NATIONAL SAFE WORK MONTH –“ A MOMENT IS ALL IT TAKES” OCTOBER 2018
Safe Work Australia was established in 2008 to develop national policy and guidance for WHS and workers’ compensation. Since then, they have been running national campaigns to raise awareness about WHS in the Australian working community.
During October each year, they ask workers and employers across Australia to commit to building safe and healthy workplaces. The theme for this October’ s National Safe Work Month is“ A moment is all it takes”. While a safety incident can happen in a moment and in any workplace, a moment’ s forethought can prevent harm.
For more information visit https:// www. safeworkaustralia. gov. au / news-and-events / national-safe-work-month
EDUCATOR WELLBEING = QUALITY EARLY LEARNING. YOU DON’ T GET ONE WITHOUT THE OTHER! BY KAREN HOPE
In addition to being curriculum designers and pedagogues, early childhood educators need to be strong and active advocates for children and families, responsible for demonstrating to the broader community the importance of quality early learning. Some might argue that the role of advocacy for our profession is as important as the learning and development programs we design and deliver. Advocacy at a practice level improves child and family outcomes. In a profession that is historically built on care, and often places the welfare and needs of others ahead their own, it is difficult to be an advocate when your own wellbeing is compromised or neglected.
The Early Years Learning Framework( EYLF) includes an outcome that states that children have a strong sense of wellbeing and become strong in their own social and emotional wellbeing. For early childhood educators to be able to support and promote this, they need to be first well themselves.
There is a lot of talk at the moment about educator wellbeing, and how to stay well in an early learning environment is worth some consideration. Educator wellbeing should be a career long focus. This requires you to be alert and constantly‘ checking in’ to ensure that you are taking care of your own needs first. To ensure that we have a workforce that reflects wellbeing it requires each early childhood educator to have his or her own wellbeing strategic plan. What’ s yours? When you are asked how is work going what is your first thought or response? Do you approach each work day with a medium to high level of enthusiasm for the challenges and opportunities each day presents or is it another day, one of many, that is to be tolerated and‘ got through’?
The issue of educator wellbeing is an important one. We cannot have a workforce to whom we entrust the care and education of young children who are not a model of wellbeing. Early childhood educators are influential in the lives of young children and as such need to be positive, powerful and well. Employers and employees both have roles to play in enacting this model. Employers need to regularly undertake organisational‘ health checks’ within their staff teams. These types of health checks can include, but are not limited to, ensuring that staff have safe, supportive and productive spaces to work and think, and that staff have the appropriate resources to do this. Employers that ensure staff are remunerated appropriately both financially and emotionally. Employers that create a culture of shared understandings and open honest dialogues about the challenges that working within the early childhood care and education sector presents, and seek to support these challenges.
Such employers recognise that an investment in staff wellbeing is integral to the overall quality of the early learning environment and places educator wellbeing as a priority.
Employees also have a responsibility to participate in their own internal wellbeing audit. Incorporating the following eight approaches in your daily practice can often provide iterative and long-term changes in educator wellbeing.
www. ku. com. au OCTOBER 2018 Page 3