Family School Partnerships

Effective communication with St Joseph's:

My name is Anne-Marie Houlihan and I want to introduce myself again to our community as  someone who works toward creating opportunities for Family School Partnership. These opportunities can be varied and essentially they all share the core objective of  forming authentic relationships and connections with our families.

The more we know about you and your children, the better we cater for your child’s needs.

We aim for effective communication with our families and we use a range of methods to communicate information. Communication is a two way street and we encourage parents to know what information we require to communicate effectively and responsibly with us.  

Last week I talked through some of the electronic platforms that we use here at St Joseph's to best share information. Caremonkey, Seesaw and the newsletter can only be effective if we have your correct information and you access them.

Some of our electronic platforms require responses from our parents and we appreciate you supporting this.

Below you will find a table outlining Communication at St Joseph’s School. There is some great information to be found in this document and this week I draw particular attention to the “Face to Face” section. We value meeting our parents and families. Our opportunities to come together are important in building a strong and authentic relationship.

Medical needs and permission forms are imperative from our parents to communicate the medical needs of your child. We also want to keep every child in our care as safe as possible. Keeping us informed and keeping all our children safe are imperative goals to all of us.

We have many children in our school with potentially life threatening illnesses such as allergies to nuts and we are a “No nuts school.” Examples of foods to avoid include peanut butter, nutella and various muesli bars and biscuits that contain nuts. As a community our awareness of such issues is integral to providing all our children the safest school environment that we possibly can.

The child safety section in our newsletter outlines before and after school supervision, and procedures for signing your child in when they are late. Collecting children who are leaving early must always go through the front office and the children need to be signed out.

We recognise that all our families, new and returning need to be informed of our processes of communication. Always remember, if in doubt then please ask.

Remember we undertake all these procedures to keep all our children safe. There could be no greater reason for us to work together to achieve this.

Anne-Marie Houlihan

Family School Leader