Children’s rights as a protective factor for mental health drives everything we do

Hi and thanks for joining us today and thanks so much for your patience while we sorted out the tech issues here in the background. This is the session Children's rights as a protective factor for mental health drives everything we do and you won't be disappointed for waiting a few minutes.  My name’s Carmen Huser, I’m a Be You Consultant at Early Childhood Australia. I’ve worked in the early childhood education sector for over 20 years as an early childhood educator, a research assistant and a university lecturer in Germany and in Australia. Nine years ago I made the big move and came to Australia to undertake a PhD in education and my commitment to children's rights led me to my doctoral study of children's perspectives of play and their rights to participation. 

 

At Be You I combine my passions for social emotional learning children's voices and children's rights. And with me today, I hope, is Claire Walker, an early childhood teacher with 25 years work experience in this sector. She's qualified with an Associate Diploma Child Studies and a Bachelor of Education. And she's currently working at the community based Gum Nut preschool in Bowral in the beautiful southern highlands of New South Wales. Claire has also been an active member of one of our Be You Connected Communities since 2020. So for the past two years we dedicated our time to advocating for children's rights and combine that with children's mental health and wellbeing. Thanks for joining me, Claire. Can you hear me? OK, that's alright. Well hopefully we hear from Claire in a bit.

 

So my wonderful colleagues Cris, Louis and Tahlia are also online with us and will be connecting with you in the discussion form. So there's a chat function and a Q and A live function, and they will be monitoring the chat and look out for your questions, and also they going to share some useful links.

This session is appropriate for educators in the early childhood years and in the school age care. And we’re going to the connections between mental health and children's rights. And we really hope that this session allows you some space to reflect how you are embedding children’s rights in your learning communities and how this supports the children's mental health from wellbeing, and perhaps that's going to spark some ideas for further actions for you. 

 

So before we start getting into everything, we first like to Acknowledge that we're meeting on the land Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and pay our respects to Elders past and present. So before we start getting into everything, we first like to Acknowledge that we're meeting on the land Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and pay our respects to Elders past and present. I'd also like to share some Dharug Language which was spoken in the Sydney basin area ’Worimi’ ing-ga-ni, hello how are you? And I wish to extend our respect to all Traditional Custodians and their Elders, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and recognise their continuing connection to the land and Country, and have to what it has for identity, strength and wellbeing of individuals and communities. Today we have people joining us from all over the country so it would be wonderful if you could share your Acknowledgement by putting the name of Country in the chat, or maybe just sit there for a second in silence and Acknowledge your Traditional Custodians. 

Today's session we aim to provide a safe space for you and I just want to reiterate the messages throughout the Be You Virtual Conference that when we are talking about mental health and also personal wellbeing, an important part is that we consider confidentiality and privacy throughout the sessions when we're sharing in the chat box. 

Oh, wonderful. Hello Claire can you hear me? 

 

Hi Carmen, can you hear me?

 

Yes, I can hear you really well. Thanks so much for joining me. 

 

Thanks for having me. Apologies in advance everybody, I don't have much of your voice today so bear with me and we'll see how we go. 

 

Yeah, we’ll make it work, Claire, thanks so much. And so, we really like to hear from everybody during the session and so feel free to participate and share your ideas and contribute in polls, but also while we here, see the image on the screen has contact details for Beyond Blue, headspace, a number of other services, that you might find useful if you need to reach out throughout the session and get some external support. We really acknowledge that each of us comes to this session potentially juggling many different things, like Claire struggling with her voice and we're all really busy, so making time for joining and learning about mental health and wellbeing is really worthwhile. But we also hope that you're feeling empowered going away from this session and with highlights of strategies that that work for you. 

 

For those of you who don't know about Be You or haven't been to one of our Virtual Conferences, Be You is a national mental health initiative for educators and we're also the organisers of this conference. Be You is led by Beyond Blue in partnership with Early Childhood Australia and headspace. It's completely free and available to every educator, early learning service or school in Australia. And at Be You we aim to empower educators to support children and young people social an emotional wellbeing and their own mental health. And Be You offers to educators online professional learning, factsheets, webinars and heaps of other resources. And also we are offering to learning communities tools and processes to implement a whole learning community approach to mental health and wellbeing. So the discussion throughout the conference will highlight Be You resources, tools and professional learning and show you how you can use Be You to support a whole school or whole service approach to mental wellbeing. And if you're interested in learning more about Be You, check out our website. 

 

In this session today we will be covering the connections between children's rights and mental health and explore a bit how children's rights are actually a protective factor to support children as autonomous capable citizens with the voice. And Claire will generously share, as much as her voice allows it, her experiences and reflections and how the team at Gum Nut Preschool have embedded children's rights into their philosophy, policies and pedagogical practice. And this can support you in identifying your own strategies for reviewing and potentially taking actions. We will also look at some of the Be You resources and tools we used in our professional community lead conversations and in particular the ones that Claire and the team at Gum Nut Preschool found really useful. So I’m going to invite you, your contributions, in the discussion forum. And remember if you have a question, if you can pop that into the Q and A live session. There's, I think, an extra box for it. OK and Cris, Tahlia and Louis they will make sure that we're not missing any of your questions. 

 

So yesterday we heard the opening keynote from Professor Helen Milroy and Geri Sumpter and we spoke about how key factors for children and young people’s mental health, how empowerment plays a role in that. And empowerment, how it's beneficial for children's learning, development, mental health and wellbeing. But I guess the other session yesterday, when we heard Sharyn and Louis talking about children actually don't need to earn the right to citizenship but they're born citizens. I think that really connects with our session today, as we are looking at cultivating children's empowerment through the lens of children's rights. And the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child are the foundation in all the frameworks and existing priorities for your work with children. And we look at the early years learning framework, or My Time, Our Place in the school age care sector, and as well as the National Quality Framework. There we see how the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child are so crucial for the work that you are doing. And Claire, you really went on a journey at Gum Nut Preschool, putting that children's rights lens onto your work. 

 

Yes thanks, Carmen. Our interest came about from beginning to explore the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It’s something that we've always aware of. We really wanted to make sure that we were finding more connections to it. So, our journey began by looking at the Early Childhood Australia Statement of Intent and we used that as a guide, used all of the domains to really summarise our policies and practices. And that also gave us some interesting connections into the Early Years Learning Framework and the national policies work as well. We found that that was a really great springboard, through this whole journey, to really start our team discussions, and also gave us a chance to read more widely which is something we love doing. 

 

It was such a pleasure to speak to you over the past two years and how that really had a ripple effect. So I think before we really hear more details about your journey, Claire, let's have a look at this poll here and get a bit of an understanding that everybody is at in our audience. So what we were actually thinking about is one of the Be You tools, and we will look at that later in our presentation. The Be You Implementation and Reflection Toolkit enables Action Teams to reflect on actions that are already been doing to build mentally healthy learning communities. And towards statements and reflective questions, you can basically self-assess and select which implementation phase best represents your learning community at the time. And when Claire and I prepared for this session we looked at those phases and really thought about how that applies to where you're at when you put a children's rights lens to cultivate children's empowerment and support their mental health in your work. So when you look at the poll, you might be at the stage of Participating. That means you acknowledge children's rights as a guiding principle as stated in frameworks and you have a basic understanding and you have made a commitment but haven't yet taken specific actions. If you're Exploring, you're planning ways to enhance understandings of children's rights for empowerment and you look at resources and ways of upskilling and supporting actions. Or you might be already Embedding. So where you embedding and reinforcing children's rights into everyday practice. And where you're reviewing policies, critically reflecting on approaches to support children's mental health and wellbeing through that child rights lens. Or, and that's really exciting when Claire and I talked about it, when you’re then at that stage of Sustaining. Where you sustain positive change through that continuous improvement and children's rights and empowerment are actually integral to philosophy, policies and practice. But maybe some of you think we're actually not quite sure where we're at yet. And if I look I can see actually some poll results coming in. Can you see them too, Claire?

 

I can't actually at the moment. Oh yes, thank you. 

 

So many of you, actually half of the audience, you're sitting at that Exploring stage. A really exciting space. So I think this session today is really great for you. And even when you're looking at that foundational stage or while you're starting to embed an Action Plan, I think you're going to take away heaps today. And if you're unsure, you're really great here as well. 

 

Alright. So Claire and I, we have actually been having discussions around children's rights and mental health in a Be You Connected Community for over the past two years. Our Connected Community is advocating for children’s rights. And as with other Be You Connected Communities, we are community led, we meet regularly, so that's something that is discussed with all the members of the community and so we about meeting almost every six weeks and having conversations. And that's where we really started unpacking the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and looking into how embedding children's rights can actually provide a protective factor for their mental health. So when we're thinking about influences and events, both positive or negative, that can impact our mental health, that's when we're talking about risk and protective factors. And putting that strengths-based lens onto it, we really want to look into the protective factors that can buffer against risks and build a child’s resilience. So that's where our conversation is really going today. Did you want to add anything here, Claire? 

 

I feel, Carmen, that all of the work we’ve done so far has really taking us through the journey. All the terminology set out in the poll there. From beginning to investigate what the articles in the Convention meant. It wasn't that we had to really have them memorised in our heads, it was just more about getting a general understanding. And then putting our ideas into practice and making sure that as we were trying to get to that sustained level, that these practices come naturally to us as a team. That's really where the sustained factor comes into it for me. That practices are meaningful and have great value, but that they start to come really naturally to us as a team. That's where the best work is. 

 

Yeah. And let's have a bit more of a look in more detail. So Claire actually is providing you now with more insight, how that actually looks like, putting children's rights into philosophies, policies and pedagogical practice. So let's delve into this topic. So Claire, you actually review your philosophy every year and that has really important reasons. So can you tell me a bit more about that?

 

Yes well we do review our philosophy every year. We do that in partnership with the families, the educators and our management committee. But the best insights we have is when we review our philosophy with the children. So we have open-ended discussions with the children. We really tap into and ask them, I'm so sorry everybody.

 

It's OK.

 

And we ask them how they feel when they're at preschool, the experiences they enjoy when they come to preschool. And we take all of that information and those keywords that they give us, making sure we get everyone’s voices, and we develop that into a wordle document. So those who have used it before, it's a visual display words, where you're most prominent words are highlighted in greater detail. And that really is a visual way to communicate back to the educators and the families the things that the children value. And because we do that every year, the children's voices from that particular group are very current, so the philosophy looks a little bit different every year. So it's a really important way for us to make sure that our philosophy is current and really is capturing the current group of children's voices.

 

Yeah. That is so powerful and the way that you are having these conversations with the children, and then having that visual display, it shows the children also you listen to them and you act on them. It's really such a wonderful practice that you're doing. And I think a lot of that also is credit to the leadership in your team. Meredith is actually also a member in our Be You Connected Community and Claire, when you were talking about it, how Meredith is leading the team and is actually also supporting the empowerment of every educator in that process of really living children's rights, I think that we also need to give credit to that part.

 

Definitely. I think the fact that we have such great leadership is testament to the work that Meredith does with us because she's also connected to valuing children's rights. That’s really coming through strongly in our reflective discussion as a team. And you don't really have that open and reflective workplace unless you have a great leader to really guide you in that way. So our philosophy really reinforces the principles that are laid out in the Convention and it communicates it in a different whole wide range of ways. The importance of fostering strong relationships, promoting each child’s sense of agency, developing a mentally healthy community and reinforcing children's rights in the way that we have, and making sure we have an inclusive and safe environment. These are all really important philosophical points and we just feel they are a nice reflection of the Convention. 

 

Yeah and we would actually really like to hear bit about your experiences and ideas in our audience. And think about how does you're learning community’s philosophy reflect policies, beliefs and understandings about children's rights, just like as Claire just shared with us. 

 

Let's maybe move on to how are you embedding children's rights in the policy, Claire. And actually, instead of talking about all the policies, let's shine a light on one of them. 

 

One of the most obvious ones that we’ve talked a lot about in our Be You Learning Community has been on those moments of rest and relaxation within the day. And of course that looks different depending on which age group you're working with. That routine for younger babies and infants is obviously so important and fortunately in preschool we can offer a little bit more choice around it. Apologies again about my voice, everybody. 

 

And let me know if you need a break and I shall continue for you.

 

Our really policy highlights the changes that we’ve made based on our reflections on children's rights. We really try to give the children a choice, reflects the principles around the children have a right to rest and relax. Also the fact that children need to have an opportunity to voice their opinions and matters that affect them, so this is one of those ways that we do that. By simply offering them a choice. Now I'm sure most people who are part of a service would think that's quite a normal thing to do, but when you look at it through the lens of children's rights you really then value what you're offering to the children by giving them the choice. Whether it's a bed, quiet reading, some yoga or mindfulness, you really giving the children and empowering them to make a decision for themselves and it's really allowing them to tap into what they are, what their bodies and their minds really need at that particular time of the day. And because it's embedded within our policy, it means that as educators we can be very consistent in the strategies that we employ around that. And that we are actually really actively involved in that part of the day with them. 

 

What really struck me as well when we prepared for this, and you were saying we do this with the children. And that kind of being with the children in their rest and relaxation time and that it is really part of the change that the educators went through with the children now. And then no other jobs that you're doing, so you're actually also modelling to the children about that self-regulation and, like you say, tapping into what does my body need right now. So I think that was such a powerful message you gave to me as well.

 

Yeah definitely. I think that being present at that time is so important and also having a bit of a ritual around that time. I know we spoke, I heard some of the presenters yesterday speaking about the importance of rituals. It really signals a shift in the day for the children. So rather than just another transition, it's for us at the moment, it's a particular song and lighting a candle and it just kind of allows the children to respond to the change of energy. But again all services look different in that way. 

 

And I think that leads us really nicely now, when we're looking at the pedagogical practice and there’s I think two important parts that we talked about. So one was actually the intentional teaching about children's rights to the children, but also how it has changed your ways of working and programming with the children together.

 

Yeah, well I mean this is the bread and butter of what we like talking about, because everyone has so many great ideas to share. I guess a couple of main things stand out. It's definitely our, in terms of the intentional teaching, using really high quality children's books to really explain to them that at that level what it means to have rights. We have discussions at circle time that we frame around three very simple words. It's about what it means to feel happy, what it means to feel healthy and what it means to feel safe. And then for us, it's about really then trying to get the children to understand that they have the right to be happy, they have the right to be healthy and the right to be safe, and what does that mean for them. And if you just excuse me for one minutes.

 

Yeah, absolutely okay. And you know what, those conversations you have with the children it so connects with Be You's mission, where we are, we want to create a community that is inclusive, resilient and positive, and where everybody can achieve their best mental health. And I think those, you always say simple conversations and keeping it simple too, you know, the right to be happy, to be safe and to be healthy. It's the essence of a mentally healthy community. So, I don't think it's actually simple conversations, it's really crucial conversations you have with the children there.

 

You go.

 

It also has led us onto something else. We've talked a lot about, Carmen, around the children having responsibilities. Because they see themselves as holders of rights, it kind of naturally leads you on to talking about being responsible as part of that too. So at the moment with my class, what we're doing is we're taking a lot of those notions they have around happy, healthy and safe, and we're putting into a bit of a visual agreement. Again yesterday, I heard some presenters talk about not so much having class rules, but more around an agreement that we can all come to around what it means, issues around fairness within our learning community, looking after yourself, but also then looking after others. And we just keep that frame coming back to being happy, healthy and safe. And it's just another extension that idea of having rights and responsibilities as well.

 

Yeah. And then, so that is the part where you are really intentionally teaching the children about their rights. But then the other component is also putting the children's rights into practice in terms of, for example we mentioned it before the Convention on the Rights of the Child articulates children's right to participate and have a voice in decisions that concern, and the way you are doing this is by children are really actively contributing to your weekly planning and your curriculum decisions. I think that is such an empowering practice for the children, not only to learn about their rights, but actually understand what that looks like in practice. And then also they are enacting their rights.

 

Yeah, definitely. I think that that's the best part of my week really, is when I sit with the children again we tend to do a lot more now in circles. As in a sharing circle, so that we're all looking at each other. It creates a far more supportive environment. The children feel like they're more part of like a social support network and they can start to feel more confident to share their thoughts, their ideas and their feelings. And it also promotes a real culture of listening to each other, which, and that concept of self regulation, you know, having a turn, listening to others. So, part of that planning cycle is creating a mind map with the children. So we sit down every week and we encourage the children to share their ideas, whether it's things that they've enjoyed doing at preschool, past experiences or maybe something completely new. But we write down everything. And because it's written down, we're then able to go back and check, you know, did we do that this week? You know, what could we do? How are we going to do it next week? And the children who aren't feeling as confident, they're not feeling like they're ready, we take that mind map to them just quietly and just ask them for their voice to see what they would like. Because we don't want to miss anyone out. As we know, working in early childhood when it comes to observing and planning and documenting, you want to make sure you're capturing everybody. You don't want those ones that fly under the radar. And so by really valuing the children's voices, we make sure we try to get to the quiet ones too.

 

Yeah. And that actually leads us a bit to a question that we just want to throw back to you, to the audience. And how do you ensure that all children feel empowered and have that voice and how that can actually look like with, let's say with infants, with children with a disability or developmental delay. So if you have experiences in that and you would like to share them, please pop them into the chat.

 

Now, Claire, I'm just going to look at the time and think I'm going to move on with you. As much as we love talking about that part. But let's look at the resources and tools that informed your reflections and that we used in our Connected Community and that you took back to the Gum Nut Preschool team. And some of those tools you will find them actually on the Be You website. And if you're an Action Team leader, they are sitting in your dashboard. 

 

So the first one we come back to, I explained earlier, we have the Implementation and Reflection Toolkit that helps you to reflect on actions that you're already doing in your teams. It's a set of 28 statements with supportive reflective questions, and they're mapped towards the Be You framework and the Domains. And so here it's where you can actually look at what phase you're in in your implementation process. So two statements that we really looked closely at in our Connected Community was statement 17, which says a range of opportunities are provided for children and young people to think creatively and critically, have a voice and demonstrate leadership. And the other statement, statement 18, is that educators support children, young people, families and communities to understand the relationship between empowerment and resilience in children and young people and the impact this has on their sense of belonging and ability to contribute. Alright, I hand over back to you, Claire.

 

Oh, thanks Carmen. Yeah, the statements 17 and 18 were really good points of reflection because it allowed us to really think the opportunities we give the children to have a voice, to participate as leaders and realising that the mind mapping that we use with them, it really makes sure that we are accountable as educators for enacting the children's ideas. So yeah, those are both been really great points for reflection and something we've talked widely about both at the service and at the learning community as well. And I think that when you first started going through the Implementation and Reflection Toolkit, it's great because you do again, see yourself, you can position yourself. It's important. 

 

And I also think back off when we had these conversations how that also changed the conversations in your team. And we heard that from other Connected Community members, and it's almost like having courageous team conversations because sometimes it can put an educator into a position where we maybe lean into discomfort or just have to find our new comfort zone when we're actually also sharing leadership with the children and we might have our expectations and thinking, but we let them go because we know when we provide the empowering environments for the children, where they can share decision-making and really actively contribute, how that empowers them. And having a voice and contributing, it's just so important for their sense of belonging to the community. It was one of those conversations we had that highlighted the importance again, why children's rights are actually such an empowering factor for the children.

 

Interestingly, when we were using these statements from the Implementation and Reflection Toolkit, that Claire actually came, you came back to the community and were sharing that you then moved on and looked at another statement, statement five, where it's about the structures and practices in place to support children and young people during key transition stages within and between learning communities. It's actually connecting a bit to the previous session today with Kathryn. So I think I'm handing back to you, Claire.

 

You're great. We sent out to form an Action Plan based on a specific need. We were just coming out of the second lockdown, as many of us will been through, and we used the Implementation and Reflection Toolkit to reflect through statement five on how we would support children and families during a time of significant change. The plan we established was to put a return to early learning plan in to action. We wanted to reflect on the experiences we had had from the first lockdown, with a view to assisting the families on how they could make a successful transition back to preschool after such an extended absence. Paying particular attention to their emotions, change of circumstances, mental health. And so the Action Plan, together with the statement, we were able to kind of look at as a team, set ourselves goals, learn some strategies, look if there was any modules, there were a couple of modules that were important for us to have a look at, to inform our practice. And then it gave us also a chance to set timelines and then to figure out if we had, if there were some measures for success there that we could work back and look back on. So, bringing the two, the Reflection Toolkit and the Action Plan, together was a really great way to really start for us, getting into our Action Plans. And now we realise that we can now adjust it in a way to make sure that we can look at it say, for families who maybe have to have an extended absence due to illness or a particular something that's happened with their circumstances. So not just about coming out of lockdown, but we can now keep that Action Plan and maybe use it in the future if we need it.

 

That is so fantastic, you know? Kind of adapting and making the action planning work for you and how an Action Plan actually is a really organic document and it's growing and evolving with the needs and the strengths of your community and your team, with the children and the families. And how you could see how you can now take that plan to other situations and circumstances. And yeah, it was just brilliant to see how you combine the two Be You tools and showed how it really supported you in your ways of working. 

 

Do you also want to, do you remember which Professional Learning modules you then put into your plans?

 

Ooh, that's a challenge. It could have been

 

I know it's been awhile.

 

Maybe Partner and Affirm, but I can't, I'd have to check. I'm sorry, I'm not sure.

 

Thanks so much. And so, those two Be You tools that we were just talking about, they are sitting within the Action Team Leader dashboard. But now we also want to share a Be You resource that we have used more recently in the Connected Community, and that's a resource that is sitting on the website, just available to everybody. The Planning for Empowerment is a booklet and it's a really new resource and we're really excited about it. It gave the Connected Community, actually, almost a reflection tool now, to look back at those two years of conversations that we already had and thinking about how elements of empowering environments are actually there from what has already been happening. And Claire, you actually said something about the Planning for Empowerment resource that I thought was so powerful.

 

We are looking forward to using it. It's quite a new document. So really, just Meredith and I, in particular, are just starting to really have a good look at how we can implement it. But it really reminded me a bit of the Early Years Learning Framework in terms of, the EYLF gives us a language for how we communicate around our learning outcomes. And this, I think, will really give us the language we can use when we talk about how we value children's rights and what empowering environments look like. So, I'm looking forward to getting into it. I haven't, we've really only just starting to read it and really looking forward to using it to communicate the work that we're doing already.

 

Yes, and while we have just started conversations based on the Planning for Environment, it was really, when we looked at those what are elements of empowering environments, we could already see what you have been doing in terms of growing positive relationships or how you're actively engaging children as partners. When you're looking in your practices of programming together with the children, how they are actually decision makers and really actively contributing. So all these elements that you were sharing beforehand, now we also can give a name and like you say, it gives you a language. 

 

Now. Thank you.

 

So a question we really want to give back to you now in the audience is, what will be your next steps to promote empowering environments that are uphold children's rights? And we really encourage you to take away this question and consider it with your colleagues in your next team meeting, for example. But we also have some ideas for you. So, Claire, what's your wish?

 

Oh, definitely just to use the Planning for Empowerment document, but also that I would love more people to come and join us at our Children's Rights Learning Community. Just purely because we have such great discussions and the more you hear from other people in different services and different age groups, the more informed we are. And it's just, I would just really encourage anyone to come along and join us because it is a great environment for discussion.

 

Oh, Claire, there's also a question for you. What good quality children's books you use? So I think in our Connected Community, we're often actually sharing what everybody's using. So Kelly, if you could maybe also come to our sessions, you'd be getting such great a pool of resources. 

 

Do we have time? I can quickly share a couple. So UNICEF have a couple of really great books. I also love Every Child a Song. And I love I Have the Right to Be a Child as well. And maybe I'll give you the authors, you'll just have to come along to the community, I'm sorry!

 

Okay, thank you so much for joining our session today. And we really encourage you to continue engaging with Be You and implementing children's rights to support their mental health and wellbeing.

 

If you can come to our next Connected Community, join as a member, that'd be great. Thank you so much. Thanks, Claire. 

 

Thanks, Carmen.