Wellbeing

Our Wellbeing Achievements This Year

We are so proud of the achievements of the Wellbeing Team this Year. We have offered a complex range of supports. And have been able to support many more students and families this year.

Bella, our Therapy Dog expanded her program over the year. She visits in the yard in the mornings and at recess. She Spends time in the art room and classes during working time. I think she secretly loves being in the staffroom trying to win some extra treats from everyone at lunchtime. Thanks to Melissa Hamilton for her wonderful work with Bella’s training and grooming.

Breakfast Club adapted to circumstances this year. We provide for about 50 students, 3 times a week. It’s a ‘grab-and-go’ type situation with fruit, milk and toast. Apart from its purpose of making sure children have food to start their day, it’s also a great social event. Two of our ES aides run Breakfast Club, meeting and greeting the students by name each morning. Thanks so much to Ms McMaster (MsM) and Mrs Joy.

Our THRIVE Program continued to be the focus of positive emotions and a growth mindset. Our THRIVE Curriculum and Diaries kept a focus on what was important. We incorporated our Berry St Training into classrooms as well with Welcoming Circles and Ready to Learn Scales. Our Playleaders ran activities most lunchtimes for junior school students. Our SRC ambassadors met regularly to organise fundraising events and to keep our perspectives focussed on important health initiatives such as fresh fruit daily and being Sunsmart.

Fiona Biss (Speech Pathologist) and Kerryn Cornelissen (ES aide) were able to offer additional Literacy support to junior school students. They worked with class teachers to implement strategies in class and also ran small group interventions.

Adrian Burrage (Network Inclusion Leader) and Sarah Roney (Network THRIVE Co Ordinator) were able to supply additional emotional and social wellbeing support to small groups of students requiring additional assistance. For students requiring more individualised support, we have a psychologist/counsellor on site (Meaghan Morely) who works with students and their families.

We hosted many more meetings with families of students requiring support this year. I meet with families on a regular basis when there were attendance or behavioural concerns. We worked as a team until we could get the positive outcome we desired.

Luana Lane and Sharna Dean-Wright worked intensively in the Disability Inclusion space. They met with families and professionals to build applications for students requiring additional support in the classroom. Although it was difficult to move over to a new disability funding system this year, we have had immense success due to the intense work for these two ladies. They have been able to provide additional funding support for twice the amount of students as we have been able to in the past. This additional support has enabled us to increase our ES aide team –hands on, with students, in classrooms.  Our ES aides also work in the yard with our students requiring additional support to keep them as included as possible.

We took on feedback from parents and improved our communication process this year. When there is a negative incident, parents will get an email or phone call—when we have enough details to share. Parents wanted to know that reflections and apologies took place. So, this year, as part of the process, students come to write a reflection and an apology when a negative incident occurs. These are then sent to the affected parties.

We have also worked hard to keep Allied Health staff at our school. We feel that it is a valuable support for many of our NDIS funded students. The Wellbeing Team has worked through the complex process required by the Dept to facilitate this for our students. Thus, we have been able to have Speech Therapists and Occupational Therapists on site to help with NDIS funded students.

We moved from SENTRAL to COMPASS as our electronic recording system. We built all of the Wellbeing Proformas we require for the new program and moved all the data securely across to ensure we kept accurate profiles for each student. We supported staff to use the wellbeing profiles to record important information for each student. It’s been a huge task—but we did it!

Overall, the most pleasing thing to note about our achievements, is that we have been able to work together as a team to support the complex needs of our students and our families. I’m very grateful to lead such a fabulous team and can’t wait to move forward into our 2024 Action Plan with them. We are very, very grateful to you, our families and students, for working with us together to get the best outcomes for our students. Have a great Christmas everyone. Rest, Laugh, enjoy your loved ones.

Deb Haddow

On behalf of the Wellbeing Team

THRIVE AWARDS

Week 7 - Enjoy Positive Emotions

Week 8 - Try Your Best

Week 9 - Be Healthy

Speech Pathology at LPPS 

Katy will be working as a private therapist from a room at LPPS next year. Stay tuned for more details…….

Wellbeing Contacts

I have come across a few more contacts which might be helpful to our community members. So we’ll continue to build this resource for you.

Families needing food or support:

• https://askizzy.org.au/food/personalise/page/sub-food
• Peninsula Donations (check their page on Facebook)
• BK 2 Basics Melbourne (also on Facebook)