. So use what you already know about each child to anticipate what they might do and what might happen next. Create suitable challenges that children are ready for and support them to succeed.

Step 6 is engage and redirect. Use what you know again about each child to plan engaging experiences. Take part in experiences with children, keep children busy, and active. Observing and assessing children's behaviour and the physical and social environment for risks and hazards is just one aspect of effective supervision. It also involves carefully planning rosters to ensure educator ratios are maintained at all times, and being responsive to and actively engaging with children to support their learning, agency, and wellbeing.

Another aspect of effective supervision that I want to mention is the supervision of staff. To a achieve a truly child safe culture, It's vital that staff are both supervised and supported to report concerns. Staff should be provided guidance on child protection practices, including understanding grooming behaviours. Approved providers should ensure that recruitment and induction processes are robust and rigorous, making sure that those employed are suitable before they commence.

Effective supervision is pivotal to creating environments where children are safe and supported while in the care of a service. Consider the supervision practices at your own service. What processes do you have in place to assess environments before children enter them, such as posters or artwork that might reduce lines of sight? How do you identify if equipment has been moved and could be hindering effective supervision?

What do you have in place to ensure all children are supervised effectively at all times? What changes do you make to supervision when children are in situations that present a higher risk of injury? For example, during water play or woodwork experiences on an excursion or during transportation provided or arranged by the service.

How are educators supported to understand when and how to adjust their level of supervision, depending on the area of the service and the skills, age mix, dynamics, and size of the group of children they are supervising? How do you include children's input into safety issues, such as the correct use of equipment and the environment and, where appropriate, setting safety rules? How does including children in safety discussions support effective supervision? Now here's an overview of the law regulations and quality standard which have the greatest impact on supervision.

Section 165 of the national law tells us that it's an offence to inadequately supervise children. This law can be used in prosecution where harm to a child occurred due to inadequate supervisory practice. In addition to this section of the national law, there are several regulations to support the implementation of adequate supervision of children in early childhood education and care. These regulations require the effective use of supervision to protect children from harm and hazard, collectively aiming to enhance children's safety through adequate and effective supervision within the sector.

Regulations 84B, 84C, 1012F, 102AAC, and 102C require supervision to be considered and included in service policies, procedures, and risk assessments for sleep and rest, excursions, the safe arrival of children, and transporting children. Regulation 112 asks that nappy change facilities are designed, located, and maintained in a way that prevents unsupervised access by children.

Regulation 115, relating to centre-based services only, mandates the design and maintenance of premises to facilitate supervision of children at all times. This regulation applies to how services use their spaces to support adequate supervision.

Regulation 170 says that reasonable steps should be taken to ensure all staff follow the policies and procedures required under Regulation 168. Approved providers must meet their obligations relating to supervision as outlined in this section of the law and these regulations. Not meeting your obligations can increase health and safety risks for children at your service. The New South Wales Department of Education, as the regulatory authority for early childhood education and care services, requires approved providers to meet all their legal obligations. And where these obligations are not met, the regulatory authority can take a range of actions against a service, an approved provider, a nominated supervisor, or educator in line with our approach to compliance policy and the national law and regulations.

Quality area 2, Children's health and safety, particularly element 2.2.1, Supervision, is the national quality element that requires, at all times, reasonable precautions and adequate supervision, ensuring children are protected from harm and hazard. Approved providers must ensure that policies and procedures are in place for health and safety, including sleep and rest for children, excursions, transport of children, and the safe arrival of children travelling between services. Each of these policies and procedures needs to consider supervision requirements related to each area, and the approved provider must take reasonable steps to ensure the policies and procedures are followed.

Reasonable steps recognises the need to embed effective supervision practices within the service, wholly supported by policy and procedures developed with risk management principles in mind. Continuous review and improvement of supervision practices should be included in routine service meetings, management discussions, staff induction, and ongoing training. The needs of children change rapidly as will their supervision needs. Clear communication channels ensure all staff are aware of their and others' responsibilities to keep children safe at all times. How do you communicate changing daily needs of individual children to all staff? How are staff made aware of any identified additional risks on any given day?

For instance, an electrician is coming to the service, a child has come in with a broken wrist after the weekend. How do you adjust your supervision plan to support the child in their daily routine?

All staff must understand what effective supervision is, how to act upon it, and what factors pose a risk to effective supervision. On that note, we'd now like to take you through some scenarios in different ECEC settings, and discuss some of the effective supervision practices within them. Although each scenario is in a particular setting, many of the practices can be adapted across all settings. To help me with this, I have Kate from the QPRS team. Hi Kate. Thanks for joining us.

KATE

Hi Louisa.

LOUISA

I'm going read the scenario, and then I'm going to ask some reflective questions of Kate. You can reflect on these scenarios as I'm reading them and see if you can relate them to your own service context. Our first scenario is a family daycare service and involves supervision practices across sleep and rest activities.

As part of daily routines, children have sleep and dressed periods that often vary day to day, depending on the individual. On this particular day, the educator is caring for a 14-month-old, 2 4-year-olds, and one 3-year-old. At around 11:00 AM, the educator notices the 14-month-old showing signs that they're tired, and decides to put them down for a nap earlier than usual. The other children are disappointed.

They wanted to play outside, and that usually happens at this time of day. The educator explains that they will go outside just a bit later today. The educator has alternative activities ready to go in case of bad weather, and is able to direct the 3 older children to these while she settles the younger child.

Once the child is the asleep, the educator actively participates in the activity herself, ensuring that she conducts a physical sleep check on the 14-month-old every 10 minutes.

A bedroom directly off from the play space is used as a sleeping area with the door left open to ensure that the educator can maintain line of sight and hearing for all children at all times, particularly while she conducts the regular physical sleep checks. Kate, what can we take away from this scenario?

KATE

Thanks, Louisa. It's so wonderful to see that the educator has planned ahead to have a backup and is prepared for changing daily events. This has allowed her to keep all the children in her care engaged and supported in their needs. So if we have a little bit deeper look at her supervision practices, she's planned a use of her space to ensure supervision can occur across the sleep room and the play spaces, making sure that she can see and hear all the children at all times. She correctly uses physical supervision to conduct checks on the sleeping child, and this includes seeing the child's face and lip colour, the rise and fall of their chest, and checking on the child's positioning as part of each check, confirming that the space was safe from hazards and including within the cot.

LOUISA COUSSENS

And what are some other considerations that can support effective supervision and keeping children safe?

KATE

So in addition to what this educator has in place, they may also be documenting their sleep checks as part of their daily processes, and doing regular checks of all the environments to ensure that they're up safely with reduced risks by removing any obstructions to effective supervision.

This can allow them to adequately supervise all children as they move between spaces and attend to individual needs, including sleeping nappy changes and toileting. So risk assessments are a great tool, and these must include supervision considerations for sleep and rest as well as hazards and risks within the environment.

So this educator could also use a risk assessment to ensure any hazards or risks in the area that the older children are in while she's settling the younger child are addressed before she moves away. While this educator has ensured the sleep and rest area is adjacent to the play space, every environment is different. So a thorough risk assessment that considers the unique context of the environment, the ages of the children, their individual needs, and various situations is important to identify any risks that need to be addressed to ensure effective supervision of all children.

LOUISA

Thanks, Kate. In another FDC service, we have an educator planning an excursion to a local park that features a splash pad within an enclosed play area. She has 4 children under 5 years in her care, including a 6-month-old.

The park is approximately 2 blocks from the educator's house and will involve crossing a road. In preparation for this excursion, the educator walks the route to the park on the weekend, taking note of any hazards along the way, she completes a risk assessment for the travel and the park itself, paying particular attention to water as a hazard, and has physically inspected the splash pad to make sure there are no deep puddles that may pose a risk to young children. She has noted any blind spots in the park and worked out the optimal position to be where she can see most of the park. As part of the risk assessment the educator created, she considered supervision and any additional adults that might be needed to assist with adequate supervision on both the walk to the park and when inside the park.

She determines that one other adult will support all children to be effectively supervised as they move around the space while also allowing her to feed and change the 6-month-old and take other children to the bathroom as needed without compromising supervision of any of the children. The additional adult will allow the 2 older children to be holding the hand of an adult with the 6-month-old and next youngest in a double pram when walking to and from the park. Kate, tell us what we can take away from this scenario.

KATE

What an absolutely fun excursion this sounds like. So parks and splash pads can be great, but they do require additional supervision due to the water hazards that they present. This educator has determined that an additional adult is required for adequate supervision. So this covers regulations 1012F, and it's great to see that she's also physically checked the park and the splash pad.

She'll be able to direct her helper on the day to positions in the park that allow them to see and hear each child at all times. She's chosen a location where part of the park, including the splash pad, are within an enclosed fence, reducing the opportunity for children to leave the space without an adult.

She's considered supervision while on the move and again determined that an additional adult will allow supervision of all children during the journey. She's used a double pram to enable all children to participate safely in the excursion and this can also help to allow her to attend to the individual needs of children on the journey to the park and back to her service.

LOUISA

What are some other considerations that can support effective supervision and keeping children safe during excursions?

KATE

So the educator could also consider what the children are wearing to support supervision, such as high-vis clothing or vests and also being in one solid colour so they're easy to spot amongst other children at the park. They could do regular head counts or have other processes in place to ensure that all children are in sight at all times and have open and clear communication with the other adult accompanying them.

In preparing the excursion, they may have considered the time of the excursion to avoid children's routine sleep times. They may also consider the age of the children attending the excursion, their toileting needs, and any behavioural or medical conditions including medications that may need to be taken.

The educator could do visual sweeps of the environment when they arrive and throughout the excursion to ensure that it's safe as things could have changed since they last visited.

If the park is overcrowded when they arrive, they might decide that it's not safe to continue with the excursion at this time as a supervision would be impeded with the number of people already there. These can be included in a risk assessment to be completed before the excursion. In the lead up to the excursion, the educator could also talk with the children about road safety and being in an environment with adults that they don't know.

LOUISA

Great. Now we know each educator setup is unique, and we remind family daycare educators to discuss these with your approved provider, along with any considerations specific to your environments. Let's look at an OSHC setting, Kate.

We have a large OSHC service on a school site here that transports children from 2 additional schools to the service premises every afternoon, as well as catering for children of the school on site. The arrival of the OSHC buses can be busy and complex as parents, teachers, school buses, and children are all on the move.

The service has prepared transport risk assessments and safe arrival of children risk assessments that include disembarking procedures and supervision considerations. On this afternoon, educators prepare for the arrival of children. They have a brief meeting to communicate any changes to the daily routine and discuss any medical needs of children enrolled for that day.

Following this, 2 educators moved to the front school gate to greet arriving buses. Each is equipped with a list of children who are expected to be on the bus that day. As the first bus of the day arrives and children disembark, a child slips on the step resulting in a cut knee. An educator who was travelling on the bus with the children quickly grabs the first aid kit he took on the bus and attends to the child on the ground. The educator who was accounting for each child as they disembarked moves the group to a safe space away from the curb and confirms that the vehicle check has not yet been conducted.

The educator attending to the child was about to but attended to the hurt child instead as a priority. He continues to supervise the group as he assists the hurt child, and the other educator conducts the vehicle check or looks before they lock. The second bus then arrives. Children disembark and, following a head count, records are made confirming each child's attendance. Vehicle checks are conducted by the second educator positioned at the school gate.

All children are escorted into the school grounds to enjoy an afternoon of engaging and fun activities. So Kate, what's going on in that scenario? What should we take away from this one?

KATE

There is indeed, Louisa. So in this scenario, the service already has in place the risk assessments and that's guided them to place 2 educators to meet the buses.

Perhaps the risk assessment identified a scenario like the above as a risk or perhaps it was identified with the possible arrival of 2 buses at the one time. Either way, the service had in place adequate supervision at the school gate to ensure children could disembark and move to the service premises safely and with the support even when an unexpected event occurred.

Through established procedures, they're able to account for each child, ensure that no child was left behind on a vehicle, attend to the injury with the appropriate items being readily available on the bus and ensure the children all arrived safely to the service.

LOUISA

So what about some other considerations that could support effective supervision in keeping children safe?

KATE

So similar to the previous scenario, having easily identifiable clothing for the children, like a service hat, wristband, bag, tag would assist in the supervision, especially in this initial outside the gate where there's a lot of busyness, multiple buses arriving and departing.

Clear communication with transport providers, schools, families, and other education or early childhood services to ensure the safe arrival of all of the children.

Services could use the OSHC Supervision Toolbox, which is a free resource available in the department's ECEC Resource Library. And although it is designed for the outside school hours care audience, there is many practices that are easily transferable into different service types included in the resources.

LOUISA

Absolutely. Great call out, Kate. And I think we're going to provide links and information about these resources towards the end of this session. Our second OSHC scenario takes into account the developing independence of many OSHC children in care. A vacation care service this time has planned an excursion to a 10-pin bowling alley. Children are transported by bus to and from the venue and will have enough time for 2 games and some lunch. Children in attendance vary in age from kindergarten through to year 6. The service has policies in place that stipulate the use of a buddy system for any offsite toileting requirements. An educator has been assigned toilet supervision for the day and positions themselves in a bowling lane closest to the bathrooms ready to assist if required. A rowdy group of older teenagers who are not part of the service or the excursion are hanging out near the entrance to the bathrooms. At this time, a year 6 child approaches the educator and asks to go to the toilet urgently. The educator firstly reminds them to get their buddy and secondly explains that there are some older children being rowdy near the bathroom and checks if it would be okay if the educator were to stand outside the door just in case they needed them. The child was happy With that suggestion. Kate, what can we take away from this scenario?

KATE

This is a great scenario because there's always a tricky balance between safety and independence, especially for our older children. In this case, the service has procedures in place to allow the independence and age-appropriate toileting while utilising peer supervision as a safety tool. In this scenario, the educator identified the increased risk with the interactions with the public at this excursion. In this case, they couldn't just say, "No, it's not safe, you'll have to wait," as it's very important that we maintain the dignity and rights of all the children, including their right to privacy. Instead, the educator proposed a solution that provided readily accessible supervision and assistance, but respected the privacy needs of a pre-teen. Independent toileting and supervision is a common issue in outside of school hours care with many services accessing separate toilet blocks physically separated from the service premises. Your service needs to consider the positioning of educators in situations like this and ensure that although direct supervision may not always be appropriate, there are ways to ensure children have access to educators just in case, and that it's supported through practices like the use of a buddy system.

LOUISA

Right. Thanks, Kate. Now for our last early childhood education and care setting, long daycare and preschool. Although I hope you can all see the many intersections between safe practices and differing service types and how some supervision practices can easily be adapted across environments. A long daycare service employs a centre cook to prepare all meals at the service in-house. Lunch today is a delicious butter chicken with rice and vegetables. As lunchtime approaches, an educator discusses with the cook children's medical and dietary needs. The cook has used the meal checkpoint resource to list all children in attendance today with dietary requirements and has adjusted the menu accordingly.

For those of you unfamiliar, the meal checkpoint resource is another freely available tool in the ECEC resource library. It encourages a 2-point check on all food served to children who have medical or dietary needs. So here the educator and the cook review this list together, checking against children's medical management plans and communication plans to ensure they're up to date on any changes to the child's medical conditions, to the child's conditions or dietary restrictions.

After confirming all details are correct, and safe, and adequate meals have been prepared for each child, another educator arrives to help serve the meals. The 2 educators then review and check each meal against the meal checkpoint resource as it is given to the child.

They discuss a particular child with a significant dairy allergy and discuss where to seek this child to reduce the risk of contact allergy while still offering the child an opportunity to enjoy a group meal with their friends. Educators then position themselves around tables ensuring that each child is supported during their meal as per the services mealtime supervision plan. So Kate, what effective supervision practices are we seeing here?

KATE

So in this scenario, it's wonderful to see the meal checkpoint resources are being used as a tool to assist supervision practices. Although much of this scenario might seem like work in the background and not really supervision, clear communication between the cook and the educators and the educators themselves supports the effective supervision through information sharing.

Having those 2 person checks in place is effectively supervising what gets placed in front of each child. It matters. Placing educators at strategic points around tables assist mealtime supervision and allows a service to plan for additional support for individual children as needed.

LOUISA

Great points. Supervision is not just being present as I said earlier. It's about the planning and the preparation as well. Our next scenario is a topic close to everyone's heart, risky play.

A preschool here operates from a local council building and has a number of supervision challenges due to the design of the building. In particular is an outside area that stretches in an L-shape around the building. Large sections of the yard are not visible from the other side and vice versa. The service has developed supervision plans that place educators at key points around the yard and include an additional educator to move between the spaces when and where required.

Additionally, walkie talkies are used on every occasion that children are outside. On this particular day, an upcycled water play table has been donated to the preschool and the children are so excited to use it. It isn't big enough, unfortunately, for everyone to use at the same time, so they plan to have groups of children alternating so that everyone gets a turn. Given water is involved, a thorough risk assessment is conducted.

As part of the risk assessment, the already in place supervision plan is reviewed with extra responsibilities given to the additional educator to assist in managing the transitions from group to group.

This allows one educator to supervise the children interacting with the water table, another 3 educators to maintain usual position and supervision, including the already in place additional educator to assist in transitions of group to group. Kate, what can we take away from this scenario?

KATE

Well, risky play is something that will generally require some informed supervisory practice, knowing the risks and how to work with them whilst ensuring everyone is safe. This service already had acknowledged a design challenge with a supervision plan and put in place an additional educator to minimise the risk, the lack of vision across the outdoor play design.

Adjusting the role of the additional educator to support the particular activity on the day is a great example of why regular review and a risk assessment is imperative to supporting the effective supervision practice. This additional educator provides direct assistance to children, ensuring they move from one activity or area to another safely. The use of walkie talkies as a tool to support supervision is a great idea. Communication between educators in a setting such as this is a key component to effective supervision.

As an easy example, in this scenario, the educator supervising the water activity could radio the additional educator if a child needed to use the bathroom or could radio an educator around the corner that a child was leaving the table and heading to the slide near them. Designs and building plans may be hard to alter, but supervision plans aren't. It's really important that services test their supervision plans with the whole team, including children and families as they could have a perspective that you may not have considered.

Review them regularly and change them according to the need, activity, or enrollments

LOUISA

Great. I love that point that building plans might be hard to alter, but supervision plans certainly aren't. All right, our last scenario is about practices being carried out before children enter an environment.

Here, a nominated supervisor of a long daycare services includes discussions and documentation on the service's supervision policies, procedures, and practices in the induction process for all staff, including casuals and volunteers. They have rostered themselves on the opening shift and complete an environment checklist as they move through each space, checking for hazards and any equipment that might have been moved.

As they're completing this check, they notice that artwork has been displayed in the window between the toddler room and the nappy change and toileting room. This prevents a line of sight between the 2 rooms and could impact supervision. They also notice a dramatic play, grocery stand, has been moved into a corner and draped with a blanket, and this creates an area that is no longer visible from the majority of the room. They remember completing the Free Child Safe Standards Training on the Office of the Children's Guardian website, and that this could create an opportunity for someone to do harm to children.

While they are aware that children may well have requested these changes to the equipment, their safety is the priority here. So they remove the artwork from the window, place the grocery stand back to its original position, and put the blanket away.

They also make a note to discuss the changes with the room educators when they arrive, and add supervision, including environment setups and displays, to their next staff meeting agenda, along with some reflective questions for all staff to discuss and to consider. Kate, what can we take away from this scenario?

KATE

So this scenario is great in highlighting how planning rosters, professional development, staff inductions, checklists, discussions, team meetings, and critical reflections can all have a positive impact on effective supervision before and after children enter environments. The nominated supervisor was proactive in ensuring the educators were given information about the service's supervision expectations during induction.

They used their knowledge from professional development to assess hazards in the environment. They're aware that moving of equipment could have been from children's choice and discussing this with educators could lead to discussions with children about safety and things to think about when they're having input into equipment placement.

They considered staff members skills, knowledge, and understanding when developing the roster, and implementing an environment checklist to support the identification and removal of hazards that could impact supervision and children's safety. They removed the hazards before children enter the environment and made a plan to prevent further incidents and to work with the whole team to improve supervision.

LOUISA

Great, thank you, Kate, and thanks for your time talking through these scenarios with me this morning.

KATE

Thanks, Louisa.

LOUISA

As we mentioned, there are numerous free resources available through ACECQA, the New South Wales Department of Education as the regulatory authority for the early childhood education and care sector, and peak bodies, organisations such as Red Nose Australia and New South Wales Family Daycare Association websites. A PDF of some of these resources regarding supervision available on each website will be put the chat for you to download and easily access in support of today's session. Thank you again to everyone who has joined us this morning. We've covered a lot of ground. I hope you've come away with some tips, resources, or strategies that you can implement into your daily practices. It's important for us all to remember that the regulations are there to provide routine, structure, and safety. Every scenario involving children requires adequate risk controls. And remember, for supervision to be effective, you need to assess each environment and address all hazards and risks. Be actively involved with children as they learn and play, respond to their individual needs, and clearly communicate with other educators. Just watching is not enough. Effective supervision keeps children safe. I'll leave you with that thought. Thank you once again. Thank you to the team. It's been lovely to have you this morning and enjoy the rest of your day. Goodbye.

EMMA

Hello. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us for an information session for Early Childhood Teaching Scholars. The focus for the session this evening is supporting ECT scholars to make payment requests. I am Emma Lindsay, Manager of Programs for Children and it's my absolute pleasure to welcome you all online this evening. We recognise that many of you may have joined after a long day educating our early learners, and we hope that you are able to gain some valuable insights about your requirements as an ECT scholar with the Department of Education.

I just wanna take a moment to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the various lands on which we all work, live, and join this session this evening, as well as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people participating in this ECE Connect session today. I pay my respects to elders past and present, as well as recognise and celebrate the diversity of Aboriginal people and their ongoing cultures and connections to the lands and waters of New South Wales.

Before I hand over to the team to talk you through the details and tips regarding the scholarship payment requests, I'd like to go through a few quick dot points on housekeeping. So firstly, your microphone and video will be disabled during the presentation. We'll be using Menti at the end of the session. A Menti allows live collection of information. In preparation, please have a mobile phone available so you can participate. The session will be recorded and available on our website following completion of the webinar, there are automated closed captions that have been enabled during this session for accessibility and a final remark as we kick off this session, I'd like to clarify that all advice provided this evening about preparing for a payment request is general in nature. For specific guidance on your individual ECT scholarship, we ask you to refer to your individual documentation and please seek assistance by emailing us directly. We'll be sharing details on screen shortly.

So tonight you're also going to hear from two other members of the ECT Scholarship Team, and we're gonna take a quick moment to do some brief introductions before we begin. Allow me to first introduce myself. I am Emma, I'm a manager working closely with our ECT Scholarship Team. I am incredibly proud to be a long serving department educator and leader, and now supporting the great work in early childhood education with early childhood educators like yourself and the great work that you do every day. I'll now pass over to Linda to introduce herself.

LINDA

Thank you, Emma. Hi everyone. My name is Linda. I am a Senior Programs Officer supporting the team to administer the early childhood teaching scholarship program. I have experience as an educator and have worked in diverse roles that support public education outcomes and I'm pleased to be here today, to be here with you today. Hanne, you're up next.

HANNE

Thanks, Linda. Hello, I'm Hanne. I'm a Delivery Officer in the Scholarships Team. Some of you may even have spoken to me before on the phone or by email. I'm really proud to have worked in the early childhood space, the department for several years, and I previously spent a couple of years working in an early childhood service. I consider it a privilege to support our early childhood sector through my work. I will throw back to you, Emma.

EMMA

Thank you and perhaps a little bit about you all this evening joining us, we understand online that there's a mix of scholars here tonight. You come to us working right across the state and sector in a variety of services as well as being from a variety of scholarship cohorts. The vast majority are actually from our most recent 2023, '24 cohort, and there's a fairly even mix of experience in terms of those that have and haven't had experience submitting payment requests previously. What this tells us is that it's a really great opportunity for us to clarify how payment requests work, as well as understand some of your insights and queries to ensure that we can streamline and improve our processes for future payment request rounds. Over to you Linda.

LINDA

Thank you, Emma. We are going to spend the majority of this session providing you with some tips and insights on making successful payment requests. During this session we may be able to address general questions you may have this evening, but please note we are unable to respond to individual questions about your specific circumstances. For example, details of your individual Funding Notice. For general questions though, as they come to mind throughout the session, please use the Q and A function at the top of your screen during this presentation. We have some members of our ECT Scholarship Team here behind the scenes, and you may have spoken with them before, Jess, Nelson and Grace. They'll be keeping an eye on the questions. We'll address these towards the end of the session. If you have questions specific to you, please send this question to us via email to ecec.scholarships@det.nsw.edu.au.

Before we dive into the payment request process, it may be useful for us to all pause and clarify the key terms we'll be using. These terms are important as they make up aspects of your scholarship payment requirements. Let's start with payment request rounds. What is the payment request? A payment request round refers to periodic opportunity at different points across the year provided to scholars seeking payments from the department as part of their scholarships.

To ask for a payment, scholars needs to log into Smarty Grants and submit a payment request. We run 3 payment request periods each year, February, July, and November. Types of payment. Initial payment. This refers to the $1,000 distributed to the scholar during the first academic session of study. Typically after the scholar provides proof of enrollment past the university's census date. Milestone payment. This payment is made when scholars progress through their study and degree and completed subjects and units. You can find information about relationship between your units completed and your payment entitlements in your Funding Notice. Practical unit support payments. Up to 2 payments of $2,500 each, so that's a maximum total of $5,000 are available to support scholars to complete a practical unit as part of their degree. You may also refer to these as professional placement, practical session or practical experiences. Smarty Grants. This is our preferred platform for the majority of our scholars to submit their payment requests.

As you can imagine, the ECT Scholarship Team process a large volume of payment requests. The documents you wish to provide must be uploaded via Smarty Grants when payment request periods are open for assessment. You'll be advised via email when that time will be. Any document received via email will not be accepted, but please note for ECT scholarship cohorts onboarded before 2020, there is a different payment request process. These scholars will have been provided with a PDF payment request form. They must fill this form and attach an academic transcript to an email and send back to us in the relevant period. This form has 3 key dates on it and payment periods differ from the newer scholarship rounds. We'll encourage those scholars to refer to your Deed of Agreement for detailed information. For the majority of our scholars, Smarty Grant is our preferred platform. Please do not submit via email.

Now what do we mean by sufficient evidence or sufficient documentation? This is the supporting material you are required to upload before submitting your payment request. This is often your academic transcript. You are actually not expected to pay for an official academic transcript to qualify for milestone payment except for your final milestone payment. You can access your unofficial transcript through your university portal online. Please work with your university student centre if you would like further support with this, but remember, seek this support before a payment round closes so that you have enough time to be ready for submission. And lastly, another important term we always refer to is your Funding Notice. Each individual scholar receives a Funding Notice that is initially prepared at the beginning of your scholarship with us alongside with your Deed of Agreement. This is a documentation that is specific to each scholar's context. The Funding Notice is based on the progress made in your studies and based on the program. Essentially, we need to reference your transcript you submit that shows you have reached a certain stage of your degree that will qualify you for your next payment. If you have not yet received a Funding Notice, this may mean that you have not yet begun your study journey or we have not received enough information to generate one. Remember, everyone is at a different stage of their scholarship journey. If you have submitted a payment request in the recent July round, the team are currently working on assessing your transcripts right now. You'll receive a Funding Notice sent to your email before you receive a payment if you have provided us with enough information. For tips to submit an eligible payment request, I'll now hand over to Hanne.

HANNE

Thanks Linda, and a quick reminder before I continue, please feel free to drop any comments or questions about these tips in the Q and A function now or as you think of them.

Our team are currently assessing payment requests made not too long ago in mid-July. Each payment request is manually assessed by the team including me, and it can take some time to ensure that we're getting the details right. We are working through batches of requests beginning with those who submitted eligible evidence during the July request period. The good news is that means some of you will start to receive payment soon. However, we are still in the process of assessing the many requests received and we're working really hard to have all payments made by late October. You may have colleagues or friends who receive a payment notification before you do. Please rest assured that all submitted requests are under assessment and we will be in touch to let you know an outcome either way by late October.

So we've captured some key tips we think are important for all scholars to note when making a payment request. These tips will be useful to you for submitting your next payment request, which may be in November depending on the progress of your coursework.

The first tip, number one, is to add us to your email account contacts. We email you from our scholarship email address, which is ecec.scholarships@det.nsw.edu.au. You can also see it here displayed on the screen under number one. The email address is used to send information about payment rounds and notify you of the correct links to use as well as any key dates and any relevant information or updates about your scholarship. Due to the high volume of scholars we support, we have to ensure we open and close the rounds fairly for everyone. This means it's important to jot down those relevant dates for the payment rounds, which we email out to you in advance of the round opening in Smarty Grants. Adding us into your contact list ensures you don't miss a single message from us.

Our second tip is to work with your university early. Preparation is key to ensure you're providing the correct information to make a payment request. On the right here we have a checklist outlining what we need to see clearly in your documentation or transcript. Your university will be able to point you into the direction of where to access this and you'll need to ensure that your transcript clearly shows your full name, the university you're enrolled in, the date you received or downloaded the document, your degree name, or sometimes just the degree code, dates for when your subjects are completed and under which session in the year. Clear subject codes and credit points associated with that, all subject results and your completion and enrollment status. Also, please ensure the transcript is the right size and nice and clear for us to read.

Now tip number 3 please refer to your Funding Notice every time you make a payment request for your scholarship. Your Funding Notice is crucial to ensure the progress made in your studies qualifies you for your next payment. Remember we said that every scholar has their own Funding Notice that we send out, which is calculated based on information you submit early in your scholarship journey. Please be aware, these can also be revised and are called revised Funding Notices. We revise your Funding Notice when your situation changes or when you submit a transcript that shows this might be needed based on your units of study.

Tip number 4 some scholars but not all may be eligible for practical unit support payments. Only two practical unit support payments up to $5,000 in total will be provided. So if your degree includes more than two practical units, you can decide when the payment is best used. You can only be paid for a particular practical unit once. If you fail a withdraw from a practical unit after payment, you are unable to receive another practical unit payment for this unit.

Based on recent experiences, we also wanted to clarify a couple of things around practical payments which are also communicated in your deed. First, practical units need to appear on supplied transcripts either as enrolled or completed. Typically, units will not appear on a transcript ahead of the current academic year and we only pay for practical units that show enrollment on transcripts after your award date. So for the 2023 to '24 cohort, that date is the 9th of October, 2023. This means that as soon as a practical unit appears on your transcript as enrolled, you can put this into a next payment request. While your scholarship is not intended to reimburse costs, its purpose is to support your study and we appreciate that practical units do have financial impact. Support preparation of payment requests can be beneficial.

That said, if the unit is planned but not currently enrolled, this means it isn't eligible for payment. And second, scholars need to explicitly apply for practical payments through Smarty Grants during a payment request period. They're not automatically made. Our team do not review transcripts looking for enrollment or completion of practical units as a standard practice, you need to alert us that you'd like the unit paid when you lodge through Smarty Grants during a payment request period. Practical units follow the same payment schedules milestone payments, and as mentioned, scholars will be notified by email when payment requests are open for submission in February, July and November each year. If you have any questions about your submission, we encourage you to contact us before the payment request period closes. We are more than happy to help. Remember though, we can't assess documents for eligibility until the payment request period closes. So it's important to make sure your documentation is eligible before submitting. And finally, make sure you do a final check over all of your details and then hit Submit. Thank you. I'll hand back to Linda.

LINDA

Thank you Hanne. These are really, really great tips. So there are likely to be questions or comments from you based on some of these tips. So we encourage you to keep submitting your questions in the Q and A function. I know Jess, Grace and Nelson are currently sorting them out to address shortly. Now let's determine what to avoid when submitting a request. This is very important.

Firstly, we have mentioned that we can't accept documents via email from most of our scholars. They can only be considered if they're submitted through Smarty Grants to ensure that we do not miss any attachment in our inbox.

For point number 2, we've highlighted incompleted transcript. To the right here, we have got an example of what will be considered insufficient documentation. In this example, we can see this actually looks like a transcript, but if we look a little closer we can see some key information are missing. Please avoid submitting documents similar to this. As you can see in this example, there are several things that are missing. The university official letterhead, the document date, when your subjects were completed, your results, and your completion and enrollment status. This example will mean the team unfortunately have to conclude this payment request as not payable or not eligible. The scholar is able to submit a further request at the next payment round opportunity, but our aim is to ensure you are paid for what you believe you are eligible for if you have the correct documentation. With this in mind, it is always wise to avoid submitting any documentation that we can't clearly read. Any transcripts submitted that are small in image size or blurry in quality means unfortunately we can't assess and therefore your payment requests will be considered as ineligible.

Number 4 relates back to your Funding Notice. If you do not have a Funding Notice yet, please ensure you're following these steps to ensure the right documentations for us to generate a Funding Notice for future payment request route. For scholars who already have a Funding Notice, please refer to your Funding Notice. This helps you to determine if you are indeed due for a payment and at which milestone credit point percentage. We have also popped in here to avoid skipping any details in our correspondence to you. All emails we sent to you are mindfully written in a way that ensures that you have all the details you need to meet the requirements of a payment round. We are deeply committed to improve our process and communication to support payment requests round. We may not always get it right, but please note we are always listening and value the feedback we receive.

For example, we've recently heard that it'll be helpful to provide a document that explicitly details each step with screenshots on how to use Smarty Grants. So for at least half of you on the call tonight, you do not yet have the experience in using Smarty Grants as a platform for submitting payment requests. So this is something that we'll be preparing ahead of the next payment round in November. There will likely to be other suggestions that come through tonight and in the future that can help us improve your ECT Scholarship experience and ensure more efficient milestone payments into your bank account. I'll throw it back to you, Emma.

EMMA

Great, thank you, Linda, and thanks, Hanne. These are important insights and I know that they're based on some of the examples that we see regularly during payment request periods and that's a great segue into our final two items for this evening. One, we wanna address some of your questions before we then seek your feedback on suggested supports that we have in mind via Menti. I just wanna take a moment to reiterate again that every scholar's journey is different.

Our experience tells us that no 2 scholars Funding Notices are the same, nor the pace or the pattern of study that individual scholars complete their qualifications, they vary, so again, the advice that you're hearing tonight is general in nature. For individualised queries, please reach out to us. I wanna take a moment again to allow you to jot down, if you need, how to reach the team if there's specific support or questions that you need either during or before a payment request round. I know it's been said, but we're unable to pre-assess any documentation before the round to check that it meets requirements until that payment round has closed and our assessment period commences.

However, we are able to assist you with updating your details. This might be your bank account, your address, a name, for example, recently we have had some issues with emails bouncing back. So encourage you to keep in touch with updates to your email address as well. You may have other questions, which you are welcome to ask us. Please do reach out. It makes it much easier to streamline the communication within our team if you include your full name, your scholarship ID, and a clear outline of your inquiry and a member of our team similar to the ones we've heard from tonight, we'll be in touch as soon as possible.

Let's now look to some of the questions that we've received from you this evening. Thank you to Jess, Nelson and Grace. You've done a great job behind the scenes here, pulling together, grouping some of the questions. We can see that there are some similar themes to make sure they're reflective of the questions that we've got coming through.

Again, I feel like I'm in an insurance ad, but our guidance here tonight is general in nature. You'll need to refer to your own sets of documentation that were sent to you as part of the onboarding process based on your individual context for the specific application of how it stands to your scholarship. So first question that we have off the ranks this evening, how do you determine my total scholarship amount? Linda, let me throw to you on that one.

LINDA

Thanks, Emma. This is a question that we receive quite often. So scholars can receive up to $20,000 in scholarship funding as well as up to $5,000 in practical unit support payment for eligible cohorts. Your Funding Notice actually breaks down your schedule of payments and your total scholarship amount. The calculation includes factors such as your current units completed and any recognised prior learning as known as RPLs. Any units completed prior to your award date are not eligible for payments. If you do have specific questions about your circumstance or believe the information in your Funding Notice isn't correct, please reach out to the team via email and we'll help you. Thank you, Emma.

EMMA

No worries. Thank you. And that sort of leads into our next question. What do I do if I haven't received my Funding Notice and where would I find it? Hanne, over to you.

HANNE

That is a great question. If you submitted a payment request in the recent July round, the team are currently working on assessing those transcripts now and you'll receive a Funding Notice via email if you've provided us with enough information to create your Funding Notice. So just keep an eye out on your inbox and hopefully get it, get back to you soon. Back to you, Emma.

EMMA

Thank you. Thanks for clarifying. Another question we've had come through. This one's from Peter. "My transcript does not have all the information that you stated on the checklist. What should I do?" Linda.

LINDA

Thank you, Emma. So if your transcript does not contain all the criteria mentioned early, please reach out to your university directly. We actually do accept multiple types of documentation as long as they meet our criteria. We also send out a guide for submitting eligible documents when payment requests open. So please review before submitting your documents through Smarty Grants.

EMMA

Great, thanks, Linda. Another one as we get through them, this one's from Elizabeth. "Will we be told if our documentation that we provided recently was not sufficient?" Hanne.

HANNE

Perfect. So you'll receive a payment outcome notification once the team has finalised our assessments. So expect to hear from us around late October. Don't worry if you're not successful in this round. You can submit in the next payment request round and they open three times a year, February, July and November. So we'll email you when you can submit your request again and that outcome notification will let you know why you were unable to be paid in this round.

EMMA

Yeah, thanks, Hanne, I think that's a really good clarification. We don't want any scholars going into the next payment round not knowing and submitting the same evidence again. Another one we've got a few scholars want to know what happens if they miss a payment round. Linda.

LINDA

Thanks, Emma. So payment requests open in February, July and November of each year as you have heard from Hanne. We'll email you when payment requests open and attach clear instruction to submit eligible documents through Smarty Grants. So I will encourage you to always keep an eye out on your email, including your Junk and Spam folder, because you will receive a lot of communication from us when the next payment request round opens. Thanks, Emma.

EMMA

No worries, I also think further to that, Linda, sometimes you may also receive emails that come through to us from perhaps DocuSign or an automated email once a payment has been made. Generally the majority of communications, as you know, will come through from our ECEC scholarships inbox from the team, but they may be one or two with connected documents as they pertain to some of the actions. Looks like we're keen to give everyone a bit of an early mark and and make the best use of time. But I'd like to include one more and I think this is a one that is often on scholars' lips and understandable. When will I receive my payment? Hanne, I'll pass this over to you.

HANNE

Fantastic, thanks, Emma. So if you have submitted a payment request in the most recent round in July, the team are currently working really hard to assess all of your documentation. We hope to notify you of the outcomes in October. So if you submitted eligible evidence, you can expect a payment by late October. Thanks.

EMMA

No worries. Thanks Hanne. We've got a few more questions that I can see here. Some of those are individual. We are going to make sure that every question is covered. We're going to package these up and send them to you shortly over the coming week. I might hand back to you, Hanne, to take us through the Menti.

HANNE

Fabulous, thank you so much. So before we wrap up today's session, we wanted to ensure you have an opportunity to provide us with some feedback on how we can better support you with preparing your evidence or just in general as part of your scholarship journey. So we have a QR code up on the screen. Please use your phone if you have it handy and we'll also pop a link in the chat if you'd prefer to do this on your computer instead.

Basically we wanna hear from you, how can we better support payment requests and the ECT Scholarships experience? So this is an opportunity for you to let us know which of the following would be most helpful in your opinion. We'll be preparing some additional supports and resources and we're interested in which ones you think will be the most valuable in the short term. You'll see some options on the screen as you access the Menti that you can vote on. I will read them out for those of you who are still getting in to that Menti, but they are a comprehensive guide on how to submit payment requests, a Q and A sheet on submitting payment requests, a step-by-step document on how to use Smarty Grants, a webinar on understanding your Funding Notice, a webinar on changes to your circumstances, a more comprehensive welcome pack when accepting an ECT scholarship or something else.

So if you have any ideas that you don't see listed here, please do email us at the scholarship's inbox. Or alternatively, you could pop a comment in the Q and A function now. Having a bit of a look, it looks like there's a lot of movement in that Menti, which is fantastic. It looks like so far a comprehensive guide on submitting payment request does seem to be the most popular with a document on how to use Smarty Grants, which I gotta say is not terribly surprising I think. It does look like they're submitting payment requests. Does seem to be the point of most support needed, which again, is not terribly surprising and is really great to get your feedback on how you'd like us to help you to do that.

Beautiful. As we said, you're more than welcome if you think of something later on or if you have some suggestions, make sure that you do email us at the inbox. We're always here to listen to any ideas that you might have. And definitely looking at the information you've given us here, there's some immediate improvements to our supports and approach next payment round opening that we can make. We'll leave this open a little bit longer, but I wanna reiterate, this session has been recorded and it'll be made available to you as soon as possible. We're expecting this to probably be around a week. So for some of you that arrive late, you will have access to the full session and also everyone will be able to review it prior to the next payment request opening in November. Thank you so much. I'll hand back to Emma.

EMMA

Thanks, Hanne, and thank you to everyone joining us this evening and for your feedback. It is what we hope to be the first of more series of sessions that provides practical guidance and context to your ECT Scholarship. We've spoken about the best way to keep in touch with us. So here again on screen is our email address. We have some great human beings here in the team. You may have recognised some of their names already spoken to them before. We do appreciate each and every one of you making the time at the end of your day and in between study and all that is balanced in our home and full lives outside of work.

We extend our very best as you continue or perhaps commence your studies. On a personal level as an educator and a parent of both small and large children, I absolutely value the great work that you do every day for our early learners. I have seen and felt the incredible impact my children's educators have had in their lives in family day care, long day care, community preschool settings. So thank you. Till next time.

LYNN

Welcome. I'm Lynn Connolly and I'm joined today by my colleague Sam Berridge. We are from the Centre of Excellence and on the call today we also have our colleagues, Amanda Tighe and Jen Morison, along with some of our other colleagues from the department. Happy Monday and if that is a bit of a stretch for you, we're at least very happy to be here with you today. I'm going to start us off by reading an Acknowledgement of Country. So we recognise the ongoing custodians of the lands and waterways where we work and live. We pay respects to elders past, present, and as ongoing teachers of knowledge, songlines and stories. We strive to ensure every Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learner in New South Wales achieves their potential through education. I acknowledge that I'm joining you today from the land of the Gadigal and Wangal people and acknowledge the various lands that you are joining from today. So to get us started, we're going to go through a review of the agenda. Today we're going to cover the importance of transitions. We're going to discuss some of the benefits of successful transitions. We're going to talk about everybody's favourite subject, the Transition to School Digital Statement, and unpack it from various different angles. We're going to explore some evidence-based key practices, and unpack some practical considerations for practice. We're going share with you some of the department's resources and then we'll discuss next steps. The Q&A is open, so please feel free to pop in any questions and comments, but we may not get to it in the session because we've got a lot of content to cover, but we will follow up after the session. So to kick us off today, we would be really keen to hear about one activity that you've done this week or month to support children's transition to school. So going to give you a minute just to share in some of those experience or activities that you've been working through in the recent future. And again, this is something that we will consolidate all of these great ideas and share with you after the session.

JEN

We just have a hand up from someone in Turramurra.

LYNN

If they wanna just pop in their comment into the Q&A.

JEN

Q&A.

LYNN

Yes. Can see some really good examples coming through. We have excursions to the local primary school this term. That was always exciting. I remember those days. Those visits are always so special. Okay, keep popping in your activities and experiences and we'll collate all of those and share them with the group after the session. So the Department of Education's strategic plan does focus on ensuring that every child makes a strong start in life and learning by supporting successful transition to school. Establishing collaborative relationships between schools, ECEC services, and families and communities is essential to achieving this goal. And how we think about and how we talk about school readiness really has shifted over the years. And traditionally we've focused on school readiness was about preparing children for the academic demands of school and sometimes it even involved introducing school curriculum into our ECEC environments. I for sure have been guilty of that over my career. But what the research is telling us now is that this approach does not lead to successful transitions. Instead, effective transitions are built on supporting a child's social emotional wellbeing, fostering curiosity, and instilling a love of learning and creating that sense of belonging. School readiness is about ready early childhood services delivering quality, proven transition programs with schools, including families and sorry, ECEC services including schools and families as part of this process. It's about ready schools. So schools reaching out to ECEC services and including families and communities in their transition programs. It's about ready communities supporting families and resourcing them accordingly and it's about families feeling ready and confident to navigate this journey for their child. It's a collective responsibility, everybody working together to support children in this smooth transition to school. So research shows us that children who are proactively prepared for these transitions, so that's starting earlier than the year before school, are more likely to attend school more regularly, develop a strong sense of belonging, confidence, and love of learning. And transition to school is the optimum time to embed this. There are 4 key themes that we see in the research over and over again. The first one is that transitions are critical periods for not just children, but for families, teachers, and educators and an effective coordination and support during each of these critical phases are essential for continuity of learning, healthy social and emotional development, and set the tone for the further education experience. We also hear that effective transitions involve families and carers, making them feel valued and included as part of this process. This involvement is linked with better outcomes for children. We hear that children who've had positive transitions experience better academic success and were more likely to engage in their school career. Effective transition coordination improve the quality and consistency of transition. So it's really about that coordinated effort between all of these key stakeholders. So we're going just click on, there'll be a QR code coming up and you can scan this and it shares a resource that the department has that explains the link between the EYLF and the Early Stage 1 and that is linked to also the Transition to School Digital Statement. If you miss out on any of the QR codes along the session, please don't worry, we'll be sharing a resource with you at the end of the session. So let's explore other ways to strengthen these transition practices. One moment and we'll watch this video together.

NARRATOR

Starting school is a big milestone in a child's life and a positive transition to school can have a real impact on their longer term academic, social, and wellbeing outcomes. In the year before Kindergarten, strong relationships and planning between schools, families, and early childhood education and care services are essential for supporting a child's transition to school.

KARINA (PRINCIPAL)

We know that the impact for a successful transition is that the students come in and are much more confident in the school environment and ready to learn and it really does set them up to be those lifelong learners moving forward throughout their primary years and beyond.

CHILD 1

I was so excited to go to school because I was going to learn new friends.

CHILD 2

I was really excited to learn maths.

NICOLE (KINDERGARTEN TEACHER)

Parents are very much a part of our transition process. They're the keepers of the information on their child and so we do everything we can to get that information from the parents through interviews and through information sessions.

KARINA (PRINCIPAL)

The Transition to School Digital Statement is easily accessible and it gives you a lot of information about each individual student that's coming to school directly from the early childhood settings where they're spending a lot of their time prior to that year of school. It is also highly valuable for our learning support team teachers and our assistant principals of Early Stage 1 as it it gives them that detailed information before the students enter our school site.

TRACEY (PARENT)

I was so inspired watching my son's preschool get him ready for school and a thirst for learning. He was ready to learn because of the work the preschool and the Kindergarten teachers did.

NARRATOR

We all have a role to play in supporting every child to have a positive transition to school as they start their journey into Kindergarten and beyond. To learn how you can help prepare children for a life of learning, visit our website.

LYNN

Your hard work and effort, particularly with the statements really does matter. It has a significant impact. The transition programs that you create really are shifting outcomes for children. Let's explore some data that we've been collecting. During our consultation this year and last year it was really great hearing from school teachers the impact the work of ECEC professionals like you have on children. Teachers shared numerous examples of how they, and most importantly, the children, benefit from the transition to school statements that you create. Before we share some of these examples, let's explore the data that we have been collecting. So to date, we have 3,349 services registered on the Transition to School Digital platform. This represents a significant engagement across the sector. A total of 62,404 transition to school statements have been created digitally, acknowledging that many services are using paper-based statements. But this is a testament to your commitment to ensure that every child is supported as they move from your service and into schools. So of these statements, 42,397, what a tongue twister, were sent to public schools and 18,719 were sent to Catholic or independent schools. So in total, 1,540 public schools have received statements digitally and they are making a real difference in how schools approach transitions. Your efforts have not gone unnoticed. We've been tracking the data and more importantly, we've been hearing directly from schools. Teachers are utilising this information from the statements to enhance their practice and their teaching. Your work is making a real difference. So let's talk about statements and the ways to maximise their impact. So the Transition to School Digital Statement has been designed to bridge the gap between the early childhood service and the primary school by communicating a child's prior learning and development to their future teacher and of course to their families. It aligns with the EYLF, but it also aligns with Early Stage 1 syllabus. And what we've heard from schools as we've been going around and talking to teachers and principals is that they are using the statements in a variety of ways depending on their unique processes and context. And so building relationships between the school and the early childhood service really helps you to understand the specific needs and processes of each school and then it helps you to sort of plan the best time to create these statements. We've heard that many teachers review the statements before meeting children during orientation because it helps them to focus on key areas and really understand, helps them to understand what and perhaps who to pay attention to during these visits. Often we were hearing things like, "The content of these statements are gold. I go through them in great detail because they really have a really good insight of what I need to be paying attention to before these children attend the visits." They talked to us about up to date photos and how that really helped them to be able to match the child with either the learning and the development. So using a real and up to date photo if you are using photos is really helpful. Some teachers are using them before they start school. So before that first day and that pupil free day, they go through and make their own notes based on your insights and professional judgement . And that helps them to prepare their teaching strategies or even their learning environment. Some schools use them as part of the process of deciding who and how they group children together. So they've had their orientation visits and they sit down together as a team and then they decide how they're going to group children. And the transition to school statements came up time and time again as a resource that they're tapping into. The other thing we heard was that teachers really wanna understand as much as they can about who this child is, how they learn, any behaviours that they have, so documenting this is really, really critical. We're going to share with you again another QR code that you can scan now or you can just wait till the end of the session and we will share it with you. But there's a video that you might wanna watch about how to create statements. So what are some of the things that we need to consider before or while we're thinking about creating a great statement? So when crafting your transition to school statement, it is important to focus on the information that will be most valuable to that teacher and other school staff. Your insights help them to create positive and supportive learning environments for each child, so considering the following. What are the key aspects of the child's development or disposition that they should be paying attention to? What behaviours or triggers should the teacher be aware of? Sorry, it's frozen. Okay, so we're going to read the strengths-based example. So this is just one way that you might be writing a statement. And as I'm going through, I want you to think really critically about what I'm really saying about this child. Read between the lines and use the Q&A function to sort of put in maybe some words that are springing to mind when you hear this description of Lynn. "Lynn is an enthusiastic learner who thrives in interactive and hands-on learning environments. Lynn's energy and curiosity are evident and she learns best when she is actively engaged. She brings lots of energy to group activities." So thinking about what this might actually mean and how this might play out in the environment. "She's making great strides in learning how to manage her excitement during group activities and benefits from clear guidance and consistent routine. Providing Lynn with specific roles or tasks during activities can support her to engage positively in her learning." I'm really keen when you hear that to hear your reading between the lines. What am I saying about this child? What does this teacher need to be paying attention to? Have a look at the examples. "Engaged learner." Yeah. For sure. A very energetic, engaged learner. Let's think about how else this could be written using non-strengths based language. And as I'm reading through, think about the tone and the impact of writing it in this way. "Lynn often struggles to stay focused during group activities and can be disruptive. She needs a lot of supervision and guidance to participate in group activities. Lynn has trouble taking turns and collaborating with others. It's important to manage Lynn's behaviour to prevent her from negatively impacting the environment." Think about the tone of these words. Think about what the impact might be for the Kindergarten teacher reading this and who they start to paint a picture of before even meeting this child. So strengths-based language is a really critical way of giving a Kindergarten teacher the information that they need so they still understand that this child has high energy needs and gives the teacher strategies about how they can support this child. Notice that different impact. Okay, so these are some other ways that we can use strengths-based language when we're talking about children's learning and development. So instead of saying, "Sam is disruptive in large group activities," you could try writing, "Sam thrives in smaller groups where she can focus and engage with verbal prompting." So that thrives gives that teacher a clue about ways that are going to support Sam and also gives them the teaching strategy because we know for Sam, giving her this verbal prompting is effective in helping her to be successful in her learning. Instead of saying, "Sam finds listening and following instructions difficult in new situations or experiences," which is important for a teacher to know, you could try, "Sam shows significant progress when provided with clear step-by-step instructions, which enables her to grasp new concepts more effectively." This is still giving the Kindergarten teacher the information that she needs, but also they're getting some teaching strategies that have been effective for this child. Instead of saying, "Sam struggles to play positively with her peers," you could try, "With teacher support," a very key clue here, "Sam is developing her social skills by increasingly taking the initiative to engage in cooperative play and taking turns with her peers." It's the same information, it's just using that strengths-based language. Instead of writing, "Sam can be disruptive during times of transitions," you could try, "Sam responds positively to verbal reminders when transitioning between activities." Instead of saying, "Sam finds it hard to participate positively in group times," you could try, "Sam participates constructively in group activities when instructions are clear and she has time to process." So you're still giving teachers the information that they need to know about who is this child, how do they learn and what are the teaching strategies that best support them in their learning? We know the statement is one way of implementing effective transition practices, now let's consider actions that can strengthen your practices further. Over to you, Sam.

SAM

Thanks, Lynn. So best practice models for transition to school indicate that rather than focusing on getting children ready for school, we need to shift that focus to ensuring that our schools, our services, and our families are ready to support the transition of young learners. The evidence tells us that some of the best practices to ensure that services are ready to support transition to school include providing opportunities for age appropriate play-based learning experiences, ongoing collaborative partnerships with schools and community, understanding that transitions are a journey and embedding transitions practices year round, seeking authentic and meaningful ways to engage and partner with families and working with schools along the way to ensure a collaborative approach to and understanding of transition to school. I'd like you to take a moment to have a bit of a think about your current transition practices and strategies and how they might align with these 5 evidence-based best practices. So have a think about are there areas that you think you're particularly strong in? Do you see any areas straight away that you think might be an area for growth? There could be areas that you used to be quite strong in, but post-COVID, you just haven't regained that momentum. Or maybe your service is particularly strong across the board for all 5 of these. So either way in a moment, we're about to pop up a Menti on the screen and what I want you to try and do is to rank these 5 practices in order from what you think is your strongest practice to what might be an area for growth or an opportunity space. So putting a practice in at number 5 is not saying you're not doing phenomenal things in that space, but it's about really applying that reflective practice and being able to identify where you might not be as strong as you are in other areas. So we'll pop the QR code up, you can access the Menti and click on the practices in the order that you want to rank them.

LYNN

I'm wondering, as you see these numbers, is this what you would've expected the order to be? Is anything in here that you see a surprise? I dunno about you, Sam, but when I see that a range of year round transition practices is number 2, oh, it's still high, that's really great to read. I remember being a preschool teacher and sometimes it wasn't until the second half of the year that I'd start to be thinking about transition to school so it's good to see that you guys are thinking about it more broadly. I'm really interested if you guys wanna pop in that Q&A, is there anything that jumps out at you? Anything that you find to be a surprise? Sharing some of those examples of what these year round transition practices might be as well? Because like I said in the beginning, we'll collate all of your great ideas and share them so that you have this bank of resources that you can refer to. Jen, is there anything that you're seeing in the chat that's jumping out that we might have missed?

JEN

Not as yet. I think everyone's busy with the Menti. There are some great examples here of some year round practices that people are doing. We have a transition to school book with all school children who are attending. Children can write their name and put a photo of themselves in their school uniform on the page, which is really beautiful.

SAM

Perfect. So what I want you to think about now is the evidence-based practice that you identified as your strongest practice. I want you to think about what that looks like in your context. So what sort of activities or strategies make you so successful in that practice? Stay on that Menti link or use the QR code again to rejoin if you've already exited. And what I'd love for you to do is share what you think is your most effective and impactful strategy for transitions. Perfect, so the QR code's up there again, if you need it.

LYNN

There's some really great examples that's really demonstrating the evidence-based practices that you guys are engaging with. You can see school visits, hands-on learning, communication, collaboration, relationships being the strongest examples. School visits.

JEN

Lots on self-help schools. I know I used to do the lunchbox thing in term 4 where they'd learn how to unpack their own sandwich and take it outta the cling wrap.

SAM

It looks like we've got some really great examples coming through there and what we'll do is we'll actually compile all of these and share them out with you post webinars so that if there's something in there that you hadn't thought of before, it might spark some ideas for you. What we've also done though is we've put together some practical tips that we can go through with you now that you could implement right away that could enhance your transition practices. So these include things like, and I know I have seen some people pop similar things into the chat. So incorporating props and scenarios into your dramatic play areas that mirror the school environment. This can help children become familiar with what they'll actually encounter when they go to school. While it's really common to plan visits to schools, don't hesitate to invite school staff out to your events. There's a lot that's happening in early childhood services that schools would love to participate in. While we know that schools are busy and might not always be available, extending the invitation can foster stronger connections. We hear from schools over and over again how keen they are to interact with services, to build relationships and to be able to work with you and with families earlier on to support children. So you could consider sending a list of your events and possible dates for the year ahead to your local schools so that they could factor in those key dates and budgets to attend events and start to provide children with familiar faces. You could start your year by plotting out your transition activities as part of your events calendar and actively include transitions focused events. You could utilise social stories. So leveraging the templates, whether your own or those that are provided by the department, to familiarise children and families with the school environment. You could display images of schools and create stories that prepare them for what's to come. You can also continue focusing on what you are already doing. So building children's independence, helping them to learn how to manage their belongings, develop resilience, and fostering those positive interactions with peers. These skills are really critical as they move into that school environment. So you could work together with families to look for opportunities to encourage children to develop independence and self resilience. It's also important to remember that transition to school is a significant adjustment, not just for those children but for families as well. So one major shift that we know that families will face is in communication. In early childhood settings, families are used to those really frequent updates. So daily photos, learning stories, even meal details. In contrast, we know that schools typically communicate a lot less frequently. We know that many families experience a bit of a shock when they transition to school and they no longer get those daily updates or those photos and then all of a sudden they feel a bit disconnected. So while transitions practices ramp up during the year before school, there's also behaviours and practices that you can implement as part of wind down practices to help manage those expectations of families and prepare them for what actually comes next. As some practical things you could do would be to hold an information session for families or add a Did You Know section in your newsletter with some of these key points. You might think about using some of the department templates and resources that can help you develop your year long transition plan in collaboration with a local school to ensure that both the school and the service have a shared understanding of best practices for learning and transition for children. Lastly, when writing transition to school statements, think ahead, project that child into their future school environment and consider what information would be most valuable for their new teachers to know based on the environment the child will be going into. This can help smooth that transition and ensures that the child's needs are understood. I wanted to take a moment to invite you to pop into the Q&A, if there's anything that's come up so far across the Menti or the slides that's made you think differently about your current transition practices. The Q&A is open, so if anyone wants to pop in their reflections, that would be wonderful. Maybe people are still processing. If you've got reflections as we go, please share them, we'd love to hear them. So let's go back to the Menti activity where you ranked your current practices. Now we've reflected on your strength. What I'd like you to reflect on now is that practice that you put in fifth place. We'll pop a list in the chat in case you can't recall what the 5 were and which you selected as fifth. So once again, I wanna reiterate putting it in fifth does not mean that it's a weakness for you. So that you could be doing really phenomenal things in this space, but compared to the other 4, this is where your opportunity for growth might sit. So as you reflect on that fifth evidence-based practice, I want you to ask yourself some guiding questions. So the first one is, do you implement this practice at all? So are you doing anything that aligns with this? Have you done anything in the past? Is anything happening in that space right now? The next question I want you to ask or to reflect on is what sort of strategies or activities are you currently implementing in that space? So what types of activities, how often do you embed them? What are you currently doing? And then have a think about what are the blockages or challenges that you might face to implementing strategies in this space? So are there things that are stopping you from implementing things? Are there things that are limiting how much you can implement? So what kind of poses a blockage or challenge for you? And then on the flip side, what could enable you to implement strategies in this space? So what supports or resources would help you to implement strategies here or to overcome those barriers that you face? Then have a think about who do you know who already does this well and how might you be able to learn from them? How could you leverage their knowledge and skill sets to enhance your own practice? And then finally, what is one single idea, activity, or strategy that you could take back to your service today to enhance your transition practice in this area? So it could be something that you previously were doing that's dropped off, it could be something that you've seen in one of the comments or that you've heard today. What's something, one single thing that you could walk away and implement right now? So we're going to put the Menti slide back up and we'd love for you to share that single idea, activity, or strategy that you could go back and implement. And we'll be collating these as well so that we can share this with the wider audience and share best practice across the board.

LYNN

So you can see contacting local schools to ask for their support. Relationship building with schools is coming up. More collaboration with schools. Inviting the local schools to events. Especially if you've got an in from a family that's attending the local school and your service that's often a way of strengthening those relationships. Excursion to the school. And that can just even be utilising their yard and going and having your lunch there or having a play in the space. Holding an information evening for families. Providing families with information throughout the year. That was such a big eye-opener for me as well, especially when you are a parent transitioning to school. That was such a culture shock that I just wasn't expecting and didn't really consider myself in that journey. So I think those things are really helpful, bringing families along that journey with their child, helping them to feel prepared, helping them to understand how to navigate the complexity of the enrolment, all the challenges that come along with selecting a school.

JEN

And Lynn, there's a great example in the chat, considering the families and how to prepare the families for school because as you'd mentioned, Sam, communication generally drops off once they attend primary school and as a parent you might feel like, "Oh, I don't know what's going on." So there's some great reflections about services that hadn't really considered the fact that that communication drops off and what does that mean for a family? So preparing the family for that in the future as well. You are not going to know everything that happens in your child's day.

LYNN

When we were speaking with schools, it was the thing that came up quite often as one of the number one complaints they get from families around this, you know, big gap between the information they were receiving in early childhood and then what feels like this disconnection. And it really is just, they just weren't prepared for this shift in communication. Some really great examples of things that you're going to change, yeah, and work on.

SAM

So as I said, we're going to collate these and we will share them out with the wider audience, which I think will be fantastic. So a great little bank of resources for everyone. So what we've done so far in this session is we've looked at evidence and reflected on practice, but we can't lose sight of the fact that transitions is a year round practice. So to support you, we have a wide range of resources that we want to share and these can hopefully assist you in navigating the transition space with schools, other services, families, and communities. So we offer a wide range of transitions resources on our website, and these include best practice guides and resources and tools that are designed to help support your transition practice. While we encourage you to explore the website in depth, many of these resources would be helpful for families, offering guidance to help them navigate the transition to Kindergarten. In the meantime, we'd like to highlight a few key tools that might be particularly useful. So a PDF version of this resource list with hyperlinks will be placed in the chat now that you can download. But some of the ideas or tools that you might be interested in utilising include tools that can help you access, sorry, tools that you can access and use and share with families called Social Stories. So these help children as they develop their sense of independence. These social stories can also support with developing socio-emotional skills in children to build resilience and set them up for success in a new context. One of the resources we've included is a freely accessible social narrative tool. So you can use this with your children to begin to familiarise them with primary school. You could connect with your local school to get images of the various areas that are named in the social narrative template. These narratives can be an important resource when we prepare children for change, for new environments and for life transitions. They support that continuity between settings by explicitly illustrating details about the setting, things that typically happen in that setting, and the actions or behaviour that are typically expected in that setting. Another practical strategy could be to create a photo wall in your room and display photos of some of these key areas of a school. This can be a really great strategy, especially for those visual learners, to help establish familiarity and build confidence levels in some children. There's a lot of resources available to support services and schools in using that transition statement as an information sharing tool. This includes professional learning, meeting templates that can help guide conversations between stakeholders, and tools to support educators to have some of those more challenging conversations with families. There's professional learning linked in that handout to help support schools and services to partner to give children a strong start to school. And there's a number of other resources included, which can support you with conversations with families and carers around transition. There's QR posters that can direct parents to relevant information, as well as the parent and carers hub, which has resources to support families with transition to school. There's resources that can support schools and services to create a shared understanding of what and how learning looks by understanding that continuity of learning and how the EYLF and Early Stage 1 curriculum work together. So we hope that by highlighting some of these freely accessible tools and resources that we can support you in your transition practices. So let's take a quick look now at one way that you could utilise these resources.

LYNN

As we support families and carers through their child's transition to school, it can be helpful to focus on these key check-in points. This ensures that they feel supported and confident as they navigate through this journey. So you can see that we've plotted it out and we've started 18 months prior. Here are these critical milestones. And each family will of course have a unique journey. But this just gives you that high level overview and ideas and ways to engage with families. So whether it's by sharing them in a newsletter or on one of your online learning platforms like Story Park, talking to families and showcasing these resources during your meetings, one-to-ones, these are just some ways that you can utilise these resources. So 18 months prior, you might wanna start tapping into this resource to support you to have conversations with families that can help have some of the challenging conversations or conversations that are talking about children's learning and development. 16 months prior to the child starting Kindergarten we really encourage you to share with families a school finder because they have to start thinking about the right fit for their family, what are the schools in their local area? These kind of tools can help them to navigate these really complex choices and decisions they have to make. Encourage families to access early intervention. And again, we have this hyperlink that we'll share with you later, to understand their options, including NDIS if this is applicable to a family. 12 months prior to the child starting Kindergarten. We're encouraging families to visit sites such as the enrolment page to understand what documentation that they'll need prior to enrolling a child. There are translated versions of this. We've got 38 different languages to support culturally and linguistically diverse families and communities. 9 months prior you might wanna think about encouraging families who may need specific access requests. So if there needs to be an adaptation made to the building for a child with a disability, you want them to be able to get a jumpstart on that because these things take time. So this is one resource that you can be engaging with. 6 months prior to the child starting Kindergarten encourage families who may need Before and After School Care to start exploring those options, to be thinking about the care for their child. Encourage families to actively participate in orientation visits and programs that the school might be offering, and these, again, like I said, you can share just by popping links into your online platform or sharing them through your newsletters. I'm going to share a QR code with you guys. That's just down here. And this is just the environment timeline tool. That's a really great resource for families that you might wanna share. So let's recap together. Transitions aren't just about the child being ready for school. School readiness involves ready schools, ready ECEC services, ready families and communities. And the best transition practices are rooted in collaboration when key stakeholders work together to ensure that children have the best support that they need in order to have these successful transition to school. Success in transition comes from continuous improvement, self-assessment, refining those practices and enhancing the experience we offer to children and families. And we're also committed to this process. We're currently involved in reviewing our offerings of transition resources so your feedback really does matter. We wanna hear from you. Visit our website, explore the resources that we share with you after this session, but also that are freely available on the website. Where can we improve? Your insights will help us to continue to grow and better support these educational transitions. We really are grateful for your time today. Thank you for joining us and we look forward to continued collaboration as we strive to support every child's journey. Enjoy the rest of your day.

KATARINA

Good afternoon. My name's Katarina. I'm the manager of the Workforce Experience Team in early Childhood Outcomes. Firstly, wanted to welcome you all today to the session "Building a Network of Support," which is part of our mental health and wellbeing series. Wanted to start with an Acknowledgement of Country. I'm joining from Wangal Land today. I want to acknowledge the Elders that are past, present, and emerging on the land that I'm coming to you on and acknowledging that you're all coming from or joining from Aboriginal Lands. Reflecting on the topic of networks and communities of support, I really like to reflect on my learnings about Aboriginal ways of living, being, and doing, and thinking about the way Aboriginal communities are so well connected in family and community, connected to the land, and sea, and culture, and identity. And their learnings have really shown that it's integral to health and wellbeing from their perspectives, and I think that's really great to take into our session today. Just to get through a little bit of housekeeping, as you can read there, the microphone video and chat functions are disabled during the webinar. What you are able to access to interact with us is the Q&A function, which will be available if you have any questions throughout the session. If we can answer them on the spot, we will, depending where we're at in the session. But otherwise, there will be a Q&A dedicated session at the end with our panel members in which we'll endeavour to get through as many questions as possible. The session is being recorded for any of your colleagues or friends that you think might be interested but weren't able to make it today. It will be available on our website shortly after the session. We've also got automated closed captions enabled. So, getting stuck into the content. We're really looking at a session designed to provide an overview of network building approaches used in ECEC, with a focus on those that enhance workplace wellbeing. As I mentioned before, my name's Katarina Rodriguez, and I'm really focused in a team, focused on workforce wellbeing, mental health and wellbeing, and looking at strategies and opportunities to support the ECEC workforce. I just wanted to pause in this intro and just say I'm very aware that today is R U OK? Day. And there is a link to the webinar topic and the importance of supporting each other and creating networks where we can go to each other to reach out. And it goes both ways, as a supporter and someone that might have times of needing support. Where stress and burnout is common in the ECEC sector, it's a good thing to reflect on. We all know that good mental health is vital for the delivery of high quality education and care because we want the best for our little learners, our kids. And if us as adults and educators in the ECEC sector are not feeling great, there's a clear connection on how that impacts on children. We know from the evidence and research we've done in my team that building a network of support is a proactive and effective way to open up these conversations and address things like burnout and stress early on. Now as we move on, I just wanted to also call out as part of what we're doing today that mental health and wellbeing is a big topic, and there are a lot of layers to it. However, today we're just sharing some research and focusing in on experiences around building collegial networks. We're not delving into the topic of specific mental health conditions. So I just want to pause and say if that's the sort of support you do need right now, we recommend you reach out to your employee assistance program provider delivered by your employer or organisations, such as Be You or the R U OK? Day resources available. We also have published some links to some of those supports in the chat component today. So, in order to get really stuck into things, the way we're going to go through our session today, I'll begin with some brief scene setting. Then we'll move into a prerecorded conversation with Dr. Marg Rogers about the Peer Support Mentoring program pilot, which is currently taking place in some Queensland ECEC services. This will be followed by a live discussion with Narelle Myers who is the director of Bermagui Preschool. And we'll discuss her experiences of building a network of support in her service and the value of these networks in regional settings in particular. And we'll finish off with some learning and sharing of strategies and ideas in our Q&A, and we encourage you also in the Q&A to share your own experiences, and we'll have Narelle and Marg join us for that. So to understand the topic a little further, when you signed up for this webinar, this is what you would've seen. We acknowledge here that the sector is facing challenges that affect mental health and wellbeing of educators, and that leaders want to ensure the best possible outcomes for their team. Building networks of supports isn't going to eliminate all the burnout and stress, but it is part of the proactive approach to creating a positive workplace culture. Now, my team and I, and I refer to my team, not just myself, because they've done an incredible job in some research that they've been doing. And these research findings, they emphasise the benefits of professional networks with the ones that we're discussing today. The quote refers to teachers, but we acknowledge that the supports that we're discussing today have value for all members of the sector in all roles, including educators, support staff, admin staff, directors. And the work of the ECEC professional is complex and unrelenting, making these professional wellbeing supports so crucial. When I keep referring to these networks of support and that phrase, I thought would be very useful for me to unpack what I'm talking about there. So the research that we've done shows that there are a number of professional network types that are proven to uplift mental health and wellbeing in the ECEC sector. Peer support, communities of practice, and mentoring are 3of those. They all have correlation with positive outcomes for children and families as well as for the individuals that participate. They're particularly important in alleviating feelings of professional isolation. That is something we've noticed that research points to for those in regional rural remote settings. We've also know that networking is the key to building capacity and retaining staff, regardless of location. Now, due to the intensive nature of the work, we also know that professionals often lack time to engage with more time-intensive opportunities for development. Network-based supports are unique in that they allow you to kind of engage more actively and less actively over time, and have someone to reach out to in short bursts as you're available or as you need support. With mentoring in particular, which is the first one there on the screen on the left, you'll see that it's usually a one-on-one relationship between a more experienced ECE professional and someone with less experience. Moving to the middle one, we see that peer support usually involves more of a collaborative learning relationship between pairs of ECE professionals that are then grouped up. The purpose of a peer support network is more around professional connection and to create a space of critical reflection on practice or pedagogy. And then moving along to communities of practice, those peers can group up and create a topic-based or thematized community. There can be... And I think something that I'm particularly interested in personally is around these informal networks. So aside from these three, we're really well aware that if you have an attitude of towards creating connection and community, there are many informal networks or those that become formalised over time. Groups can meet regularly, work together, solve problems. These are what forms kind of the more organic communities of practice. These sorts of groups can result in connection, reduced feelings of isolation, and the sharing of innovative solutions, which is also fantastic. When we've looked at this area, our team has also been really interested in one of the common denominators or common factors for success. And what we've gleaned is that results of studies, particularly in British Columbia in Canada, indicate that the benefits of peer networks, in particular for ECEC professionals, is that they're based on reciprocal, collaborative, and non-hierarchical relationships, which is particularly interesting. It also discovered that embedding these types of networks into staff induction programs had positive results because you're establishing this as a norm very early on in a career. Now, by way of neat segue, an Australian pilot of the Canadian peer network model is being conducted in Queensland. And we're actually, as I referenced earlier, we're lucky enough to have interviewed the researcher leading this work in Australia, Dr. Marg Rogers. We will move into a recording of that interview in a minute, but just a little bit of background on Marg. Marg is currently overseeing the Peer Mentoring program pilot in Queensland. The program is designed to provide peer support for early childhood educators, and the PMP recognises that while working as an early childhood educator is very rewarding, it can also be very challenging. So let's hear from Marg. Good morning, Marg. Thanks so much for joining us.

MARG

Pleasure to be here, Kat.

KATARINA

I just wanted to, yeah, thank you for joining us in recording this interview conversation we're about to have. I really appreciate that, and I think the best way to get started is to tell everybody a little bit about who you are, what you've been working on, and then we can get stuck into some questions.

MARG

Right. Yeah. I'm Dr. Marg Rogers, and I'm from the University of New England. I'm a lecturer in early childhood education, and I research in early childhood. I'm also a postdoctoral fellow with the Manna Institute, and they look at regional, rural, and remote mental health, and we do place-based research to help improve the mental health and wellbeing of people in RRR communities, or regional, rural, and remote communities, in Australia. So my background in research is looking at the work and wellbeing of educators and having a look at how that's been impacted over the years with things like COVID, but also with changes in the sector, and having a look at what's being done in other countries and comparing not just for the sake of comparison, but to think, "Oh, I wonder if that might work better here by looking at different contexts."

KATARINA

Awesome, and I think that's a perfect little segue into hearing a little bit about one particular project where your early childhood background, your regional, rural, remote, and the mental health and wellbeing all has converged perfectly around a Peer Network program pilot that you've been leading in Queensland for a while. If you want to tell us a little bit about that pilot, but also in that point of comparison from overseas examples, where that came from, the history of that.

MARG

Sure. So I've been part of a program that's being led by the Southern Cross University with Associate Professor Wendy Boyd and her team members. It's being funded by the Australian Childcare Alliance, the Queensland branch, and we're particularly targeting childcare deserts in Queensland. So we're looking at setting up 5 communities of practice or supportive communities of educators within each of the 5 desert areas that we've looked at. I mean, most of Queens is a childcare desert except for some of the more affluent suburbs of Brisbane. And we've been looking at starting by just surveying the educators who signed up to the project and looking at their work and wellbeing before we start. And then we'll be, once we put the intervention into place, which I'll chat about in a minute, we are looking at surveying them partway through, and then at the end, to see if there's any change in their work and wellbeing over the course of the year, and their feelings are being supported I guess, They meet once a month, this group. There's up to 12 educators, and then there's a facilitator who's a highly trained and highly experienced educator. And the range of educators in the group vary from very new educators to quite very experienced educators. They meet for 2 hours, and this can involve sharing a meal, or it could be just grabbing a meal, a funded meal, and then hopping on a Teams or a Zoom chat, depending on how dispersed they are, and their time, and their availability. So in the other 3 weeks of the month, the educators actually break off into pairs or groups of 3, and they catch up via Zoom or face-to-face. They go for a walk together while they're on the phone or whatever suits them and where they are. And then the group as a whole choose what professional development they would like within that year. So they have a $400 spending money for the group, and they can combine with other groups if they want to pull their resources, and then they can do a virtual professional development of their choice.

KATARINA

That's awesome. And so, that model based kind of from a model in Canada, is that right?

MARG

Yeah, so I-

KATARINA

What are the similarities, differences, and that kind of thing would be great to hear.

KATARINA

Lovely, thanks Kat. So, basically, I had been working on another project about early childhood education with associate professor Laura Doan, and she works at the Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, which is a fairly large state, a bit like New South Wales. It's got really remote areas, and then it's got metropolitan areas obviously, and it's got high indigenous population as well. So it's got some quite similar history and background to New South Wales. So she had co-created this program about 7 or 8 years ago with educators and kept piloting and adapting that program. And it's a peer mentoring program, and she just started with a few pilots close by where she worked, and then started expanding it out into different areas of the state. The reason behind why she started the program was there had been up to 50% of educators were leaving the profession within the first 5 years. And mainly they were saying they were just overwhelmed, and felt very unsupported, and felt quite isolated. So it was trying to address that, and she really thought it would just help those beginner educators, but their surprise was that the mid-career educators and people who were looking to retire because they were burning out actually found it super helpful because they were connecting with the really energetic, and really excited, and passionate less experienced educators. And that mix and being able to mentor them and feel like they were giving back to the sector was really empowering for them as well. So it's been really successful in a lot of areas in British Columbia, and that includes regional, rural, and remote areas, indigenous communities, and also metropolitan sectors. And over there, it's called the Peer Mentoring program.

KATARINA

Cool. And so, you mentioned some really exciting intended and accidental findings in the British Columbia case. What are some of the findings that you've found in your pilot here in Queensland?

MARG

Yeah, so, look, basically, it's supposed to be creating a nurturing network of care where they set the agenda for any meeting, whether it's just a one-on-one meeting that they're having with their peer or their group of three, or if it's a big group meeting, they're actually setting their own agenda. So they choose what they want to talk about, which could be wellbeing. It could be how do you manage your work-life balance, or what do you do when you are having struggles with a family that's experiencing a certain thing or with a child with neurodiversity? How do you get support around that? So, it's been really nice to let them set the agenda instead of saying, "You are going to work on these things that we think you need help with." It's letting them take that agency and say, "Actually, we know what we need support with and what we don't need support with." So some of the adaptations have been that... And look, in saying that, I just want to preface that by saying that the British Columbian program, they found that they did things differently in remote areas than they did in, say, Vancouver, which is sort of the equivalent of Sydney in their state. So they had already started adapting it, depending on the context. And we found in ours that we had this huge flurry of registrations. And then because of the state of the early childhood sector in Australia at the moment, which is I guess a bit panicked because there's a lot of staff shortages in a lot of areas, we found that we had to change our approach. So getting that flurry of registrations down to people who are actually committed to and had the time to engage was a challenge, and so some of the facilitators found that just calling a meeting wasn't working and that they needed to just speak with one or 2educators and do shorter meetings to start with, to get the educators on board and feeling like they were going to get something for it, for their time commitment. We also trialled different communication methods. Some facilitators said the WhatsApp worked really well. And others said, oh no, they only want phone calls or they only want text. So that's been changed. A lot of them said, oh look, let's just pool the money for the meals once a month and have that as just every 3months we get together for a meal, and then we can spend a bit more money and have a nicer, healthier meal-

KATARINA

It's very important.

MARG

Funded. Yeah, that's right. And then they said, look, sometimes shorter get togethers just worked, and then follow up texting or messaging. And then educators said that they have just absolutely loved the get togethers, and the facilitators have reported that they are really finding that the sense of agency or their efficacy, meaning that... I mean they're just fancy words for self-confidence, and feeling like they're a professional, and they know how to take charge of their own professional development has really improved. Already, the groups that are going have already identified what they want professional development in, and they're just overjoyed at being part of a really supportive and empowering group, and they look forward to each meeting, rather than, "Oh, have I really got time?" They're finally feeling like, "Actually, I'm worth investing my hour in a week or the 2 hours once a month that I'm worth that self-care of being part of such a group."

KATARINA

Those findings and the results and impacts are awesome. I'm really also interested around the adaptations and the need to be responsive to a moment in time needs and the unique context of each participant. I think that's really kind of the essence of these programs when they're successful. So yeah, thank you for sharing that. I also love that connection between professional development and the networks as well. I think this type of engagement is really fit for purpose for the early childhood sector as well. And I think, we're talking about childcare deserts and professional isolation and these sorts of things, and particularly in that regional, remote areas that sort of all converges. And I think as well, dignifying the expertise and capability of our educators and teachers in early childhood is absolutely on the money as well. So yeah, thanks for sharing your pilot, but also for kind of highlighting those unique features that lead to success. So in terms of your program, where are you heading next? Where's it going to go from here? And maybe also, what would be your advice for anyone listening today?

MARG

Yeah, I think we've just got to start these final 2 groups, and I think we need to analyse the data. So what I've given you today is just sort of the highlights, but we need to sort of dig deep into that data and see what it's telling us. We'll need to do some halfway surveys, and we're going to do some focus groups with the educators as well just to sort of tease out some of the things that are working and not working. Because what's not working is really important too because it is a Canadian program, and we want to make sure that it's fit for purpose for educators in New South Wales and in Queensland and other states, like what works in a really remote area and what doesn't, and what works in metropolitan low-income suburbs there in Brisbane as opposed to in Townsville. We need to compare the various approaches within groups and see what's working and what's adjusting, and then we want to compare our data with Canada, and see what we can learn from each other. And then ways to make it more adaptable, like that money that comes in for the meals, like is that sustainable? So what could be done instead? Could that be outsourced to the community where different hotels or different organisations, or could it be something that a department might pick up? What about the sustainability of educators giving their time? Is that something that could be time in lieu? How would that work? Just working out, moving forward what might be a recommended model I guess, to how this could be implemented in other parts of the country.

KATARINA

Awesome, and I think... Yeah, I think definitely the future sustainability of programs such as these, I think they're particularly interesting to educators from what I've heard, because, obviously, they're going to invest their time in that sort of startup phase, but they need that commitment back or that surety back that these things will be able to be sustained. So, definitely great things to hear in the future from you, Marg. I feel like that pretty much wraps up our conversation for today, and we've great gleaned some great insights from you. We'll probably also be checking back in with you shortly in live form for a Q&A session, so that'll be awesome to sort of hear from our listeners, our audience today, if they have any other questions for you. So we'll look forward to that as well.

MARG

Thanks.

KATARINA

Awesome. Thanks so much. Okay, and Marg will also be joining us for a live Q&A. So if you have any questions for her or about that interview, you can put them in the Q&A for now, and then we can raise them when we get to the Q&A session. So to introduce our second person that we're interviewing today, we've got very excited to introduce Narelle Myers. She's the director of Bermagui Preschool, which is located on the far south coast of New South Wales. The service has been operating since 1976 and caters for up to 40 children between the ages of 6 weeks and 5 years. Bermagui is an exceeding rating service and holds a rating of excellent. Narelle is here to talk with us about her own personal experiences of building networks of support in her service, her involvement in championing the CELA Network, plus the unique role these supports play in regional areas. Welcome, Narelle. Thank you for joining us.

NARELLE

Hi, hello, everyone.

KATARINA

Hello, yeah. It's a bit weird because we can't get reactions and feedback from people, but they're all there. I know they're listening. If we get kind of stuck into it, if you want to introduce yourself briefly, but also you maybe start talking to us about your experience. What are the unique challenges relating to forming and keeping networks of support specifically in that regional or remote setting?

NARELLE

Absolutely. Wallawani, everybody. I'm down in Bermagui on Djiringanj Land in the Yuin Nation. Yes, rurally and regionally, remote has a lot of challenges on top of what we're already all experienced. I'm sure that everybody can agree we're in a really tricky time of change and challenges, but added to that, being in a really regionally remote service adds to a next layer of that, but we use it to our advantage as well. But one of the things that is critical is our focus on networking as well. We really believe that as a standalone not-for-profit community-based preschool, I think we're about 4 3/4 quarter hours south of Sydney with a population of about 2,000 people, but we really believe that children and families in really regional and remote areas deserve access to excellence in early childhood education and care that are afforded to those in the cities I guess. But we have to work really hard to make sure that that happens through our networks. We've done a lot of work over the years to create those, but it's constantly making sure that we do keep those alive because they can be quite transient, and one minute you've got this amazing partnership and then you turn around and, for whatever reason, people have moved or fundings evaporated. So it is something that we're constantly thinking about. I think, for us, the challenges of creating and sustaining networks is mainly our allocation. So, there's lots of wonderful online opportunities out there, but we found that a lot of people in our community weren't accessing those things for whatever reason. So trying to find networks that are really for your specific context as well is really important. So looking at your local communities and reaching out to those people that might not be quite evident but can actually support early childhood in really unique ways is very important. I think the other challenge for us is time. I think everybody would agree that we're all very time poor. So developing really good systems so that you can maximise those networks in really quick and efficient ways and embed those so that it becomes part of what you do.

KATARINA

Yeah, that's an awesome snapshot, and so many significant challenges working against, and so that resilience really shines through. To me, I think, talking about being time poor, we know that support networks, they can be either informal or formal in nature, and there's definitely benefits to both, but you've had some experience in those more formalised structures, and just wanting to hear about what your view on the benefits of either kind of the informal versus the formal types of networks.

NARELLE

I think the informal networks are absolutely critical and normally a really good starting point. So those just yarning with people, stopping to have a chat, things that involve food, sharing of food, those informal things are really, really powerful because it helps to make those connections. It helps to create those partnerships, and those informal networks really give you depth of information. They really tell you those little things that you won't be able to capture with a survey and that you won't be able to get from a formal program. So starting with informal networks is absolutely critical to help you to strengthen and ship those, I guess, into more formalised networks. They might not turn into a formal network. Sometimes it's better just to leave them as informal, but really important to invest time in those informal meetings. Make sure that you're spending time on doing those things because it is really hard to stop and have a chat when you're... You've got pickup happening and drop offs happening. So really slow down and have a chat with people in your community when you're out in the shops and things like that, because they can really help to see who's out there and try and connect those dots with what's happening in the service and what the gaps might be. But then really important, if you can, take those small steps to formalise those networks because that really helps to strengthen them and to sustain them, but, more importantly, to help widen them so that it's not just your little preschool or your little pocket or community. It's actually then benefiting other people in the sector, and then it becomes like, I guess, a snowball. It gains momentum, and the next thing you know, this little seed of an idea or network has grown to something that's making not just your service stronger but the sector as a whole as well. So yeah, really good balance between informal and formal networking is really, really important.

KATARINA

That's an awesome breakdown, Narelle. Thank you so much. So I think with that comparison, you have been involved in a previous peer network specifically working with CELA. What were some of the positive outcomes that you experienced in that, some things that were challenges, and how that kind of impacted your career, your work experience, but then also for your service as well.

NARELLE

The CELA Network that we created was amazing. It was a really great opportunity for like-minded people to share that passion and that inspiration for early childhood education and care, and it really helped to improve your energy. When you're feeling a little bit flat particularly, when you're in a regional location, connecting with people that share that passion, it just leaves you energised and ready to try new things or think in a different way, so benefiting your pedagogy, and being able to share what you're doing with other people as well. When you're doing something and able to share it with other people, it's really nice to be able to get some positive feedback about that. And I think one of the examples of how that worked in practice, we've got a Moodji Farm, a little project running next door to the preschool, and it started off just a cultural space, some children growing and connecting with sustainability and culture. It extended out to a cooking program internally at the preschool, but then we involved our local cafes and restaurants and created a cookbook that then was available to our community and then sharing that with Munch & Move at a more state level, and then connecting with the peer network to be able to share that with other preschools as well. It's just those tiny literal little seeds that were planted that were able to spread far and wide from that one project. And I guess the negatives, obviously, lack of funding and lack of time are always an issue, but finding those creative ways to connect with each other in short little snapshots that can be at a time that suits you. So the network had some live webinars that were at different times during the day, but there was also resource library connected to that. So if you missed that, you were able to jump in at a time and see the recordings or access the amazing resource library. There was a book club that emerged from that as well. And being able to read some of the latest university papers that had come out and be really on the cutting edge was a great benefit of that network being able to see the latest innovations that were happening to give you further food for thought. So yeah, I think, those kind of things are great because, again, it's not just benefiting you and your service. It's helping to strengthen the sector as a whole.

KATARINA

Yeah, that's such an awesome example that you had about the cookbook. So it's having tangible benefits that are widespread. You're sharing that passion for practice and pedagogy, and then also having a sounding board and somewhere kind of safe and supported to share your ideas at a peer level. I think, yeah, they're all really fantastic outcomes of a network of this nature. Thanks so much, Narelle. You've given us really a lot of valuable, practical information on how service leaders and people in all kinds of roles can work towards building a network of support for themselves and for their colleagues. Look, we'd really like to throw to our audience now. We are struggling to locate Marg online. So for now it's just you and I in the live Q&A session. So we really people to use the... Oh, I think we found Marg. I think we found her. Her hand is up, so she'll join us now in a moment. But while we do, we welcome anyone to sort of throw in any Q&A... Welcome, Marg, in live form. Hello. Any questions into the Q&A function. But I did have a look so when people signed up for this session, they threw some commentary in terms of what they were hoping to get out of today. And so I have a few things up my sleeve that I thought I'd just throw at us. There's one I'm really interested in because I sort of said earlier in my intro that networks like these are proactive in supporting people's mental health and wellbeing. But I'm wondering, what outcomes are there for children and community when proactive strategies exist? So these networks, it's good to be proactive, such a very common thing to accept, but what are the benefits and outcomes that you've seen? Maybe we can start with you, Marg.

MAG

Yeah, look, I think it's so important, and I think when you create that space, and that community, and that time to go, "Narelle, how are things for you right now?" then you are thinking in that way, and so then you're more attuned to other staff members who you didn't realise might be struggling, or you didn't realise might be getting close to burnout, or are really thinking about leaving, and that's something that's really difficult. So I think you can catch, and you can retain, and you can nourish other people, but also it makes us more attuned to what's happening for families and for children as well. And if we've got well educators, and well-supported educators, and nourished educators, then they're much more able to nourish young children and families as well.

KATARINA

Awesome. Thanks, Marg. Would you like to add anything to that, Narelle?

NARELLE

Yeah, no, I totally agree, and I think nourishing your educators and giving them the opportunities, it's such a great strategy for mental health and for feeling empowered and inspired to be working in early childhood in the current climate, which is quite challenging. We've got 3 staff away today, and was only able to jump in at the last minute because it is quite hectic. But an example of that, we've just had our reframing fire project, and it concluded with a bonfire. And one of our educators wrote a learning story about that, and then we shared that in our local newspaper. And the feedback that has come back for that, she's just like going, felt really, really empowered. So just you do these little things as part of your program, but thinking about how to extend it out to the broader community to strengthen those networks with that little step of sending it off to your local newspaper or connecting with somebody else to take that next step. Just do it in little bite-sized steps so that everybody's benefiting from it.

MARG

That's great, Narelle. I was going to say too, Kat, that sometimes, too, when you are in these proactive relationships, you're not only giving back, but you are receiving back. And so it could be that something that somebody said, like if I'm partnered with Narelle or I'm meeting with Narelle, she said something that really helped me rethink or really helped me feel better about where I'm at and my struggles, and so then I'm better able to respond in a better way to other people. So you're learning and upskilling as you go.

KATARINA

Yeah, I think that's so valuable, that continuous learning opportunities. We actually have 2 really, really good questions in the chat. I want to go to James' question first, and it's like a "This is my situation. What would you suggest?" type of question. So it says, "What about networking with other services? We're a rural preschool who has a long daycare in the area as well. We have been wanting to connect or network with them but have been unsuccessful so far. Any advice?" Maybe, Narelle, you can start and then we can jump to Marg.

NARELLE

That's exactly our situation. So I'm really excited to answer this question. My advice is don't give up. We have exactly the same situation. We're a tiny little rural preschool, but there is a long daycare nearby, and sometimes, depending on the owners or the staffing at that service, it can be hot or cold. But ironically, today, our primary school connected with us and we're organising a combined trip to the playground for both services. So hang in there and just keep chipping away and keep your doors open, and it might not be at that particular moment, but, at some stage, the doors may open and that connection may happen. So yeah, just don't give up. Awesome. Marg?

MARG

Yeah, James, terrific question. I would, yeah, echo what Narelle is saying, but I'd go a little bit different as well. I'd say keep that door open with that service because staff turnover we know is a reality. But also, maybe consider having an online relationship with another service that might be similar or different to you in another community that has some similarities, or they have some differences that you might be able to learn from as well, and that can be reciprocal learning. So if you are in a town of 8,000 people, is there somewhere else that might be dealing with what you are dealing with, or would it be beneficial to connect with a remote community if you're in regional or metropolitan? Sometimes I think learning from how different people work in different circumstances can be really good, and that could even extend to the children. The children could be meeting up online as well and learning from each other, and it could be an all community preschool or an all, the whole service is learning as well.

KATARINA

That's a great suggestion, Marg. I'll move on to another question here from Jen, which is more around what skills a leader or a champion might need to ensure the sustainability and momentum of such a network. I think that's a really interesting connection around those that are responsible for building and leading in this space.

Any takers?

NARELLE

Yeah.

KATARINA

Sorry.

NARELLE

I think it's knowing what your strengths are as well and really using that. I'm not particularly good with technology and I'm feeling quite terrified at the moment, so I would not normally jump in and do this kind of thing. But like when we looked at the book club for CELA, the facilitator for that, Janelle, she was just phenomenal because that was something that she was so passionate about. So knowing what your strengths are, if you're really great and confident with speaking in public, then find those opportunities to create those networks. If it's something that you would prefer to do in a different capacity or in a different way, then know your strengths and step outside your comfort zone every now and again. But yeah, working for your strengths is a really good thing to do. It just makes everything stronger when you're comfortable with it, I guess.

MARG

Yeah, that's great, Narelle. I think play to your strengths for sure, but I also think find people who have got what you don't. So, I work really well with people who have particular skills that they're everything I'm not, right? And so, when we combine, the magic happens. So, sometimes you might go, "Well, actually, the technology thing, that's not my grain." So there could be someone in your service or someone in another service that goes, "Oh yeah, I'm really good at that or I've got a teenage son. He'll set it all up for me and make it happen." So yeah, so work with other people. And also I would say, from what we've learned with our peer support mentor program, don't take it personally if educators say they're too busy right now. Sometimes just knowing those supports are there can be helpful, and also engagement looks different culturally than other things. Participation looks different for different people at different times. So if they say, "Look, I really want to do this, but I'm just overwhelmed right now." That's not to say what you're offering isn't amazing. It's just like right now that's just a step too far, but it doesn't mean that they won't engage ever. So, be really mindful of that and have some stamina, which is really hard, and recognise that you might need a break sometimes, and you might be able to rotate that, like I'm going to organise every second catch up for something and have your co-lead can be really helpful there too.

KATARINA

Awesome. I love all of that. We've got some live networking happening here in the chat. Louise has said the Eurobodalla have a ECE network that you're more than welcome to join. There's preschools, LDC, and FDC services, and they connect with allied health and family support. So, there you go. We've got some network offerings coming out live as we speak. I also, I have my own question out of interest, which is a little bit around, sort of a bit of a question for Narelle, and then a different version of it for Marg, which is, what are the popular topics that you discuss in these networks, and then maybe more for Marg, is there any professional learning or topics that you find have been highly subscribed to? Maybe, Marg, you can go first this time and then-

MARG

Yeah, so professional development, usually, it's around children's behaviours, neurodiversity, trauma-informed approaches, that type of thing. They often want to talk about what's happening for them. How do I deal with that lack of work-life balance? How do I get better at dealing with that really difficult manager? How do I cope with the stress points that are in all services, assessment and rating? How do I manage those times? So they're really common themes that come up.

NARELLE

Yeah, totally agree. They seem to be the constant things that people are needing information about. I think, with any network that you're involved in, give the members the opportunity to articulate what it is their needs are as well to make sure that the network is being responsive to those members within it as well. So, take that time to stop and go, "Okay, this is what we're doing, and where should we go next?" so that you can plan the PD that you're delivering or the topics that you're talking about to meet the needs of those people in the network.

KATARINA

Excellent. There's another question now in the Q&A. This one is someone saying that they are a member of a director's networking group, but it's an informal one that have been together for 10 years.

MARG-

Wow.

KATARINA

That's awesome. That there's great support. Friendships have been built and valued. However, we're worried by changing the structure to a more formal structure, it might impact in a negative way. So I think they're asking, do they keep it informal and maintain it as their sort of own community, or will they kind of miss an opportunity there by formalising it?

MARG

I think they can leave it. I mean, are they wanting to change it because they want to have other people that are non-directors there? I'm not quite sure why they're wanting to change it. But if it's working, then that's great. And if you've been going for 10 years, there, you've got the answer. You've got something that works for those people. And so like with the model that I put forward and then with what's working for Narelle's service, they're just models, right? And it's going to look really different in really different communities, and different people, and different preferences, and that's okay. You don't have to... It's not a political party. It's not like you have to back everything I say. That's not what it's about. It's about finding supports because we just want to support educators, and whatever that looks like is a good thing, informal, formal, whatever. Yeah, that's a great thing. And well done, 10 years, congratulations.

KATARINA

I agree.

NARELLE

Yeah, I agree with that as well. Our local director's network has been running for quite a while informally, and when we've needed to, for different projects, we've reached out and got formal support from like the Independent Education Union to help us with our pay parity cases. So yeah, keep it informal, but if you need to formalise it to do certain things, then reach out to those other connections as well.

KATARINA

That's a great point as well. We don't have a question, but we have a statement, and I think it's a really important one to consider, and it's talking about family daycare. "It's very hard in family daycare. We work alone." is the statement. But I wonder whether there's... I mean, Marg, have you had any interaction with people working in family daycare, experiences, or suggestions in that space?

MARG

Yeah, so my guess there would be that sometimes there might be an early childhood association or there might be the CELA thing. There could be these informal networks, and saying to those networks in a particular area, "Can we be part of that?" I think that's a good place to start. And I'd be surprised, I'd hope it wouldn't happen that they'd say, "Oh no, you're family daycare, " I really hope that didn't happen, but that could be a place to start. The other thing is connecting with other family daycares from either your area or different parts as I suggested in another one, because family daycare is so important. We so need family daycare, and it could be that you want to just connect with family daycare educators because they have unique... It is a unique setting, right? So I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but if you want to be in with services and preschools and all different types of services, then that's okay too. I think anything that's going to get you those supports will be worth pursuing. And you might get it right the first time. It might be that you've got to try a few different approaches, and I think it's just finding what works for you really.

KATARINA

Narelle, would you add anything?

NARELLE

Yeah, we in Bermagui, we've got 3 or 4 family daycare operators, and yeah, it's really hard because you are really isolated. In the Bega Valley Shire, we have a family daycare network that acts as an umbrella for all those standalone family daycare. So if you have one in your area, reach out to them because I know the Bermi family daycares, they quite often get together to have picnics in the playground or have a day at the beach, and they sometimes connect with the services in Bega and the other communities as well. And the Bega Valley Family Daycare support them by accessing training and going off to conferences and things like that. So check to see if you have got one for your shire or your local area. And as Marg suggested, if there isn't one, then connect with just one other service, and start informally, and see if you could just hang out together and see how that that goes because, yeah, definitely it's very isolating and trying to find other people that are doing what you're doing is fabulous and great.

KATARINA

Awesome. Well, we're really close to time, so I'll just say let's leave it there, and thank you so, so very much to both of you for your contributions and preparation, particularly in the lead up, but also today. It's been so great to have you on, and thank you to those who've thrown questions into the Q&A. By way of wrap up, I just point people... Separate to the Q&A, there's a function called the chat function. In the chat function, there are a couple of resources available and references. There's also a bit of a, what can you do next? We've also, yeah, provided that list so there's some immediate next steps you can take from your buzz of having this session today. You can do some things really quickly to kind of take the lead in building your own personal network of support. So just thank you again for your participation and attendance today, and we look forward to seeing you again in our next webinar series.

MARG

Thank you.