Wellbeing

As the 2024 school year draws to a close, I would like to thank the VSC parent community for their support and work with the Well Being team this year as we have endeavoured to support our students with their wellbeing and studies.  School holidays are an exciting time for many students as they take a break from school, have downtime and spend time with families and friends.

It is also a time however for many families where things can be difficult and not as picture perfect as social media would have us think.  Christmas and celebrations can be times where support services can be inundated with requests for support following family violence incidents. 

Families may find the below services useful if needing assistance over the holidays.

Orange Door: https://www.orangedoor.vic.gov.au/

Safe Steps: https://www.safesteps.org.au/ or 1800 015 188

Headspace: https://headspace.org.au/

Online Gaming and Managing Internet Use

A recent survey of students in Year 8 and 9 identified that a significant proportion of our students requested workshops and information in 2025 on gambling.  Similar to pornography, this is an area where we as adults are struggling to keep up with what are young people are exposed to and accessing.  Parents can also experience increased stress in this area in holidays due to the sudden increased use of social media and gaming, often at a time where we are still managing demands of work and increased social committments. Whilst it can be helpful to enter conversations around screen use with curiosity and openness I know from experience these conversations can be fraught.

If you are interested in learning more about onling gambling, internet addiction and communicating around screen use please follow the below links to School TV. 

https://vermontsc.vic.schooltv.me/newsletter/gambling

and

https://vermontsc.vic.schooltv.me/newsletter/internet-addiction