Be You offers Professional Learning courses for educators and leaders in early childhood, primary and secondary education aimed at building your skills, knowledge and confidence around mental health and wellbeing for children, young people and families, from birth to 18.
It's free, online and can support your early learning service or school to meet national, state and territory requirements that relate to mental health and wellbeing.
A flexible, whole learning community approach
At the heart of Be You is a content framework that provides educators and leaders with a structure for both Professional Learning, and the actions that early learning services and schools can take to implement a whole learning community approach to children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing.
The Professional Learning consists of 16 content modules grouped under five domains, with content centred around mentally healthy communities. Once you’ve signed up, your dashboard gives you full access to the modules and allows you to track your progress.
To complete a 'module', you’ll need to progress through every topic. To complete a 'topic', read through the content – making sure you watch any videos and click through all sections within the content.
Read an overview of each Be You Professional Learning module.
Mentally Healthy Communities is central to the content framework
There’s no right or wrong place to start with Be You
The framework is not linear – educators can start wherever it suits them, or their early learning service or school, best.
Read through the overviews below and see which resonate with your learning community.
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Mentally Healthy Communities
This domain is central to the Professional Learning framework, and outlines what a mentally healthy community can look like. It can be viewed as the introductory domain with modules outlining key concepts related to mental health, wellbeing, connectedness, relationships and diversity.
This domain includes three modules:
- Understand mental health and wellbeing in learning communities
- Connect through strong relationships
- Include by embracing diversity within the community.
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Family Partnerships
Families and communities are the primary contexts for the development, health and learning of children and young people. Modules in this domain will assist early learning services and schools to review and continuously improve their strategies for working with families to foster the mental health of children and young people.
This domain includes two modules:
- Partner with families through purposeful and positive relationships
- Assist families to support and promote mental health and wellbeing.
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Learning Resilience
This domain will provide educators with an in-depth understanding of social and emotional learning and why it's important for mental health and wellbeing. It provides educators with an understanding of how to intentionally teach social and emotional learning skills, and foster resilience in education settings.
This domain includes three modules:
- Affirm the importance of social and emotional learning and resilience
- Embed evidence-based social and emotional learning strategies
- Empower children and young people to look after their mental health and wellbeing.
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Early Support
As a result of their regular contact with children and young people, educators are in an influential position to notice and support children and young people who might be showing signs of mental health issues. Modules in this domain provide information and guidance on recognising behaviours which might indicate early signs of mental illness, how to talk to children and young people about these issues, and how to provide appropriate and timely support.
This domain includes three modules:
- Notice the early signs of mental health issues
- Inquire sensitively about the child or young person’s circumstances
- Provide support within and beyond the early childhood service or school.
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Responding Together
Critical incidents can have a range of impacts for everyone in the learning community. The role of the learning environment in promoting a mentally healthy community, preparing for critical incidents and being responsive in times of crisis have been shown to be crucial in ensuring that people receive the help they need.
Modules in this domain provide educators with an understanding of how to support recovery following a natural disaster or community trauma in their learning community.
The Therapeutic storytelling module provides educators with information about the purpose and principles of therapeutic storytelling. The Leaders module supports education leaders to take a whole learning community approach to support resilience and recovery following a natural disaster or other traumatic events in the community.
This domain includes five modules:
- Recognise the potential impact of critical incidents
- Respond collaboratively to critical incidents
- Natural disasters and other community trauma support those affected by community trauma
- Leading through natural disasters and other community trauma leading your learning community through community trauma
- Therapeutic storytelling support children using therapeutic storytelling.
Start a module in the Responding Together domain
Supporting evidence
The Professional Learning provides evidence-based information and advice. Read more about the supporting evidence.