We want to acknowledge that this sector is facing challenges. We know about them. We hear about them. And this is a small way at providing you some additional support in the mental health and wellbeing space. And just as a side note, that is a particular focus for our team at the moment, just really understanding that setting and working towards what the department can be doing in this space. On the next screen, just underscoring all of this session is why we're focusing on this topic. This is a quote that came through during some stakeholder engagement that we did and consultation we did late last year. And the reason we're using this quote is, it illustrates how the role of the early childhood professional is a complex one. It requires the ability to multitask. It requires someone to be flexible and responsive to the needs of all stakeholders: colleagues, children, families, all at once. And to required to be strong, not just physically, mentally, and emotionally, so that the child and families achieve the best outcomes. That's a lot, and the next slide that's coming on now tries to go some way to illustrate that. And wow, it's a busy slide, and that's intentional. What you can see here is our depiction of the cognitive and emotional load of an early childhood educator on a daily basis, on a minute by minute basis. And that's a very busy space. When we're talking about this, it's that constant load that the early childhood professional carries with them. Now, the loudness or volume of these environmental stressors and the related task, it's really noteworthy and it's something that, in trying to unpack it and understand it, has come really clearly to our attention. So what we're gonna try and do now is talk a little bit around how to establish a safe and stable environment within all of that noise, which is there's no sort of perfect answer. It's very case by case, setting by setting. But here is some language and some concepts that might go somewhere to inform people about how they can operate and support each other. So what you see on this screen is a bit of an illustration of setting up psychological safety. So this concept of psychological safety was first used in 1999. It's been around a little while, but it relates to protecting the psychological health of workers, and it's actually categorised at the same level of importance as physical health. So creating a psychologically safe workplace requires best practise through leadership and management, ongoing and effective communication, key on that effective piece, and showing appreciation for staff input. Because we're really passionate about understanding that that's where innovation and success lies. So with all of these things combined, it equals the thriving worker, or in our case, thriving educator in the sector. Moving on to the other key concept of psychosocial safety. And as you see here, it's referring to SafeWork New South Wales, and excitingly, in a little preview, we've got a panel member from SafeWork to talk to us a little bit more around these things a bit later on. So harm prevention occurs through identifying and measuring risks to psychological health and safety. So that's that concept that we just ran through. And then, the psychological and hazards and factors are elements within the design and management of work that increase the risk of psychological harm. In 2021, SafeWork New South Wales, as you can see here, established this Code of Practise around psychosocial hazards, which cover that set of factors there. A risk management process, identifying the hazards, assessing and prioritising them, and then putting controls and effectiveness controls in place. So these are other factors and areas that we can look at, and I recommend people, particularly those involved of leadership and management, have a look at the SafeWork resource because that can assist in building these safe environments.

I'm very excited to move on and introduce Professor Sandie Wong, who is going to assist us in understanding these concepts a bit more, and really let's look at evidence and practical tools. So Sandie is a professor in early childhood and the co-deputy director of the Centre for Research in Early Childhood at the Macquarie School of Education and an executive member of the Lifespan Health and Wellbeing Research Centre at Macquarie Uni and the lead researcher on the Early Childhood Educator Wellbeing Project. So with that mouthful, you can definitely see that Sandie is in a great position to talk to us today. Welcome and thank you, Sandie. And Sandie has worked as an academic, manager, researcher, evaluator, educator, consultant, nurse, within a range of early childhood, academic, and health organisations. She has a fantastic background to talk to us today. I would want to really get stuck into it with you, Sandie, straight away. So I'm keen to ask this first question around the research you've conducted into mentally healthy workplaces with the particular focus on early childhood space.

Yeah, thanks, Katarina, and I'm coming to you from beautiful Gadigal land today. So I think it's important that I say, first of all, that whilst a lot of the focus of my research has been on workforce and educator wellbeing, that the reason I do that work is because I strongly believe in the role that high-quality early childhood education has in ameliorating disadvantaged, supporting the most vulnerable, marginalised, and disadvantaged children. And for that to happen, we need really high-quality, well educators. So well both physically well and emotionally and mentally well as well. Because it's only when educators are well that they can provide the complexity of what you were saying there, providing the relationships-based, pedagogical-based development, knowledge, all of those things to support the educators. So the work that we've been doing in ECEWP, that's what we call the Early Childhood Educator Wellbeing Project, it's been going on now for about 10 years. We started that work because we were particularly concerned around, yes, it's really great that more children who came from disadvantaged backgrounds were coming into early childhood to experience early learning and get that support and their families get that support, but we were really worried that the educators weren't actually getting support to do that work. They were just meant to kind of incorporate that into their everyday practises. And as you pointed out, it's really complex, physically, emotionally challenging work. And yeah, we were just really concerned that nobody was paying any attention to the educators or to their wellbeing. Now, I have to say this has changed quite a lot in the last 5 years in particular. So our research, we call it holistic approach. We see educator wellbeing not just about the individual educator and their physical mental health, but also the environments that they're working with, the leadership that they have, their colleagues, and as well as the kind of larger social, cultural, political context. And we see educator wellbeing as being in everybody's benefit and also in everybody's, it's a role for everybody to play. Employers, organisations, everybody has a role to play in supporting educators' wellbeing.

Thanks, Sandie. And so in your research, what have you discovered and with a particular emphasis on what you found works?

Yeah, well, that's the challenge. What have you found works? So most of the research that we've done, and that has been done elsewhere across the world, has really kind of looked at, well, what is the state of educator wellbeing? And we know from that research that educator wellbeing is compromised. Now, that won't be a surprise for many people on the line, and particularly since COVID, that it's compromised. We know that there are things like high levels of bullying, there's high levels of emotional burnout, and we know that those things all contribute to attrition. And that has been found across the globe. We've got evidence from that in Canada, the US, Korea, Singapore, Iceland, and even Finland, where, you know, it's always held up to be a really high-quality education service. Even in Finland, there's problems with educator wellbeing that's leading to attrition. But what we also know is that, you know, educators still love their jobs and we also know that organisations want to do something. They're committed to kind of contributing to things that will assist wellbeing. But you ask for evidence and, surprisingly, there is very little evidence about what works. So these initiatives, like the programme that you're talking about from New South Wales government, from the, I've forgotten what it's called. What's it called, Katrina?

SafeWork?

SafeWork, thank you, from SafeWork, are really exciting. And I'm very interested to see the case, to hear about the case study because we don't know what works. There are lots of little flowers blooming everywhere about, you know, mentally healthy workplaces or mindfulness programmes and great things happening, but we don't necessarily know whether or not those things are working. And so we actually need to build the evidence about what works in practise in the early childhood context, because as you said, it's a quite unique context with unique conditions. And so you can't just take something from somewhere else and kind of drop it into the early childhood space. Yeah, so in terms of what works, we've got a problem. We don't know what works.

And I think today we will invite, you know, anyone who's online who's tried to do something, doesn't even matter if it feels like a small something, to include that in the Q&A dropdowns. Like, if you've had something that you've come across, if it's a resource, if it's an experience or a strategy you've implemented, like, please also feel free to contribute that because that's an opportunity for us colleagues and people all working towards that same ultimate goal, Sandie, that you mentioned to share. So I'd encourage that. I wonder as well, like, and not to throw you in it, Sandie, but what's your sense on scalability, like, on how to tailor things, like, locally? Have you had any insights around that?

Well, we do have some insights around what works. We know some things that are promising and potentially could be scaled up. One of the interventions that we've been particularly interested in is clinical supervision. And we've done research around that. We've done a couple evaluations around that as a way of supporting, like, where clinical supervision has been provided as a way of supporting, in these cases, centre directors. Now, some people are probably going, "Oh, what's clinical supervision?" Because it's a very challenging word. It gives kind of the idea of people in white coats, but it's not that at all. Clinical supervisors are people who are qualified psychologists or counsellors and they provide spaces that are safe and secure and trusting and they enable the supervisee to talk through some of the challenges that they're facing in their work. And it can include things that they've bought from home that might be challenging them in their work. It might be about the relationships, might be about dealing with difficult families or difficult behaviours of children. And the clinical supervisor helps them to talk through those things and helps them to kind of develop strategies and skills to be able to do that. And it's different from mentoring and it's different from coaching and it's usually delivered by somebody outside of the organisation. So it's not like your boss asking you what's going on, and "I'm going to give you some strategies." These are trained people who are external to the organisation who provide this. And, again, and it's even different from, I'm glad you mentioned the employee assistance programme, because that's important, but it's different from that as well because it should be somebody who actually knows about early childhood because somebody outside of early childhood doesn't understand all that complexity that you're talking about. So we've conducted a couple of studies of clinical supervision, and we know from those studies that that works. We know that it's helped centre director health and wellbeing. We know that it's helped them manage their teams. We know that it's increased their capacity to work with families and work with children, raise their self-efficacy. And really, really importantly in the context that we're working in right now, it actually contributed to retention. So whilst it's costly, it's supported retention. But there are some things around, you know, well, what makes it work? And as I said, it has to be best practise supervision. So following all the kind of ideas about relationships based, trauma informed, those kind of things. As I said, they have to understand the early childhood context and it needs time and it needs space. You know, many, many services' educators don't actually have a physical space where they can go and do this. We had centre directors who were going into the laundry to have their clinical supervision sessions. So, you know, there's some challenges around it. Even getting outside, if you want to have it face to face to get out of the centre, to go and, you know, many centre directors would be walking out the door and some disaster happened, so their session was cancelled. So there's some challenges to it. And even kind of coming, the supervisee coming to it is a skill. So to be supervised is a skill, because it's not been a tradition in our profession. Social workers have it, but we've not had it in our tradition. So, but we know that that works. So I think it's a, you know, that's a potential that we could scale up, you know? But I think that the SafeWork tool is a great tool for a centre leader and the team to work through. So as I said, I'm really keen to hear a little bit more about how that actually worked in practise in an early childhood context.

That's an awesome segue. Thank you, Sandie. But I think, yeah, I think it's that point you're making is, like, what is scalable, then there's probably less things, and the supervision one sounds like a bit of a winner there, but then, you know, how can we use other simpler and quicker things to inject a little bit of extra support? And I think that's a perfect segue into our panel discussion. But thank you so much, Sandie.

We'll now yeah, we'll bring up our other panel members in the tech background and I'll do a little intro for them. So we've already met Sandie. So we also have Kathryn Barker, who is an Early Childhood Services Manager at ECTARC, or E-C-T-A-R-C, I will say ECTARC from now on. ECTARC is a community-owned not-for-profit organisation that manages 10 early childhood education and care services in the Illawarra and Shoalhaven regions. And is also a registered training organisation that delivers training to early childhood education and care professionals across Australia. And it's an organisation committed to create aiding and maintaining mentally-healthy workplaces. We also have, so we have Kathryn Barker here today who's worked at ECTARC for 20 years now and a little getting to know you, her favourite children's book is "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." Welcome, Kathryn. I'll also introduce Melissa Owen from SafeWork New South Wales. She's an Assistant State Inspector in the Strategic Programmes Team and focuses on the healthcare and social assistance sector, which includes early childhood education and care. She's a qualified rehabilitation counsellor and social worker and has experience working in occupational rehab, youth and children's services, disability support, and case management. And her favourite children's book to read to her kids is "I'm Going to Eat You" by Matt Mitter. And just circling back to Sandie, because I know you'll all want to know what her favourite children's book is, it is "Owl Babies" and she also has multiple copies of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" in various languages, which is exciting. So I don't think I can say caterpillar in any other language, but yeah, so that's just a little bit about our 3 panel members today. I'm going to start off by asking the floor, so all 3 of you, anyone who jumps in first to talk just a little bit about the unique challenges of establishing a mentally-healthy workplace in the early childhood sector. And I know, Sandie, you referred to it as the sector having unique challenges, but can you all talk to us a little bit about what makes it specifically unique?

I think there's a few things. One is the workforce itself, but very different backgrounds as in different qualifications. We have a system where we've got for-profit, not-for-profit, large, small services that are only open for 7 hours, those that are open all day. It's a really complex system and trying to, there's never ever going to be a one-size-fits-all in early childhood. So I mean, and then of course you've got all the cognitive load challenges that you were talking about as well of working with children of different ages and different abilities, and yeah. So I think that's the complexity, and other people outside the sector trying to actually understand that, anybody who does deliver any services I think really needs to understand the complexity of the work, the complexity of the workforce, the complexity of the system that we operate in in order to be able to deliver any kind of initiative for any service.

Yeah, thank you, Sandie. And I think, Kathryn, you had a comment as well.

Yeah, for us, it's about being overwhelmed and not knowing where to start. And we know early childhood, we are time poor, so we need to be able to have access to something quite quickly because we don't have a lot of time to ultimately research. And at the time when we were really investigating what we were going to do as an organisation, there wasn't a lot around, and specific to our sector, and we had processes in place in our services and we'd put Tim Tams on the table in the staff room and that was the go-to for people's wellbeing. But we know when Tim Tams running out, what happens to the wellbeing? So it was about something that was an embedded practise across our whole organisation, it was sustainable across forever as such. But it was also evidence based and driven in terms of what we do. So we still do the Tim Tams but we have other strategies that ongoing, and it's about understanding that we are promoting positive mental health, but we know at times people struggle and the mental health continuum for some people fluctuates from positive down to where they're struggling. As such, they're not flourishing as much as we want them to. So we want to know that they're accepted for that. We want to be able to reduce the stigma, which is really important. So they come forward and say, "I'm having a hard time" or "I've got a mental health plan," or what it might be. So that was really important and breaking down the barriers for the other team members working around them so they knew the same language and they had a common purpose to be able to support one another through various times. And that was a challenge and where to go to. But we found a good tip was we went on the Black Dog Institute's website and all our staff did Your Mental Health at Work little webinar. So they all watched that. So we had a common language and then there's managing your team's wellbeing for our leaders in our organisation. So that just took a next level. So we knew as leaders, how can we help our staff? So that was the challenge, but it was easily overcome once we knew what we were doing.

Thanks so much, Kathryn. And I think the common language conversation is a good one. I think even Sandie, you were talking about that when you're talking about supervision and clinical supervision, I think to hopefully today's session gives everybody a bit of that common language but I do think, let's jump to Mel and see her thoughts because she sits in a space across healthcare and social assistance sector. So that's a sort of a broader lens. It's big. So tell us a little bit, Mel, about your perspective. Also like what's unique about early childhood too?

Yeah, I think, I think some of the unique challenges present within the early childhood settings from a regulated perspective when you're talking about managing psychosocial risks and hazards within the workplace is that a lot of businesses that we've come across anyway, they don't really know where to start with psychosocial safety. You know, what does it look like? It's something that is intangible. So how do you put something that is tangible, that is measurable on top of that? So I certainly can appreciate that. And then it's also the level of acceptance of risk, you know, that there are certain risks within the industry that educators, well, you know, this is a part of the job. This child is upset, I need to pick this child up and I need to console this child. And there's other facets and things that can happen that are outside the scope of the regulator that educators would see in relation to abuse and neglect of children as well. So there's that amalgamation of the little things that can really impact somebody that it is very much an accepted risk of the job and those little things can start if you don't have a system to do check in with your staff and to keep on top of that, they can chip away. And those little bits and pieces can cause a psychosocial risk. The other thing is that directors have a lot of responsibilities. You know, managing a centre is huge, and I get that, and they've usually got heaps of staff and they've got children to worry about and they've got a million different regulations to come under, not only ours but you know, the childcare staff and you've got all these different regulators that you have to talk to and deal with across the board. So I really feel that this, the work that they do, the educators do in the early childhood sector is really important. It's important for society. You know, they're helping to create the people of the future, which it's quite a great job. You know what I mean? Like, we need to make sure that, that these unique challenges that we're all aware of, that we have steps to take in the right direction so they can be identified and assisted in managing psychosocial risks.

Awesome. Thanks so much, Mel. And as I jump to the next question, I'm going to ask if Kathryn, you can start in your answer because there's a question in the Q&A that relates to my next question, which is awesome. And it's about what successes you've had or seen in the establishment of a mentally-healthy workplace in the sector. And the question from the chat was about sharing some of your ongoing strategies that you now use. So if we can start with you and then we'll get Sandie and Mel to weigh in as well.

So we were able to start by using an audit tool that come from Heads Up. It's no longer a tool that they have available, but there are other tools that you can use through the New South Wales government and things to help us work out where we were, what were our strengths already and where our gaps were and what we needed to put in place. So that was really positive because we had a foundation there, and then we had to bring everybody on board in terms of we've got over 200 staff so we had to bring them on board with that. So we developed a wellbeing policy which had a clear wellbeing statement so everybody knew from a management perspective and our board were on board. We have a voluntary board that were invested in this. So it came from leaders to start off with, but we were able to have every service in our organisation and every department has a wellbeing champion. It was someone who was interested in the wellbeing space, doesn't mean they had all the expertise, and certainly they're not the wellbeing person in every centre to, if you've got a problem, go to them. But they were, they come together, they meet, they attend some professional training or conversations with the other wellbeing champions to be able to have ideas to support teams or put them through some activities at a team meeting to start off the conversation at a team meeting that's positive or finish a team meeting that's positive as well, because sometimes we get to the nitty-gritty in team meetings and then, "Oh, it's time to go home," but we want to finish them positive, and people walk out, which is really important. I can say that all our staff are on board and that's just ongoing. It seems overwhelming, but you have to take little steps. You are not going to achieve everything that you want to achieve in the first 2 months or the first 12 months. It's about little steps, what can you for your service now? And you know, we did a wellbeing lens across all our policies. One of the things, the sector and our staff services as well, behaviours of children and complexities, that's something that educators feel. We are very wanting to support children, but it can be overwhelming. Staff can go through vicarious trauma in relation to that. So our policy that we had was about supporting children's behaviour, but in there, we made sure that the wellbeing aspect for educators was put in there and then sharing that policy with parents. Parents said, "What about the wellbeing of my child who isn't a child that we're supporting with the complexities but is a child who is witnessing what's happening?" So, you know, that lens across all our policies was a real success for our organisation, which it is great to have. One of the other successes is that our staff have self-care plans. So we were able to introduce the purpose of those and encourage them to have self-care plans and things that they do to support themselves, whether it's what they need from the team that they work with or whether it's things that they need to do for themselves at work or out of work as well. So, that was a really good success for our staff because then they had something concrete to hang onto and say, you know, "When I'm feeling like this, I can refer to that and that will help me as well."

That's so awesome, Kathryn, thank you so much. There were so many gems and practical little references there. I'm just going to call out that there is a PDF in the chat function, which has a few of those resources that you referred to, including Black Dog and a couple of the others. So just for anyone interested in accessing those immediately, they are now available to people. Mel, did you have any perspective on success stories or what works well beyond Kathryn's comments?

Yeah, just a couple of things that I've seen probably work really well in the sector is I know that we're going to talk about it a bit later, but using the People at Work tool, the survey tool as a check-in, and we'll talk about that a little bit later, I know, but that's a really good way to get a snapshot about how the workers and the workplace is functioning from a psychological perspective. And it's a validated psychological tool that you guys can use and it's free. So there are some parameters around that, which I'll talk about later. But what that does give you is a way moving forward. Now from using that, what I've seen is that a lot of the smaller businesses, they will reach out to us for an advisory visit. So what they'll do is an inspector will come to site and they'll actually talk about, if it's psychosocial risks, if it's MSDs, whatever the risk is, will come to site and will talk to you about what is a practical implementation that you could do in your workplace. And that is free for all businesses. There is a limit on how many, if you've got over, I think it's 50 staff, don't quote me, I haven't done one in so long. But they're a really useful tool and a good way to connect with the regulator and to hear directly from them about how you could improve things from the regulatory perspective. The other 2 things that I've seen work really well within this sector is giving the room leaders, team leaders, like having more of them in a room and giving them the opportunity to mentor other staff so that can actually take the burden off the director and those senior people when they're delivering on, it might be the education component or things like that. So taking some of that off them and giving the experience and mentoring to other staff members can actually be quite useful and sharing that load. And then also having the space to debrief, for all staff to debrief with a professional as well within the workplace. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to hire a professional in the workplace, it's just linking them to a counsellor to do that regular check-ins. But honestly, consultation is key in this space, as you know, like Kathryn said, and consulting with your workers, checking in with them and having that openness about the communication, about psychosocial safety, but as well as work health and safety in general, just having that open communication can really make a difference.

Awesome. There's some other really practical things and I think calling out that SafeWork's available to come to site is a good one that maybe people didn't know about. Sandie, did you have anything to add to that? I think I'm hearing a little bit around the role of leadership here too, if there's anything you can tease out there as well.

Well, I actually think the most important thing that's happened is that we're talking about educator wellbeing, right? It's a focus, we're talking about it, we're recognising it as important, we're making it visible. Kathryn talked about, taking a lens, a wellbeing lens across all the policies, we're trying to do something about it, which 5 years ago it was hidden, it wasn't talked about. Now it's in our workforce strategy. So for me that is a huge, like, I just think it's amazing where we've come in a very short time. We're all a little bit kind of apprehensive, perhaps, a little bit kind of not quite sure what's the best thing to do or anything. But I just think the fact that we're talking about it is the biggest success that we've had and there are lots of, you know, really well-intentioned interventions that are happening across the place.

Awesome, that's a really good point, Sandie, I think celebrating the wins is very important and the rate at which this is becoming front and centre, so I appreciate that.

You mustn't forget that because it is such a big step that we've taken in the last few years, but here we are talking about it, while literally 5 years ago when I mentioned educator wellbeing, and people would go, "Educators, why, why are you looking at the educators?" And so I'm absolutely stoked that there is attention paid to this now.

Yeah, and I think as always, you're giving me great segues, Sandie, for the last question, but before I ask the last question about panel discussion, I'm just going to let everybody know that the Q&A session is next where we can get some questions through from the audience. Our team has been working away in answering some questions in live with responses, but we're curating a few to ask. So if anyone has any questions for our panel members, now's the time to type them up, as we ask this last question, so this question's a little bit around the role of who is, so whose role is it in ensuring a mentally healthy workplace? I mean, I know, initially, everyone will say it's everybody's role and that's definitely the right answer and I think we've heard a little bit around leadership and taking the lead in that space in management. But if you can sort of, if you have any insights in breaking down how those relationships can foster mentally healthy workplaces, and those roles, what exactly they should be doing, that would be awesome. Happy for anyone who chooses to go first. Maybe Mel?

Yeah, the regulator should probably comment on this.

Yeah.

So when we're looking through our regulator lens, it really is the director of the centre, the person that is higher up. So officers, directors, they're who we're looking at to ensure the safety of workers and others in the workplace. It's the law, basically. You can't get out of it. Everybody does have a responsibility to ensure that their actions or inactions in a workplace don't put themselves or anybody else at risk. It's pretty common sense, whether that be physical or psychological, it's all the same. But ultimately it does lie with the directors. Now I know that they are, they have a big job and I get that, but the best change and the focus on safety and getting that safety culture to a point where it's where you're addressing risk, and you've got those good systems and you've got that consultation in place, that comes from the top. So it's always top down. So we always say start with the leaders because that's where we want to see these changes made.

Awesome, thanks, Mel. And super clear, and I think, Sandie, when you're talking about clinical supervision, you reference starting with the leaders. So I think that that's, maybe that's why it's working because that's that area of responsibility. Maybe, Sandie, you wanted to add?

Of course the centre directors have got the lead responsibility. It just worries me that we continue to put more and more and more onto centre directors. I think individuals have a responsibility as well to kind of look after themselves but also to be alert to when there are challenges. So it's not, but obviously it's not all about the individual, it is about the whole context. It's about the owners, the approved providers, the board that Kathryn was talking about that have to be on board to do this because we are in a marketplace, you know, we've got for-profits, not-for-profits, school-based services, all sorts of ownership models. But in the research that we did with centre directors, we can be, I can be very clear and say to you that when the centre directors were supported through clinical supervision, that played down, it trickled down, it not only did it help them in their capacity to deal with the challenging situations, it also built their skills, knowledge, and understanding in order to be able to support others underneath, because people who are in centre director positions today wouldn't necessarily have had that kind of leadership training to support them to do that. So a bit of support for the leaders is absolutely critical to be able to support the educators in the service.

Sorry if I could just chime in really quickly on that front as well. Totally agree. And when I say directors, I suppose I should probably correct myself 'cause I talk under the work healthy safety legislation and we've got directors and offices, so it is obviously the management of the centre, but if you've got boards and directors that sit above them, they are considered directors and officers under our legislation. So the owners do sit with them as well. So it's not just on the director. Having said that though, I just wanted to chime in and say that I do understand that the directors of centres have lots on their plate already, but it is imperative to note that we have developed practical guidance for leaders in this space as well. So we just developed a new code of practise, I think it's called, but it's about managing, sorry, designing work to be psychologically safe. And it's only come out in the last couple of weeks and it is basically a companion to our code of practise for managing psychosocial hazards in the workplace. So I would absolutely, your directors and whoever's interested to have a read of that because it does provide some practical examples and it is meant to be a practical tool about how you can design the work to be psychologically safe and to help you identify and manage these hazards.

Awesome, thanks for adding that, especially because it's a new resource. Kathryn, just because there are some really great Q&A questions in there, I want to hear from you. But if you could talk about that centre setting, because some people are asking around small standalone services with limited resources, human and other resources. So if you could maybe add to your response, but buildings a bit of an answer to that. Like in the service, in the setting, in that bubble about roles and supports that each other can play.

But that's why we created the wellbeing champions and it wasn't, and none of the directors sit around at that table for the wellbeing champions. So that can be accomplished in any size service to have a wellbeing champion to someone that leads it and works with the director to drive wellbeing across that service. And that's an easy thing to do. And have acknowledgement days such as R U OK? Day, celebrate those kind of things. I know we celebrate children's week in our organisation so we really celebrate children but we celebrate our educators in that as well and promote their wellbeing within that week with simple things that you can do from the wellbeing champion and the director can do that quite easily in terms of saying thank you, we have gratitude, and that that's part of that positive psychology, that gratitude, and switching things to be that positive way rather than coming from a deficit model. Very easy to do in any type of service and there's lots of free things out there. Like, we didn't have a big budget to do it and I had to, I did advocate for extra funds in our budgets moving forward because we've been doing this for 6 years now. But, you know, it was about looking at the free options to support services, so you don't need a big budget for it. You just need the willpower and that common language and that common passion. All our services now have a part of their service philosophy is about educator wellbeing in there, so simple. But they all know that they're supported by each other, which is really important when you're having a rough day. But you know, your colleagues there standing with you, standing tall together.

So this survey came about, originally there was a project that was established in 2007 called the People at Work Project. It was started by, it was then WorkSafe Work Cover New South Wales, but now we're SafeWork, so we've changed. So us, the ANU, WorkSafe Victoria, Beyond Blue, we all came together, and the University of Queensland, and we all came together and said, "Okay, let's do something about psychosocial safety." So part of this project developed this survey tool, which is actually, it's accredited, and it's validated, and it's the only one of its kind and it's completely free. So what it does is it helps employers to identify psychosocial hazards and factors that can cause rise to psychosocial injuries and risks and whatnot, and it gives you a way to manage them in your workplace. It is adaptable to a variety of workplaces. It's not workplace-specific, so it doesn't have to, it's not just focusing on manufacturing and it's not just early childhood, it's for everyone. There are some limitations, so there needs to be a minimum of 20 survey responses for you to actually generate the report. So the report that this generates, it gives you a snapshot and overview of how your organisation is tracking compared to other organisations within Australia, so this tool is Australia-wide by the way, but you need a minimum of those 20 survey results for that. And then from there you get a more in-depth report, again, totally free, and then that will tell you, if you've divided the report into certain teams or anything like that, or areas of the work, it'll tell you where you need to focus your energies. And then you'll get a plan, you get a project plan on that as well, and then you action plan that and you can work that out in consultation with your workers and everything on the ground. You basically create an account. It's all free, and yeah, use that tool. If you do have less than 6, sorry, less than 20 people working in your organisation, you might do a family-run daycare, we do have another tool that might be able to assist you as well, but I'll mention that we'll put that information in the chat for you guys so it's not confusing.

Yeah, and I think other, I think we are going to drop that in. It's called the Workplace Wellbeing Assessment, is that the one?

That's right.

Yeah, and you can do that.

Yeah, we'll drop the link. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, brilliant. Do that with a minimum of 6 people.

Awesome.

Quite good for a smaller organisation.

Yeah, that's great, and it's great that we've got that scalability there. So we're really excited, Kathryn, to hear in 5 minutes your experience with using this tool in the ECC setting.

So we've been implementing this tool for 4 years now, so the beauty of it is we have data for 4 years about what we are doing. So where we first started, the actions that we put in place then, and we can see from year to year how those actions are improving the wellbeing of our workforce. And you need to remember, we've gone through some critical times during that time, so, you know, we've had, for us, we've had bush fires, so that's significantly impacted staff in our Shoalhaven services, and COVID, and, you know, workforce shortages and things like that. So we were able to see what's working for us and where we need to head to next. One aspect for us is that we can, it breaks down age groups, so we're able to see where people are sitting in our organisation. Remember, it's anonymous, but where they're sitting in our organisation into age groups, so we have a young cohort up to age 24 years, and most of that is our trainees that we have in our services. So for them, it showed that they were bit, they had a role overload in their job. They were a bit overwhelmed as such, so we could take that data knowing that it sits mainly for our trainees in terms of the age brackets and look at what we are going to do to support trainees more in our services, so we were able to have a network meeting specifically for trainees. So they come, the 3 trainees come together twice a year and the diploma trainees come back twice, together twice a year, and they're able to, you know, have time together where there's that peer learning where the conversations are the same. So they're not, sometimes a trainee may not contribute at a team meeting because they feel like there's all this wealth of experience and knowledge sitting in front of them, and who am I to speak up? Whereas they can speak up more with their peers, so that there were good outcomes that we're having and we are seeing that change for that age group. You know, one of the other things that came about is our directors are, our leaders in our centres are feeling overwhelmed. They're the ones that carry the full load, and I think we've addressed that, but we are able to have discussions with them about what they're needing and moving forward with that. They feel the weight of everybody, so we've tapped into accidental counsellor training for them, but also we devised, we changed our appraisal system as such to be called focus conversations. And then rather doing an appraisal once a year, they're bimonthly, and they're set sessions that the director has with their team. One, it builds to getting to know your staff individually, it helps open communication, staff feel empowered because this is about me. At least once every 2 months, I get to sit down with my leader and have a good discussion about me, my professional growth, what I'm needing, what I don't like about my job, and how we can fix it together. The other thing, you know, we had an example in our services because we can break it down into our services particularly, because they have around that 20 staff, they had a lot of change because they had parental leave positions. We had a baby boom in a couple of our services, so obviously they're going off to have babies. We've got contract staff coming in to replace them at that time. When those staff that come back after parental leave, they often come back part-time, so it's increasing the numbers of staff. So communication was a key for that service, and that was identified in the People at Work survey, that their coworker conversations weren't happening. So the action plan was developed in consultation with that team to say we need to improve our systems across the week, and how we can engage part-time staff so they know what's going on on the day that they're not there? And it was funny, you know, we could see the next year, that team certainly improved in their results under the People at Work survey. And, you know, one of the educators said, "Look at us going now, we're great guns now." You know, and it just was a catalyst for change that was measured and then they can see that it works, so that was really interesting for that. The other thing that-

Kathryn, we're-

Out of time?

Sorry, I'm so sorry, we're out of time. But everybody knows Kathryn from ECTARC now. No, I won't say that, but I really loved how you really gave real life, real scenarios and examples on how people at work can be implemented and used, so I really appreciate that, and I'm so sorry we ran out of time. It's clearly a juicy topic, one that our team are really passionate about and want to keep talking about. As you can see on the slide, and the webinar will be saved and shared later, these are all the resources we've run through, plus a bit, a few more. We've pinned them in the chat because it doesn't allow us to put a little PDF in there, but I just wanted to thank everyone, first of all, for joining and giving us the airtime and letting us talk to you. I especially want to thank Sandy, Mel, and Kathryn for their generous time and efforts, and their commitment to educator wellbeing in early childhood sector. And just echoing Sandy's comments there that, you know, it's a win that we're talking about this, and we are getting into a very exciting period where we actually can move the dial on it. So really keen for all the sharing, and thank you for all your questions, and let's keep the conversation going. So thank you so much everybody, and I hope you'll have a lovely afternoon.

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, RUOK Day, and there is a link to the webinar topic in 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 wanna pause and say if that's the sort of support you do need right now, we recommend you reach out to your employee assistance programme provider delivered by your employer or organisations such as Be You or the RUOK 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 gonna go through our session today, I'll begin with some brief scene setting, then we'll move into a prerecorded conversation with Dr. Mike Rogers about the peer support mentoring programme pilot, which is currently taking place in 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 Mark 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 practise, and mentoring are 3 of 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 and 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 ECEC 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 peers of ECEC 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 practise or pedagogy. And then moving along to communities of practise, those pairs can group up and create a topic base or thematic community. There can be, and I think something that I'm particularly interested in personally is around these informal networks. So aside from these 3, we're really well aware that if you have an attitude towards com 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 practise. These sorts of groups can result in connection, reduce 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 programmes had positive results because you're establishing this as a norm very early on in the career. Now by way of cute, neat segue, an Australia 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. Mark Rogers. We will move into a recording of that interview in a minute.

Just a little bit of background on Marg. Marg is currently overseeing the peer mentoring programme pilot in Queensland. The programme 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.

Pleasure to be here. Kat,

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.

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 Manor 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.

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 or remote and the mental health and wellbeing all has converged perfectly around a peer network programme pilot that you've been leading in Queensland for a while. If you wanna 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.

Sure. So I've been part of a programme 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 are particularly targeting childcare deserts in Queensland. So we are looking at setting up 5 communities of practise or supportive communities of educators within each of the 5 desert areas that we've looked at. I mean most of Queensland 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 and 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.

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

Yeah, so I-

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

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. Like 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 programme about 7 or 8 years ago with educators and kept piloting and adapting that programme and it's peer mentoring programme. 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 programme 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, 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 programme.

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?

Yeah, so look that 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 pair or their group of 3, or if it's a big group meeting. They're actually setting their own agenda. So they choose what they wanna 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 wanna preface that by saying that the British Columbian programme, 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 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 2 educators 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 trial different communication methods. Some facilitators said, oh, like the WhatsApp group 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 3 months we get together for a meal and then we can spend a bit more money and have a nicer, healthier meal.

It's very important.

And funding. Yeah, that's right. And then they said, look, sometimes shorter get togethers just work 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. They've 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.

Oh, 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 programmes 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 are talking about childcare deserts and professional isolation and these sorts of things in particular in those 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 programme, 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?

Yeah, I think we've just gotta 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 programme and we wanna 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 wanna 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? Like 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.

Awesome. And I think, yeah, I think definitely the future sustainability of programmes such as these, I think they're particularly interesting to educators from what I've heard, because obviously they're gonna 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 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 look forward to that as well.

Thanks.

Awesome. Thanks so much.

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 rated 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.

Uh-huh. Hi. Hello, everyone.

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 wanna 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?

Oh, absolutely. Yaribee 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 experiencing. 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 and 3 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 funding's 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 location. So, you know, 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, really important. So looking at your local communities and reaching out to those people that, you know, might not be quite evident, but, you know, 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.

Yeah, that's an awesome snapshot, and so many significant challenges working against, and so that resilience really shines through. To me, I think, you know, 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 are.

Yeah. I think the informal networks are absolutely critical and normally a really good starting point. So those just, you know, yarning with people, stopping to have a chat, things that involve, you know, 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 programme. 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, you know, 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 know, 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, 'cause they can really help to, you know, see who's out there and to try and connect those dots with what's happening in your 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, you know, 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.

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

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 and, you know, 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, you know, 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. You know, 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, you know, one of the examples of how that worked in practise, we've got our Mooddji farm, a little project running next door to the preschool, and it started off, you know, just cultural space, some children growing and connecting with the sustainability and culture. It extended out to a cooking programme 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 that one project. And I guess the negatives, obviously, you know, lack of funding and lack of time are always an issue. But, you know, finding those creative ways to, you know, 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 a resource library connected to that. So if you missed that, you were able to, you know, 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, you know, 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, you know, 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.

When people signed up for this session, they threw some commentary in in terms of like 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 all. 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, you know, what outcomes are there for children and community when proactive strategies exist? So. These networks yeah, 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.

Yeah, look, I think it's so important, and I think when you create that space and that community and that time to go, you know, "Narelle, how are things for you right now?" Then you're 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. You know, 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.

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

Yeah, no, I totally agree, and I think nourishing your educators and giving them the opportunities is 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, 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, you know, felt really, really empowered. So just you do these little things as part of your programme 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.

That's great, Narelle. I was gonna say too, Katzy, that sometimes too, one, 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 Noelle, 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.

That yeah, I think that's so valuable, like that continuous learning opportunities. We actually have some, two really, really good questions in the chat. I wanna go to James' question first and it's like, "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 day care 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.

That's exactly our situation, so I'm really excited to answer this question. My advice is don't give up. We have the exactly the same situation. We're a tiny little rural preschool, but there is a long day care nearby and sometimes depending on the owners or the staffing at that service, it can be hot or cold. But ironically today there were 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?

Yeah. 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 you know, like if you're in a town of 8,000 people, you know, 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? Like sometimes I think learning from how different people work in different circumstances can be really good, and that could even extend to the children, you know, 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, you know, the whole service is learning as well.

That's a great suggestion, Marg. I'll probably 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, really interesting connection around those that are responsible for building and leading in this space.

That's-

Any takers?

Yeah.

I should have said, sorry.

Yes. 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 speaking, I'm feeling quite terrified at the moment so I would not normally, you know, 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 her 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, you know, 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 you're comfortable with it, I guess.

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, you know? So I work really well with people who have particular skills, but 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 grade." 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, who 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 programme, don't take it personally if educators say they're too busy right now. You know, sometimes just knowing those supports are there can be helpful. And also, engagement looks different culturally than other things. Like participation looks different for different people at different times. So if they say, "Look, I really wanna 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, 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 gonna organise every second catch up or something and have, yeah, co-lead can be really helpful there too.

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 Narelle.

Yeah, so professional development, usually it's around children's behaviours, neurodiversity, trauma-informed approaches, that type of thing. They often wanna 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, you know, assessment and rating, how do I manage those times? So they're really common themes that come up.

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?" And 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.

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.

Wow.

That's awesome. That there's great support, friendships have been built and valued. However, we are 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?

I think they can leave it. I mean, you know, 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 know, you've got something that works for those people. And so like with the model that I put forward and then with the what's working for Narelle's service, they're just models, right? You know, and it's gonna look really different in really different communities and different people and different preferences, and that's okay. You know, you don't have to, it's not a political party, you know? 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, you know, informal, formal whatever. Yeah, that's a great thing. And well done, 10 years, congratulations.

I agree.

Yeah, I agree with that as well. Our local directors 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 and reach out to those other connections as well.

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 day care. "It's very hard in family day care, 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 day care and experiences or suggestions in that space?

Yeah, so my guess there would be that like sometimes there might be an early childhood association or there might be the CELA thing, you know, there could be these informal networks and saying to those networks in a particular area, you know, "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 day care," I really hope that didn't happen, but that could be a place to start. The other thing is connecting with other family day care carers from either your area or different parts, you know, as I suggested in another one because family day care is so important, we so need family day care. And it could be that you want to just connect with family day care educators because they have unique, you know, 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 mightn't get it right the first time, you know, it might be that you've gotta try a few different approaches, and I think it's just finding what works for you really.

Narelle, would you add anything?

Yeah, we, in Bermagui, we've got 3 or 4 family day care operators and they, yeah, it is really hard because you are really isolated. In the Bega Valley Shire, that we have a family day care network that acts as an umbrella for all those standalone family day cares. So if you have one in your area, reach out to them because I know the Bermagui family day cares, they quite often get together, you know, 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. But and the Bega Valley family day care 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 goes because yeah, definitely is very isolating and trying to find other people that are doing what you're doing is fabulous and great.

Awesome, well, we are 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.

Worimi Ngani that's hello, how are you in Dharug language, the local language of Sydney, which is where I live, work, and play. Didjurigura, thank you for joining us for our Be You session, "Wellbeing in the Workplace." I'll just check I'm sharing the right screen. One moment. So my name is Amanda Kidd. I am a Be You consultant with Early Childhood Australia. I also have my colleagues, Blaire Aldrich and Susan Sharpe, also Be You consultants joining us in the chat box, sharing Be You resources and answering any questions that you might have. Later in the session, we'll meet Mel Oake, the wellbeing officer from the Berry Patch Preschool and Long Daycare Centres, who will help us bring alive wellbeing in the workplace, sharing their Be You journey with us today. So thank you to all of them for giving up their time to be here with all of us, and to all of you as well. I know time is a precious commodity in the early childhood space. So thank you very much for being here today. So I would like to acknowledge that I am meeting on the land of the Darramuragal peoples, and I pay my respects to elders past and present for they hold the knowledge of many generations to pass on to our children, and acknowledge them as the traditional custodians of the lands, skies, and waterways of this country. I would also like to acknowledge any First Nations people joining us online today and extend my respects. As we have people joining from all over New South Wales, it would be really wonderful if you could take a moment to do your own acknowledgement, however that may look for you. So while you're putting your energy into creating a positive mental health environment for children and young people, it's also really important to focus on your wellbeing and that of your colleagues. So yours and your colleagues' wellbeing need to be a priority, and we're gonna learn more about that today. So when discussing mental health, sometimes unexpected feelings or thoughts can emerge, and sometimes these can be really challenging. So please be aware of any thoughts or feelings that come up for you, and have a plan for who and how you can reach out for someone, to someone for support. And Be You has a range of wellbeing tools and fact sheets to support educators, and they will be in the chat box for you. And this is one of the resources up on the screen. This is our mental health services and support resource, and it can be found on our website, and it's free for any educator to download and display within your service, as appropriate. So today we are going to have a bit of a spotlight on workplace wellbeing. We're going to unpack the research, which is the foundation of our newest educator wellbeing resource. And we'll have an overview of the resource which can help you to build a thriving workplace. So hopefully you'll get to go away with some new information and some practical tools and ideas to support your wellbeing in your workplace. So just a little bit about Be You, we are a federally-funded mental health initiative to promote mental health from birth to 18 years. It's for every educator in Australia, from early learning services all the way through to secondary school, and it also includes future educators, so people training to be an educator. Be You is led by Beyond Blue in partnership with Early Childhood Australia and Headspace. And our vision is that every learning community is positive, inclusive, and resilient, a place where every child and young person, educator, and family can achieve their best possible mental health. Be You includes a suite of resources and tools, including a team of consultants like Blaire, Susan, and myself, who can help you to implement a whole learning community approach to mental health and wellbeing. So let's get into it. We're going to start off with an activity, doing this together, and we're going to use Mentimeter. So you can actually access our Menti board by using this QR code up on the screen, or there will be a link in the chat for you. So you can click on that link and it will take you directly to the Mentimeter board. So what we're going to do, we're going to create a word cloud together, and we are going to fill this word cloud with words that come to mind when we think of a mentally healthy workplace. We are going to think about what it looks like, what it feels like, and what it sounds like. So I think this will help us get into the right kind of mindset for this session, thinking about wellbeing in the workplace. So hopefully, oh, it looks like you have, I'm gonna share my screen now. You've all managed to access the board, so thank you. And I can see the numbers are rising there. So up on the screen, these are all the words that you are telling us is what a mentally healthy community looks, feels, and sounds like. And what you can see there, you can see in the middle those big bold words. So we see safe, we see supportive, we see happy, respectful, those are words that are being repeated and they're being, so people are using those words the most on that board. So I can see things like laughter as a big one. I think that's a really important attribute of a mentally healthy community, positive, respectful, honest. Look at all these wonderful words that we can see there. So I feel like that we're not having any trouble thinking about what a mentally healthy community looks, feels, and sounds like, are we? We see peaceful, we see caring. So these are all really great words that we are going to maybe consider later on in the session when we look at our strengths and our opportunities for growth when we are thinking about positive culture, positive workplace culture. So there you go. Look at all of those wonderful words. And hopefully you are feeling really inspired. And hopefully you can reflect on your own service and whether or not these are attributes of your service. And if it's not, perhaps having a think about how could you build these into your service. And that's what we're here to talk about today with Be You. So thanks for your contributions, everyone. I think that will help us, yeah, as I said, reflect on things later on in the session. So we'll go back to our board. You can keep adding to that board if anything comes up for you, that's fine. It will still be up and running for you if you'd like to keep adding to it. So up on the screen are the foundational pillars for mentally healthy workplace. And these are taken from the National Blueprint for Mentally Healthy Workplaces, which was developed by the Federal Government as part of the National Workplace Initiative. So we see the words there, protect, respond, and promote. So Protect is identifying and managing work-related risks to mental health. Respond is identifying and responding to support people experiencing mental health issues or distress. And Promote is recognising and enhancing the positive aspects of work that contribute to good mental health. So why are we talking about this? Well, because protecting, responding and promoting a mentally healthy workplace is actually our legal responsibility. We have a responsibility to identify, respond to, and manage psychological risks and hazards in the workplace. So according to SafeWork New South Wales, stress is actually one of the top causes of injury for education and training. So it's really important that we identify and address psychological and hazards to protect the mental health and wellbeing of our team and to support a thriving workplace. So today we are going to focus on Promote, creating a positive environment and promoting mental health. So if you do want more information on the Protect and Respond pillars, there'll be a link in the chat box to our education and workplace safety resources webpage to find links to relevant external resources. So this is our newest wellbeing resource. This is our Beyond Self-Care: An Educator Wellbeing Guide. So this was launched at the end of March this year. And we are really proud of it because we feel like it's, you know, innovative, and it's specifically for educators, but for the workplace ideally. So the guide actually supports services to explore the Promote pillar for a mentally healthy workplace. And there is a link in the chat for you so you can access it online. So in 2021, Beyond Blue commissioned Monash University to conduct a series of educator wellbeing projects to support the development of new Be You educator wellbeing resources, including this guide. And so the information in this guide is actually from the voices of educators across the country who have shared, who have been active and have shared their voices. And so a lot of what's come from this is from educators. So the guide actually contains key findings from the research, and it provides foundational principles and activities to help services promote a mentally healthy workplace.

So, the key findings from the research, which are pointed out in this guide, but are also summarised really well in an article by some of the researchers, which is the... There will be a link in the chat box to "5 Ways to Promote Educator Wellbeing," the article. So the research actually said that we need to have a shift in thinking about stress. So this refers to the Moving Beyond Self-care piece. And so we are thinking that while there are some aspects of individual responsibility around supporting our own wellbeing, so ensuring that we're looking after ourselves, we're having enough sleep, we're eating healthy, maybe getting extra support if we have a mental health condition or we're eating healthy, exercising. So, all the holistic things to care for ourselves. But in actual fact, what we found from our research was that many of the stresses that educators actually experience arise from their environment. And it's the environment that actually needs to change and not the educators. So, this shift in thinking is actually a strength-based, sort of equitable supportive approach, where we're addressing the environment, those stress factors in the environment, rather than saying to an educator, "Oh, you need to look after your mental health," "You need to make sure you're doing this or you're doing that." So just thinking about how we could do this, how we can identify those stress factors within our environment and how we can address them. And I'm sure you can think of examples of stresses in your environment. And so the next one there is positive relationships with colleagues and leaders are essential to promote wellbeing. So this highlights the importance of culture in nurturing collegial relationships. So, people are helping each other out when required. People perhaps are doing some small acts of kindness. They're celebrating each other's successes, they're encouraging people to take breaks. I think that's a big one. And to go home on time, I think that's a big one, too. We often feel we have to work extra hours or do extra things, not take our breaks for particular reasons, which is, yeah, we shouldn't really be doing that. So having that culture where we are promoting help wellbeing where we can. Obviously, I know there's a lot happening in the sector at the moment, so it is challenging to do some of those things, but how can we make it easier and more supportive for educators? So, supportive leaders positively contribute to educator wellbeing. So, this is about the role of supportive leaders in promoting an inclusive environment where there are opportunities for staff to have input in decision-making about the service. And that leadership provides clear expectations around roles and responsibilities. They're checking in with staff regularly to ensure they're doing okay and to help them support their professional development and their mental health, and giving them choices where possible around perhaps work options. So, for example, what their roster might look like in the week. And leaders also leading by example. So role-modeling self-care, role-modeling help-seeking behaviours. Again, going back to taking breaks. We don't want to create a culture. People are looking up to the leaders. We don't want to create a culture where the leadership is not taking their breaks, they're not going home on time. We want them to ask for help if they need it from their colleagues, because in our team, we have expertise and we have... Yeah, we can share that decision-making and that support. And I think it's important for leaders to be vulnerable with their staff to show that we are just humans, and we do need support, and yeah, that collegial relationship. So I think it's important for a leader to think like that, and the research has shown that as well. The next one is a systems-wide approach is needed to promote and sustain educator wellbeing. So, taking a system wide approach to wellbeing means offering individual support to educators. So, having things like a employee assistance programme, in mindfulness programmes, or having maybe mental health days available for staff. So, looking at those aspects of individual educator support, but also addressing the demands on the educators. So, for example, I can think of one that comes up quite a lot, thinking about the required amount of time... Sorry, the required amount of documentation versus the time that educators are actually allocated to do it. So, and then looking at perhaps the National Quality Standards and seeing: What are the regulations around that, and are we meeting it? Are we going above and beyond, and perhaps we need to cut it back for a certain time period? Or just reflecting on that alone. Creating and implementing a service-wide approach to wellbeing that is supported through policy and leadership and also includes educators' voices. So yeah, ensuring that everybody gets a say can help build that culture, that positive culture. The last one is unique challenges for diverse teachers. So, diverse teachers face unique challenges that need to be identified and addressed, including First Nations educators, culturally and linguistically diverse educators, LGBTQIA+ educators, and also early career educators and educators on contracts. So, ensuring that we are meeting their needs and creating an inclusive space and ensuring that everybody feels included and a sense of belonging within the service. So, have a read of that article for more information about those key areas and recommendations, and see how you are doing. You might be able to sort of have a bit of a reflect on how you might be going in those areas. So, why does educator wellbeing matter? Well, educator wellbeing is actually at the heart of caring for children and young people. It affects how educators interact and build relationships with children and young people, families, and colleagues. And it's been linked to better outcomes for children. So, this image on the screen demonstrates the bidirectional influence of wellbeing between children and educators. So, when educators are flourishing and they're thriving, children are flourishing and thriving and vice versa. And this often comes to a surprise to some educators want to show them this image because they just... We're carers. As educators, we want to help and we want to support children as best as we can. And we don't recognise that when we're burning out, that's actually impacting the way we interact with the people around us. So, I think it's really nice to see this as a visual in front of us. And while I think it is important to point this out, as this is often the motivator for educators to begin prioritising their wellbeing, the focus on educator wellbeing in the workplace should really be motivated by the fact that our people in our community, our team, they are important and their wellbeing matters. And just because we care should be enough, and it should be the reason why we are focusing on educator wellbeing. So, what contributes to wellbeing? So on the screen, you can see the 6 layers that can contribute to educator wellbeing. We can see the individual educators, and we've touched on that a bit, collegial relationships, workplace culture, leadership, community, governance, and policy. And when I look at this particular image, I see similarities with the Bronfenbrenner Socioecological Cycle with the educator kind of in the middle there and where all the layers are interacting and are influencing the individual educator's wellbeing. And I think it's important to remember there are some layers there that we cannot influence. So, governments, and policy, and community are probably areas that might be out of our control. But they do influence on the educator. So sometimes, we can't control it, but how do we manage that? So while some of those contributors are out of our control, what this actually highlights is that educator wellbeing goes beyond just the self-care of the individual, and that the workplace is in the position to address some of the components that contribute to educator wellbeing. And so the areas that the workplace can address are the individual educator. So, we talked about that earlier where we talked about perhaps offering a employee assistance programme, having access to mindfulness programmes, or encouraging them to build their mental health literacy by... For example, I'm just going to plug Be You here, but registering for Be You, because I think when you build up your mental health literacy, you start to understand how mental health actually affects everything that you do. And you begin to notice it in yourself as well and where you are at on the mental health continuum. So, that's a really important one there. The other areas that a workplace can address is collegial relationships. So, we can build those, we can put things in place to build collegial relationships and to build workplace culture. So, how we do that is by talking to our team and finding out what are our strengths, what are our opportunities, which we will look at a little bit later. Well, we'll look at sort of how... Looking at activities that can help us with that. And leadership. So leadership, I think often, some of us have moved into roles in leadership that perhaps haven't had the time or the professional learning around leadership. And maybe it is about doing professional development in that space and learning more how we can support ourselves as a leader, how we can be a better leader and to support our team, how we can support workplace culture, how we can support collegial relationships, and how we can support individual wellbeing. So, we don't actually have time to go through them individually, but we do have an extensive list of outcomes in the guide that you can consider as focus areas that you might like to address from the collegial relationships, workplace culture, and leadership perspectives on the areas of working together, inclusivity, and prioritising wellbeing. So, that's on page 12 to 19 of the guide. So, let's move on. And I did see there is a question in the chat box: "Is there any recommended employee assistance programmes for early childhood sector or any plan to develop one for early childhood professionals to access?" That's a really great question, Lisa. There are a lot to look at, and I think it's going to depend on your specific circumstances and where you are. I think Blair, you might be able to answer that question so I don't take up too much time, but it does depend on your context. So, you might be able to find ones that support a larger organisation or a smaller organisation. So, some people might be from a really small organisation, and instead of having an employee assistance programme, they might actually reach out to like a local counselling service that they can recommend on an individual basis, or that they can access, or there's larger ones. So yeah, depending on where you are, I don't know. If you do want to reach out, if you are a Be You service, reach out to your Be You consultant, that would be a great place to start and they can help you with that. So, thanks for the question, Lisa. So on the screen is the 7 principles from our guide that can actually support your learning community towards being a place where educators can thrive. These principles aren't in any particular order; they all have a similar level of importance and we will start at the top there. So, create a positive culture and environment. So educator wellbeing is based on a positive organisational culture. Services need to create environments where educators are supported, engaged, and can thrive. As we move over to recognise educators and as professionals, the focus on this is that educators' professionalism, their expertise, and capability is acknowledged, it's respected and celebrated. This is important for professional identity. Moving to acknowledge educators' autonomy. Educators' agency and autonomy is acknowledged and respected. This includes whether and how to engage in wellbeing initiatives. So, thinking about our context, what wellbeing initiatives are going to work and what are you trying to address as well? So yeah, that's a good one to have a think about. Because often, we are quite enthusiastic about introducing wellbeing initiatives, whether that be let's all do yoga, or let's have a fruit bowl, or have a mindfulness programme. But, is that going to work for your staff? Is that what they're requiring? Is it addressing the issue that you are trying to address? So, that's something to think about. Where are we up to? Promote respectful relationships, so relationships amongst staff, children, and the learning community are respectful and collaborative. Wellbeing resources are accessible and inclusive. So, wellbeing initiatives are accessible to all educators and they're convenient; they acknowledge educators' cultures, experiences, and needs; and they support their work with children, young people, and communities. So moving on to learning communities use evidence-informed practise. So, high-quality relevant evidence is used when designing wellbeing initiatives. Local data is used to inform decisions and track and review progress outcomes. So, data is actually really important for the successful implementation of any change. So, if wellbeing in the workplace is something that you want to be focusing on in your service, perhaps finding a way to collect data, whether that be sort of surveys from with the educators about what they want, or having a session discussing what that might look like to get the educators' voices in there, and then to see it progress. 'Cause when you've got the data, you're able to plan for change, and then you can then implement things appropriately. And yeah, based on your context. So, wellbeing initiatives are practical and they're adaptable. So they need to be applied and relevant to the daily work of educators and their learning communities, and they should be adaptable to the context in which educators work. So for example, talking about Be You, when you're implementing Be You, you're going to do it in a way that suits your service and what you're already doing, so you don't... So yeah, I think it's nice to be able to perhaps thinking about also whether or not it's working right now, it's good to reflect on that first, but instead of trying to make things... Yeah, trying to do big things, you could perhaps already look at what you're doing, and how they're working, and how you can, yeah, make that support the change you're trying to do. So, these principles are a great starting point to inform policies and procedures around workplace wellbeing and to take into consideration when exploring perhaps the role and responsibilities of your wellbeing champions at your service. How you approach or engage with them will depend on your service context and where you're at in your workplace wellbeing journey. And also, as I said, any identified issues that need to be addressed.

Okay, so we are now going to hear about an organisation's journey towards a thriving workplace. I think you've had enough listening to me, so I'd like to introduce Mel Oake from the Berry Patch Preschool and Long Day Care Centres, a participating Be You organisation. Mel is the wellbeing officer, specifically for educators for all 5 of the Berry Patch services. And so welcome, Mel.

Thank you.

Thanks for joining me today to share all about the Berry Patch's journey. Here you are. I can see you now. So we're going to just perhaps start off with Barry Patch's history with Be You and maybe a bit of an overview about your organisation's approach to wellbeing in the workplace. Would you mind sharing a little bit about these please?

No worries at all. Thank you so much, Amanda. It's great to have the opportunity to share a little bit about our service's culture. So the lovely Berry Patch operations manager, Kylie, identified a need for mental health and wellbeing through the COVID period. Although we had some resources in place to support this, she found staff burnout, low morale, and isolation being such big factors coming forth that more intervention was required. She sought out a way of incorporating resources and activities to encourage conversations around mental health. In doing so, she found Be You. We found Be You to provide fact sheets and resources to encourage and support these conversations and slowly shine light on educator wellbeing. Once in contact with Be You, we were assigned a Be You consultant, and that is where Amanda's come in. She was able to point us to useful information and help encourage all educators to sign up to the website and take full use of these resources. Each of our centres were assigned action team leaders all by volunteering to assist educators locate the right resources that were applicable to that specific workplace. As well as Be You, we have regular correspondence, guidance internally, meetings with SafeWork New South Wales, Transitioning Well, Black Dog Institute and Heads Up, all to ensure we're covering all different needs within the workplace in regards to staff wellbeing.

Thanks, Mel. Did you have more or you, I'm not sure if you looking-

No, I'm good.

No, that's great, and I think it's really nice that when you were talking, you were talking about that there was an issue identified. So during COVID, you know, your operations manager saw that there was a need for educator wellbeing to be a focus for your service and I think what that highlights there was the leadership support. So leadership actually went in and went, no, we need to find something to do. We need to, we've searched around and we found Be You was suitable for our context and it was flexible and adaptable for each individual service. So it's quite interesting to hear that you're not engaging with Be You as such as a blanketed approach. You are actually engaging with it based on each individual needs of the services. So I heard you say there that each service accesses various parts of the Be You initiative and they're engaging with various tools that are different to one another. So I think that's really nice.

Yeah, of course. 'Cause I think that if we had them all just as a streamlined approach for all the centres, I think everybody has, there's a lot of different backgrounds and cultural differences. So I think it's important to make sure that we've got a bit of difference between all of the centres and provide for that as well.

Really good. And the other thing I heard you talk about was relationships with other external resources. So you mentioned SafeWork New South Wales, you mentioned Black Dog Institute, and I think it's really nice that you are seeing the need for creating relationships with community organisations that can support you to help build a, you know, a culturally safe and a inclusive and a thriving workplace.

Oh yeah, definitely.

So can you just tell us a little bit about the relationships that you have? Like how did you get involved? I feel like sometimes that might be, yeah. Something people can take away.

Yes. Originally, so once we got involved with Be You, there's obviously the other resources out there. So it's kind of just going through really an internet search and finding what's applicable for our services and what's going to work best for us. Looking at Black Dog Institute, they send out regular emails, they check in, they identify different parts in our workplace in regards to mental health, what we can look at improving or something that we can change or things like that. And the Black Dog Institute will give you some positive feedback, different resources as well as Be You they obviously, you guys give us so much positive guidance and support and Heads Up, they have provided us with templates, different, there's a thousand things that comes to mind. But yeah, majority of it is fact sheets, support guides, as well as providing the support through phone calls, through Zoom meetings, through emails. There's a lot of correspondence between myself and those companies.

And what I really like is that you're not doing it on your own. That you are actually being able to reach out to people. You've got the confidence to be able to go, no, I need support in these spaces. And there are people with evidence-based, you know, tools and resources that we can actually use to implement into our service as well. And what I like is that you are, you know, you're not seeing Be You as like this programme that you have to do certain things. You're actually seeing it as a support to implementing mental health and wellbeing in your workplace. That it actually is just sort of this really great resource that you can use. And particularly, you did plug the consultant support, so I thought I'll add that.

I think it's very helpful to be able to take elements of each place and be able to use it rather than just using one as a whole approach. We've got multiple different influencing factors that are going to help support the educators, the leadership team, the approved providers, everybody.

Yeah, I really like that, how it's actually, you're utilising those resources to support each of the various levels of roles within your service. So you've got, you know, resources for the, perhaps the executive level, the middle management level, the service level, the educator level. So you're able to meet that whole community approach to mental health and wellbeing.

So we're going to have a look at some of our questions from our workplace review table, which is from the guide based on the 7 principles. So the workplace review table is an activity that is recommended to be done as a team, which helps you to explore your current contexts, identifying your workplace wellbeing strengths and opportunities that exist. So we actually have Dr. Tamara Cumming from Macquarie University's Educator Wellbeing Research Project join us for a Be You webinar about 2 weeks ago to talk about her research, and she spoke about identifying and directly addressing the problem that you want to address, and this activity can help you to do this. So you're identifying your strengths, and you're identifying opportunities for growth. So when engaging in this activity with your team, it's really important to ensure that you have created a psychologically safe environment for people to be vulnerable and share and to provide access to support should they need it. So if you could, please go to the Menti screen now by using the QR code, clicking the link in the chat box, and starting to add to the board about ways that your service creates a positive culture and environment, there you go, and also include ways it could be improved. So it is anonymous, so just having a think, and just a reminder about safety in this space, so please be mindful about confidentiality and privacy and ensure that your comments are quite constructive. So Mel, if you feel comfortable, it would be great if you could share some of your strengths, your service strengths, and any opportunities that your service have identified, what you're considering doing to address those, while our attendees are adding to the Menti board there.

I think we've got quite a few strengths. I think our main one is the ability to adapt to each educator's needs individually. So what might work for one staff member might not work for the other, as well as providing support through different hotlines and senior leadership team conversations. So the different hotlines that we've got from Be You the factsheet that we found very, very useful, we've got that spread throughout the services. This is for all staff or parents as they walk through most of the areas that we have them placed at to be able to have access to those numbers and knowing that's a place that I need to call. And yes, so the senior leadership team conversations, just providing those relationships, that positive relationship building to help the staff feel comfortable and safe when they're having these conversations that may be at times, let's face it, hard. I would say some of the challenges that we have, although we have a teamwork policy, I think we need to make a more streamlined approach policy towards educator wellbeing. The teamwork policy covers it very vaguely, but I think having it a bit more specific to us as educators will definitely help in the future as well, I think that this is kind of a, and in any workforce, that trying to normalise our mental health and wellbeing, just having the conversations and bringing it to the forefront rather than being behind closed doors, and yeah, I think that's probably a big one across all industries.

Yeah, there are some really great strategies there, and I like that you were honest that, you know, that you found perhaps an area that you do need to, you know, work towards, and that was identifying educator wellbeing as its own focus area, so that was really great. Now, did you talk about your safe space? Because you've got this really wonderful safe space, and I heard you sort of talk about the support lines and all of that, and you actually have your support lines in this safe space, so do you want to tell everyone about your safe space that you created at your service?

I would love to. We love our safe space. So when we're going through Be You resources, we felt that we really didn't have a space to keep those resources as well as a space of our own. So in consultation with our approved providers, our nominated supervisors, and some of the staff, we began to put together our safe space. We began by identifying a room which did used to be our printer room, and it did store our records and things like that, so we cleaned that out, and we began the transformation. We asked the staff what they wanted it to look like and what they wanted from it. I have to be completely transparent. There was some hesitation to begin with. A lot of the staff asked how long it will last and what's the relevance of it? The truth was we actually weren't quite sure where it was going to go and how useful it was going to be, but we knew it was a space that was going to provide opportunities to start conversations. We actually created this room at the beginning of last year, so 2022, and I'm happy to say it is being used every single day. The safe space is used to assist in transitions from home to work, having quiet time. Sometimes, people want to have their lunch in there and for sensitive and meaningful conversations. In our safe space, we have 2 beautiful comfy couches, our tea and coffee-making facilities, a diffuser, Be You fact sheets and support guides, positive affirmations plastered on the wall, self-regulating activities, so we've got magazines. We've got puzzles. We've got yoga techniques, and I think probably the most important thing that we have in that room is the lolly and chocolate jar.

It's funny you say that because that came up in our positive culture and environment on our Menti board there. There was definitely, you know, lolly jars up there in there. And tea and coffee and bubble teas I saw as well, so that seems to be at the heart for some educators. Yeah, and I think having that space, and what I really liked when you were telling me about this particular space that you created was that you actually came to that decision to make that space. There was a few of you that came up with that decision. That wasn't just someone with the grand idea and going, "We're going to create a safe space." You actually identified that as, you know, a need with, I think you said 5 of your staff members kind of came to that decision that that was going to be effective.

Oh, yeah. We have 2 action team leaders at each of our services, and so it was the 2 action team leaders, so myself and one of the other girls, and the director, the Ed leader, and the approved provider, as well as some of the staff as well, so it was a very collaborative approach.

I like that, and what I thought was really interesting when you were telling me about it was that you went to leadership, and you said, "This is what we would like to do," and leadership were really supportive of it, and you did say at the beginning that there were some staff that were quite hesitant because, you know, that was money, so sorry, I won't jump to that bit. So leadership actually gave you money for this so that you got $500, was it, to create this space?

Yes. Correct.

And that was seen as, you know, quite, there was a bit of a pushback because some of the staff felt that that money could be used towards resources or other things for the children, but the leadership were actually really positive towards this, and they went, "No, this is something we feel is going to really be valuable, and we're going to pilot it in your Kellyville Ridge Service."

Yes.

And it was something that, as you said, it's used every single day.

Oh, yeah, every day. I think by the end of every week, there's no lollies or chocolate left.

But I think it was really nice to hear, so what really came out for me was things like a transition space, that it could be used as a transition space because transition, we know, is often, it's really important for children, but it's really important for educators as well. Transitioning from home to the service, the fact that they've got this space now where they could have a conversation with someone, they could choose someone to bring into that room and go, you know, "I've had a really terrible morning. My children weren't listening to me," or, you know, "It was really stressful on the road. The train was late," or whatever, all of those spaces, and you come in, and you're really heightened, so to have the space where you can actually sit and go, "Okay, I can breathe. I can talk to someone about it," and that's why you have the 2 couches that were opposite. I think you really thought about that. You had one couch and one chair that it was less, so you thought about how that made it less intimidating to be sitting directly next to someone. So you were really thoughtful in the design of this particular space and how it would work for your service, so.

Yeah, absolutely. I think it was definitely a collaborative approach, though. I can't take all the credit.

No, no, I wouldn't expect you to. That's okay. And we might have time for one more question, so I'm going to go to our next one, so we're going to now look to this principle, so promote respectful relationships. So having a think about how does your learning community currently support and promote respectful relationships, and what opportunities, so what do we need to put in place to ensure everyone in the learning community experiences respectful relationships, and what gaps exist, and how can we address these? So did you have anything to share, Mel? Did you want to?

Yeah, so we have, through our induction process, we encourage all new staff to create Be You accounts. This will help to break down the stigma of mental health from the onset of their employment. We also use Facebook. We've got a closed Facebook page where resources and fact sheets are shared between all educators, creating a positive forum to help staff feel valued and supported. I think, speaking with the approved providers as well as conversation with other staff, we find a lot of Facebook pages quite negative, so we wanted to make sure that this page was positive, and everything we need, resources are there just for our staff.

Yeah, and that's a space, so you, in your wellbeing officer role, you actually get an hour and a half each week dedicated to that role, don't you, working away from the children?

Yeah.

And so I think that space is really nice for you to be able to go away, to plan, to implement, to add resources where you need to to support your teams across the 5 services. Now, we were having a discussion about your role, and you were sort of like, "I'm kind of learning about it on the fly. There's no real," you know, it was a new role. You were kind of going through and making, not making it up, but you were trying to navigate it yourself, and we talked about how were you going to, you know, support yourself in this role, so did you want to share about that? Was there? Yeah.

Oh, definitely. So my role is very complex in its layers, and it's always evolving. So there's no day that looks the same. I think that there's new initiatives that are coming forth all the time, and there's new needs within the workplace that are identified on a daily basis. I think it's important to be able to adapt and change to these to ensure that I have the best interest of all of the services' Berry Patches in mind. I am not 100% sure with my direct role as in I know that my underlying tone is to support educator wellbeing through meaningful conversation and providing resources to accompany this, but I think where my underlying part plus me being me and trying to help everybody and trying to assist all my educators to be the best people that they can be, I think that's probably the biggest part of my role. But yeah, I think that's pretty much it, nail on the head.

And we talked about using the guide, the new "Beyond Self-Care Educator Wellbeing Guide." We talked about perhaps utilising that as a way to perhaps create a role description and a role, you know, think about your responsibilities from that whole community approach so it can be bit of a guide for you moving forward, didn't we? So fantastic.

Yeah.

All right, well, I feel like we probably don't have much time because yeah, we're getting on there, but I can see, thank you to all of you who are adding to the board. I can see that there's lots of things there: listening, remaining open, communication, lots of things there, and hopefully, we've inspired some of the people out there to yeah, think about these things, and yeah, so yeah, it's time to wrap up our conversation and our Menti board, so thank you so much for joining us today, Mel, and sharing your organization's Be You journey towards a thriving workplace.

It was a pleasure, thank you.

No worries. Thank you.

Coming up to the end of our presentation. So let's just have a look at what we have discussed throughout the session. So I guess the first one is, I haven't written it there, but putting your own oxygen mask on before supporting others. I think that's always a really key one because, if you remember back to that bidirectional influence of educator wellbeing on children's wellbeing, yeah, we need to be supporting ourselves individually and our whole service needs to be supporting us as well. So, and that's where it leads us to that first key takeaway there, that educator wellbeing is everybody's responsibility. So we all have a role in supporting educator wellbeing in our workplace. So the second one there is a systems-wide approach is needed to promote and sustain educator wellbeing. Supportive leaders positively contribute to educator wellbeing and positive work culture and positive relationships with colleagues and leaders are essential to promote wellbeing. So let me just have a look to see. So what is your next step? I think after any professional learning, it's always a really great idea to set an intention of what you're going to do next. So perhaps you might explore the Beyond Self-Care: An Educator Wellbeing Guide. Maybe you'll continue on with the questions from the Workplace Review Table, or perhaps you might register your learning community with Be You to chat to a consultant about building a thriving workplace, or even having a conversation with a colleague to share what you've learned. I feel like they're all great ways to strengthen and continue your learning. And I could just see, Belle, you were asking about Dr. Tamara Cumming. So it's C-U-M-M-I-N-G is her.