Inclusive practices are vital for ensuring that everyone including children, families, leaders and educators feel valued, respected, and have access to opportunities and resources.
Mental health and wellbeing is most likely to flourish in a supportive environment where diversity is acknowledged and valued.
Early learning services and schools promote inclusion when they welcome children, families and educators with diverse cultures, abilities, family structures, playing and learning styles.
If you are promoting, embedding or developing further inclusive practices consider how Be You can support you in your journey of developing a thriving inclusive community.
Reflect
Registered Be You Learning Communities can access the Implementation and Reflection Tool to reflect on what inclusive practices are already in place in your service or school and assist your planning of further inclusive strategies.
Watch
Watch Walk with me: A journey of distributed leadership and inclusion and explore how the inclusive practices at Forbes Preschool encourage positive mental health and a thriving, inclusive community.
You could also take a look the In Focus webinar Diversity Matters for Mental Health, with your team, to consider further strategies for inclusive practice in your service.
Join the conversation
Early learning services are invited to hear what other services are doing and come along to a Be You Conversation session to talk with a Be You Consultant and other educators from around Australia.
Services can also join one of our Be You Events for early learning to discuss and share knowledge, skills and practice.
For school staff, come along to an interactive Be You Event to talk with your Be You Consultants and peers about themes relating to a whole-school approach to mental health and wellbeing.
Learn
A great place starting point might be some professional learning. Look at the Include Module within the Mentally Healthy Communities domain.
Consider the Disability Inclusion Guide, with an introduction to inclusive practices supporting developmental delays or disability, or the Cultural Actions Catalogue, developed with Aboriginal elders and communities in the Kimberley and Pilbara, to create inclusive and respectful learning environments.
There is also a series of Fact Sheets supporting inclusion, which look at the importance of Relationships, Cultural Diversity and Mental Health and Supporting Cultural Diversity.
Plan for change
Inclusion practices and strategies to promote inclusion in your learning community will always be evolving with the coming and going of children, families and educators. Consider some of these Be You resources if you want to promote inclusive practices, unique to your school or service, so your community will be thriving and inclusive.