One of our partners at Community Northern Beaches is ‘Relationships Australia’, an organisation which co-ordinates a ‘whole school’ intervention called ‘Ready for Life, Ready for Success’. This program runs in both primary and high schools and works with students, staff, parents and administrators to raise awareness of students’ psychological well-being, and the importance of strengthening self-esteem, resilience and self-efficacy.
Lyndsay, one of our Family and Child Workers regularly facilitates on this program and was recently part of the facilitation team delivering a full day program of group workshops with approximately 200 Year 5 and 6 school students, assisting them with the development of social and emotional awareness. The facilitators worked with groups of 10 students each and worked on collaborative, creative and hands on exercises to explore how students were feeling about and dealing with fundamental challenges in their lives. In the last training workshop a common struggle for many of the students was a feeling of being overwhelmed and exhausted by the academic, musical and/or sporting ambitions that their parents had for them.
Feedback from the schools has been very positive so far, and so Relationships Australia is expanding these workshops to more schools, and to include more year groups. It is critical to customise the various programs to suit the needs of particular ages and communities, and Lyndsay will continue to work with Relationships Australia to help reach more schools and to promote the important of psychological well-being and care in students.
