- Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you all for coming in, spending your time with us this afternoon, this webinar regarding Start Strong 2023 Guidelines. I'll just wait for a little bit while people trickle in. I can see the numbers rising steadily. Fantastic. All right, looks like the numbers are starting to plateau out, so we will look to get started. People continue to trickle in as we go along but hopefully they won't miss too, too much at the beginning. All right, well, thank you all for joining us today. Again, thank you very much. We know it's a late session, 4:30, 5:30 and your time is very valuable but hopefully we can provide an informative session for everybody today. My name is Jeff Wong. I'm a program coordinator with the Funded Programs Team at the Department of Education. Joining me, are a bunch of my colleagues amongst the panelists and we'll introduce them as we proceed through the webinar. If we could move to the first slide, please. Oh, sorry, we're just waiting for a few more people.

- We place our hands on the ground to acknowledge aboriginal land. We place our hands in the sky that covers Aboriginal land. We place our hands on our hearts to care for aboriginal land. We promise.

- Sorry, everybody, just bear with us for one moment, we're just waiting for a few key participants to join. All right, thank you everybody for joining us today. Apologies for the delay, we were just sorting a few technical issues but while we're going through that, I'll just go through a few housekeeping before we start. For participants, just a reminder that your microphone, video and chat functions will be disabled during the webinar. However, the Q and A function will be available at the bottom of your screen. If you have any questions throughout the webinar, please feel free to pop in your question there and a member from our team will try to answer them or we hopefully will get through them at a later time. We will prioritise the questions that are most voted most highly and we'll try to answer them throughout the webinar. We'll also be using a Menti during this session. If, for those of you who are familiar, this means it would be good if you could have your phone or another web browser ready to scan or enter the code on the screen when it comes up so you can participate in the interactive components of the session. And just a reminder that this webinar is being recorded and we will hopefully be able to get it on the Department's website at a later date. It does take a little bit of time, so it won't be ready immediately following this webinar but hopefully we can get that shortly onto the department's website. And if we're ready to go, I think we can begin to proceed through the slide deck.

- [Kate] Hi Jeff, it's Kate here. Sorry everyone, I think we're just having a couple of issues with the sound coming through from Jeff's end. But it's a bit crackly, Jeff.

- Sorry about that.

- [Kate] But we're just having a look at where everyone's dialing in from. We can see there's quite a good variety of where everyone has dialed in from and we welcome everyone from all the areas that you've come from. It's great to see so many people here today. We might move on to the next part of the Menti, which is what service type do you work in? And so, we've got lots of people from preschool and long daycare and a good percentage of people from other service types as well. Mobile daycare as well. It's great to see everyone here. Right, Jeff, I might just hand back over to you now.

- Is it still crackling or is the audio okay now, Kate?

- [Kate] The audio's fine for me now but if you're having problems with the audio, just drop it into the Q and A for us please.

- Thank you very much. Kate, it looks like the slide deck, for me, is still on the cover but while we're waiting for that to resolve, I will start off with a brief acknowledgement of country. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waterways where we live, work and play. I myself am calling in today from Dharug country and we celebrate the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and their continuing cultural and spiritual connections to country and we recognize the significance of their voices and cultures. We pay our respects to elders past and present and we are committed to nurturing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who are the elders of our future. Now, with housekeeping out of the way and if the slide deck is working for everyone else, then I think we are ready to pass on to Joe Parsons who is our acting executive director for Early Childhood Outcomes Commissioning. Joe, over to you.

- Thanks, Jeff. Can you hear me okay?

- Yes, we can.

- Good stuff, thanks very much. Thanks everyone else for making the time this afternoon. Appreciate you've all got very busy schedules, so really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to come along to this session, I'd like to begin by acknowledging that I'm dialing in from Gadigal country. I'd like to pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging and extend my respects to any Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander colleagues on the call today. So, as Jeff said, my name's Joe Parsons. I'm the acting Executive director for Early Childhood Outcomes Commissioning. We've been involved in the redesign of Start Strong over the last four or five months really. So, that started with the sector consultation process in August. We've worked very quickly to factor in the feedback we got from the the sector consultation into the guidelines that we released last week. So, that the key purpose of today's session is to run through with you the key features of those guidelines, the 2023 Starts Strong program for both community preschools and long daycare services. It's an opportunity for us to step through, in some detail, as to the key features but also to respond to some of the questions that you've already sent in. So, I'm going to give a quick overview of the new program before handing over to colleagues Meg, Caitlin, Liam and Sonja who will go into a bit more detail about the program features. So, key point to make, I guess, upfront is that Start Strong in 2023, will essentially be the vehicle through which we meet our preschool reform agreement and our affordable preschool commitments. So, these two major investments promote universal access to quality preschool programs for all children across New South Wales. Jump to the next slide, please. So, this just breaks those two commitments down in a bit more details. So, as you can see, affordable preschool will commence from January 2023. It's 1.3 billion investment over four years and it provides fee relief to New South Wales families and support 600 hours a year of access. So, for the first time we're introducing fee relief into long daycare settings, building on the Free Preschool program that currently operates, that is specific to the community preschool sector but from January, fee relief in both long daycare settings and community preschool settings. And then with the Preschool Reform Agreement, some of you may have seen this before but it was signed last year back in December. A agreement between the New South Wales and the Commonwealth Government commits $840 million over four years, commitments in there to improve preschool enrolment and attendance and to maximize the benefit of preschool by improving outcomes for children. So, we might jump, again, to the next slide. Important point to call out here, I guess, is that the way we're structuring the Start Strong program from 2023 is it'll be one program that will deliver multiple objectives. So, there's objectives in the program to improve the affordability of early childhood education, to uplift quality and to drive improved outcomes for children and incentivize increased enrolment and attendance in quality early childhood education programs in the years before school. So, the program will incorporate an outcomes focused approach. This means we can build the link between evidence, the program and performance to influence more effective outcomes for children through improved program design and delivery over time. Just jump into the next slide. So, here is just a quick overview of the new features for the Start Strong program from 2023 and I think I mentioned this at the roadshow a month or so ago but important to think about the architecture, I guess, of the program. So, currently we have three separate Start Strong programs. We have the Community Preschool Program, the Free Preschool Program and then the Long Daycare Program. We're essentially bringing those three programs into one overarching program that has two streams, the Community Preschool Stream and a Long Daycare Stream and both of those have the fee relief component built in. So, as you see on this slide here, there's a more sustainable funding model. We're fortunately moving away from the one year funding agreements that we had over the last couple of years through the Universal Access National Partnership. So, the PRA locks funding in over the four year period, as does the affordable preschool funding that's locked in over the forward estimates. Some additional requirements around ECTs in the program guidelines. We'll go to some of this in more detail as we step through the deck. There's some updates to spending rules, so more flexibility, particularly in the long daycare space around what funding can be used for, particularly in relation to staffing. Funding will be provided on a quarterly basis and the program will move to a calendar year. So, we'll talk in some more detail around the timing for that and we want to make sure the transition to school statements embedded within the program. So, from 2023 it will be a requirement of the program that transition to school statements are completed. There's also a three year old trial that will be commencing in the long daycare sector. Program details will be on the way very soon but we've got some slides to talk about that in a bit more detail. And then there will be some additional requirements around financial accountability and compliance. We'll need to expand how we approach that to capture the new program elements but also to take into account the fact that there's been a significant uplift in funding, both in relation to the program payments that will go to long daycare providers but also the fee relief component as well. So, we'll talk a bit about that. Also wanted to flag upfront and again, we will go into more detail on this but the approach we're taking to multiple enrolments. So, if we could jump to the next slide. Important to call out this at a high level and then both Caitlin and Sonja's team will talk in a bit more detail about what it means for both community preschools and long daycare services. So, important to flag upfront, we know there are a range of reasons as to why a family may enrol their child or children at multiple services. It could be due to a particular family's weekly routines, challenges enrolling their child or children for the required number of hours at one service. So, we recognize there may be a genuine need for families to have these enrolment patterns but we do need to ensure that there's a clear policy position relating to families accessing fee relief. So, the way it will work is that families will need to apply for the fee relief. There will be a declaration and consent form to do this, which will be available very soon. There'll be two versions of that form, tailored to service types, so one for community preschools, one for long daycare. To monitor the fee relief pass through to families, the Department will require some additional data from long daycare services and to assist with this, we've reached out already to third party software providers. We've shared a technical specification with them that outlines the data we need and how and when they will need to provide it and also the need for fee statements to include the fee relief component. So, again, we'll go into some more detail on all of this as we step through the slides but just wanted to call that out as it is, I guess, a feature of the new program from 2023. So, I am now going to throw over to our Community Preschool Team and Liam is going to take us through some of this in a bit more detail. So, over to you Liam.

- Thank you, Joe, and good afternoon everyone. My name is Liam and I'll be speaking to you this afternoon on the program specifics for services that are funded under Start Strong for Community Preschools and some information for our small group of mobile preschool funding program services. I come to you this afternoon from the lands of the Wadi Wadi People of the Dharawal Nation and I too pay my respects to elders past and present and extend this to any Aboriginal and or Torres Strait Islander People participating in the webinar with us today. Before we jump into the content, I'd like to highlight some of the key themes from the preschools that are emerging from the questions you've provided to us in the registration form as well as from the phone and email inquiries you've raised with us. In particular, we have had a lot of questions around Service Safety Net funding, some of the specifics on fee relief spending rules, the declaration form process and of course, a hot topic is the funding details for next year. With that in mind, we've tailored some of the slides for the community and mobile preschools to cover off these elements, so hopefully I can answer a few of your questions over the next few minutes. Don't fret though, we have time for question and answer at the end and we'll be directly answering more of your questions that don't necessarily fit into these topics as well. But our starting point for the Community Preschool Program is funding rates for the program as it stands. For our participants today who aren't fully up to speed with the program, there are two components of your funding moving forward. These are the program payment, which is what has traditionally been known as Start Strong funding and the fee relief funding, which has previously been delivered to you Time Limited COVID 19 Free Preschool Program, Start Strong free preschool program, which will be ending on New Years eve. The program payment funding rates are based on both the SEIFA band of your service and the hours of enrolment for the children that are enrolled. As you can see, there is a sliding scale which goes from 100% to 0, depending on whether the child's enrolled for 600 hours per year, which generally works out to be 15 hours per week or below. The top rate, which are SEIFA band one to eight services received for all enrolments for 600 hours and that all services, irrespective of location, received for equity enrolments is $7,466 and the full table of rates is available to you in the program guidelines. On the right side, we have our fee relief funding. This funding is only based on the hours of enrolment of the children at your service and as you can see, the sliding scale is more generous, as at the end of the day, the objective of fee relief funding is to provide support to all children enrolled in preschool programs. There is no SEIFA band scaling at all for the fee relief component of your funding and the maximum rate for children enrolled for 600 hours per year is $4,220. You may have seen the rates have increase since the last time we presented to you at the September road shows. I'm pleased to confirm that the funding rates have been increased by 5.5% in acknowledgement of the current state of things. Everything is expensive these days and we want to be able to support services accordingly, so that's why the maximum rate of program funding has increased, as you can see in the box at the bottom left and why the fee relief funding has gone from the lovely rounded figure of $4,000 per year to the higher but less friendly $4,220 per year. Before we move off the funding rates, it's important to acknowledge how things work for the mobile preschool services who are currently funded through the Mobile Preschool Funding Program. These services have been eligible for free preschool programs previously and we can confirm that this is once again the case moving forward. While the program payment specific elements of Start Strong for Community Preschools do not apply, the fee relief component is applicable for mobile preschool funding program services. So, as you can see there, you'll be receiving the same amounts through the same process and the guidelines that community preschools will follow are the same as what you will need to follow. These will be updated in your specific program guidelines very shortly but in the meantime, if you do need the information you'll be able to refer to the Community Preschool's website page for guidance on this. To move on to talk a little bit about the funding allocations, the way that we calculate your funding under Start Strong for Community Preschools has not changed. As in previous years, your funding allocation will be based on the submissions you provide in each annual preschool census. As we move into 2023, your funding will be based on the 2022 annual preschool census and this is for both the program payment component and the fee relief component. We won't be taking fee relief funding away if children are leaving at the end of the year or anything like that. It's all going to be based on the data that you provide to us in census. To the second point there, we are doing our absolute utmost to get your funding details to you as soon as we possibly can. We've heard from you it is important to give you as much notice as we can and we are doing our absolute best to get that information to you in a timely manner. At the very least, you'll be receiving your funding letter from us by the end of term four but we certainly hope that we can get it to you earlier than that. In the meantime, the funding planning tool is available and ready for use. I know lots of services have already started using it and have sent some questions in about it. It's available on the main Start Strong for Community Preschools landing page. It's been updated with the 2023 funding rates that I just referred to and it includes both program payment and fee relief components. You can use your 2022 census submission to give you a guide on how the funding will be calculated. If you're looking for that, you're able to access it on the Early Childhood Contract Management System. It'll be there for you to download in PDF format and you'll be able to input that straight into the calculator. I'll remind all services that the planning tool provides estimates only and the amounts in the tool are not a guarantee of what will be received and if you do have any issues using the planning tool, please get in touch with us, send an email through our funding inbox or give the Information and Enquiries Line a call so that we can give you some assistance with the planning tool. I do want to talk to Service Safety Net as it is a hot topic of discussion and I personally have had a conversation with quite a few Service Safety Net services so far to talk through some of the funding questions that you have. Because it's a popular topic, I want to share some key points and hopefully ease some of the concerns that your services are having regarding how Safety Net status will impact your funding moving forward. As you can see on the left hand side of the slide there, there are six criteria points which a service needs to meet to be eligible for Service Safety Net funding. A service needs to have a licensed capacity of 20 places or fewer. You need to have between five and 20 eligible funded children, eligible funded children are all children in the year before school and three year olds that are eligible for the equity loading. Your service needs to have an ARIA+ classification that is not major cities of Australia, so generally you need to be located outside of the Sydney, Wollongong and Newcastle metropolitan areas. You need to have daily fees of less than $55 before the fee relief is passed on, not after you've passed it on, before the initial structure that you have, before you pass it on to the families. And the last point is that the service would need to be receiving less than the Safety Net amount if it wasn't going to be applied. There are a couple of small changes that have been announced as part of the new program but they don't change how eligibility is assessed and they don't have any impact on existing Service Safety Net services. Firstly, the Service Safety Net funding amount has increased from $141,520 in 2022 to $149,320 in 2023. This doesn't mean that you'll get the full 149,320 this financial year, as it'll be halfway between because you've got a bit of 2022 and a bit of 2023 but you can expect that this is the going rate for the 2023 calendar year. There's also one new eligibility criteria. This is the one at the end there that refers to having a lower Service Safety Net amount. This is simply codifying what's always applied, which is that you only get Service Safety Net if the calculations indicate you would be getting less than that if we weren't giving it to you. If the calculations say to us that you'd be getting 160 or $170,000, that's fantastic, you'd be getting that amount. We're not going to give you Service Safety Net just because you meet all of the other criteria. If you are eligible for more funding, we will give you the highest rate that we can and adding this to the criteria, it's really just making this a formal part of the guidelines where it's just been something that we've done previously. Importantly, services that receive Safety Net funding are still part of the Start Strong for Community Preschools Program, which means that you'll be getting the fee relief funding to pass on to the families at your service. You'll need to follow the same spending rules as everyone else and you'll need to bear the Safety Net criteria in mind when you're creating your fee structure, just around that $55 point that is item number five on that list on the left there. But yeah, hopefully this is easing some of the concerns. We've had a few questions asking if Service Safety Net services are eligible for fee relief, that is a big yes. We want you to pass that onto your community, so hopefully that has eased some concerns there. To talk to the spending rules for program payments, we understand that by bringing fee relief into the Start Strong for Community Preschool's umbrella, there's now two different sets of spending rules that you'll need to abide by under the program. We will be making it very clear that you understand how much you receive as program payments and how much you get as fee relief payments so that you can spend the money accordingly. The program payment spending rules appear as they have over the years. You can see them there on the screen. These haven't changed. These are for the operating expenses of your service. You can use these for staff wages and staffing costs. These can be for costs of educational resources for your preschool program. These can be any other things that come up as operational expenses for, you think rent, facility costs, cleaning, maintenance, utilities, all of your operational expenses can be funded through the program payments. Some questions have popped up exactly about what it can be spent on. The key thing that I'll say to you today is to remember that funds are for operational expenses. How you spend the funding at your service is at your discretion, provided that you believe the spending is in line with the program rules that you see there. This wraps up the information on the program payments, so I'll now move in to talk to the fee relief elements of the Start Strong Community Preschools Program that are coming in on the 1st of January. As you heard at the top of the presentation, family declaration forms are being introduced to the Start Strong program. There are similar but unique processes for both long daycare and preschool services. My wonderful colleagues in long daycare will detail the process for those services later but I will focus on how it works for Start Strong for Community Preschools funded services. We have a flow on the screen there that indicates how the declaration forms fit into the funding model. The declaration form will be available very shortly for services to access and start using. It'll be available on the department's website and the good news is that we have the template, we will be uploading it so you won't need to create your own, you'll be able to download ours and we'll expect you to be using that. Once you send out the forms, you'll need to collect those forms back from the families to identify which children need fee relief funding applied to their fees at your service and which children continue to be charged fees as normal as they may be accessing fee relief elsewhere. The fees will be adjusted as necessary, in line with the forms. The guidelines indicate that you will need to acknowledge that fee relief funding is being provided by the department and that it's been used to reduce fees that families are being charged. This may be communicated on regular invoices if you have a process for regular invoicing. If that's not the case, there are other communication channels that you can use. If you would like to see some examples of that, you can refer to the program guidelines where there are a couple of suggestions mentioned as part of the language on this. Once you have all the declaration forms, you will need to store them for record keeping and audit processes, just as you do for other documents that you've got. Enrolment forms, evidence of equity status, this is another document that we'll need you to keep on you so that if you get asked to produce them in an audit, that you have them available for us. But at the end of the day, you do not need to send the forms to the department, you just need to have them on record. So, we won't be asking you to send copies of all of the forms for all of your enrolments to us. That is for you to collect and store. As mentioned, there will be a way to return fee relief funding to the department where it isn't used. We will establish where the fee relief funding was applied through our normal processes. You'll be concluding the census as normal for the families that have returned consent forms and once the data has been received and processed, we will notify services where adjustments need to occur. More information on this process will come out next year. On the topic of how the department will have visibility on multiple enrolments across the sectors, as you can see there, between the long daycare data capture and the annual preschool census process, the department will have the information it needs to understand how multiple enrolments are occurring across the sector. We've had quite a few questions, so we've put together a few case studies that you'll see on one of the following slides and in the long daycare space as well so that we can explain the spending rules and try and make it as clear as possible to you to make things a bit easier. Before I get into the case study for the community and mobile preschools, I'll briefly summarize the spending rules the for fee relief and how it works under the Start Strong for Community Preschools program. So, the primary intention for funding is in the name. It's there to reduce fees and notably, it's there to reduce fees for eligible children for up to 600 hours of enrolment. This is largely in line with previous free preschool payment programs. However, here it's not delivering free, it is ensuring that you pass on the full amount of fee relief funding you have received per child. We've passed that funding on and you still have excess funds after you've passed it on for 600 hours of enrolment where in this case it would be where your fees are zero and you still have funds left over. The money should be used to reduce additional costs to families as this is in line with the objective of making preschool more affordable for the families of New South Wales. Finally, where you've done all of the above and there is still a surplus, funds can be spent in line with the program payment spending rules that we talked to earlier. To demonstrate how the fee relief can be passed through, we have a comparison here, so we will be comparing the pair. The services have the same age groups, same fee relief income, you might think same soup contributions. I'm not very good at that but in all seriousness, there's plenty of similarities for these services but the big difference is in the fees and the levies. This is to be expected because every community has different costs and different needs. The rates have been updated to make sense from a maths point of view. I apologise if I haven't got this quite right. I've done my best, it's been a while since I did year 12 maths and I hope that it's simple enough to demonstrate how the spending rules work. So, if we go onto the next slide that has our examples, we'll have a look at how the money flows for Service A and Service B. For Service A, which is in the middle column there, some of the $168,800 has been spent on fee relief but not all. The fees at Service A are now zero and there are still funds remaining. For Service B, however, in the column on the right, the full fee relief allocation has been directed to the fees and the fees have been greatly reduced from the services fee structure before fee relief to the new rates that you see there. It's important to note here that this may mean that you have two sets of fees. You may call it two tier structure. I saw that in one of the questions that was submitted. At the end of the day we want you to be able to set your fees as you would each year and then use the fee relief funding you receive from us to subsidise those accordingly. You'll be expected to pass on the full amount you receive per child and if you need some assistance with individual business planning on how to set fees and whatnot, you may be able to contact the Peak Bodies if you are a member. Where you still have fee relief funding remaining like service A does in this case, we follow the spending rules in order. As you can see, Service A has enough fee relief funding remaining to cover the costs that were expected to be covered by levies that families would've provided. As you can see in the Service B box, this doesn't mean you can't charge levies or third day fees, et cetera, et cetera, but in this example Service B certainly can charge those fees as those used for their fee relief funding. But where you have levies in place and you have excess fee relief funding, it is expected that you reduce these as much as possible. In the example that we've presented here for Service A, the levies that they were planning to be charged have been covered by the fee relief funding that the service received from the department and that still leaves them with a surplus of $68,800. At the end of the day, if you still have fee relief funding left over after all that, which we expect that some services likely will, that's when it can be directed to the operating expenses in line with Start Strong. That's it for Start Strong Preschool specific information at this point, there's more to come for community preschools and mobiles but these are items that cover both sectors, so we'll be hearing about them a bit later on. But for now, I'll be passing on to Meagan who'll be speaking to the Start Strong Long Daycare information.

- Thanks, Liam. That was a lot of valuable information for community and mobile preschools. I am Meagan, a program coordinator in the Preschool Funding Team and firstly, I would like to acknowledge that I am coming to you from the lands of the Wiradjuri People and I would like to acknowledge elders past, present and emerging. Next slide, please. Funding rates for Start Strong Long Daycare. We had a lot of inquiries coming through from the webinar registration and on the phone and from email inquiries. On your screen are some of the questions that we have been sent that we will answer throughout this section of the webinar. Questions including when funding will be received, child equity and does the 2023 Start Strong funding have any impacts on the 2022-'23 Start Strong funding that has already been paid to services? Next slide, please. Being able to release the final figures and information about Start Strong Long Daycare is really exciting to our team. The initial Start Strong payment for eligible services is calculated based on the New South Wales enrolment data provided by the Australian Government from the representation week 23rd to the 29th of May, 2022. The funding adjustments will be applied by the end of 2023 to reflect changes in enrolments using data from a representative period in early 2023. This enrolment data will include children who are at least four years old on or before the 31st of July, 2023. The new 2023 funding allocation does not impact the 2022-'23 funding allocation. Services will not need to repay any of the funding from the 2022-'23 funding because they have now received 2023 funding. As you can see on the left hand side, the program payment is scaled for enrolments above and below 600 hours. There are also additional loadings for children who are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander and services that are located in areas of relative socioeconomic disadvantage, meaning services that are in a geographic location with a SEIFA Decile of one or two. With this in mind, for children that are enrolled for more than 600 hours, the base annual funding is $960 and the loaded rate is $1,440. For children that are enrolled for less than 600 hours, the base annual funding is $643 and the loaded rate is $965. On the right hand side is our information about the fee relief payment. Eligible children will receive up to $2,110 per year to support the fee relief and as Liam touched on earlier, we have increased it from the initial amount we introduced in September of $2,000. The funding is not mean tested and will not have an impact on the family's childcare subsidy. Fee relief funding is paid to services for them to pass through to families. To simplify the distribution of fee relief, services provide families with a flat rate for fee relief distributed across a number of weeks that the service operates. The fee relief is not allocated to a specific day of attendance but just a weekly reduction of fees. Any outstanding gap fee after the childcare subsidy and fee relief payment have been applied would be paid by the family. Start Strong payments for both fee relief and program payments will occur in quarterly instalments. The first in January for the period of January to March 2023, the second in April for the period April to June 2023, the third in July for period July to September 2023 and the fourth in October for the period October to December 2023. Also noting that the payment will not be made until the Early Childhood Outcomes Commission program funding agreement terms and conditions are accepted in the Early Childhood Contract Management System, otherwise known as ECCMS. Next slide, please. Throughout consultation we heard from the sector about the problems you're experiencing, including the impacts from COVID and other workforce issues have placed a great strain on many services. The redesign of the program and increase in funding coming into long daycare sector through the Preschool Reform Agreement is nearly doubling and provides an opportunity to allow more flexibility in how we guide services to use the funding. From 2023, the spending rules enable services to continue to use the funding for functional and educational resources. However, funding can also be used to improve pay and conditions, help attract and retain staff and improve quality of preschool programs. Next slide, please. We have been working in the background with software providers and they're working on a technical solution to record where a declaration form has been provided and consent given. Additionally, updating the fee statements to show how the fee relief is being applied. Services will need to provide the consent or declaration form for the parents to fill out. They will inform the software provider or system where the family has applied the fee relief and given consent. This may be in the form of a tick box. The department will then provide funding to long daycare services based on the enrolment data by the Commonwealth from May 2022. The software will then apply the fee relief to fee invoices or statements. Services must store the declaration form and they do not need to send them into the department. However, they may be requested during the audit process to provide that form to us. At scheduled points throughout the year, data must be provided to the department and this will be shared with the Commonwealth. Services will be required to return any unallocated fee relief and this will be done through an adjustment process. Next slide, please. So, this slide provides an illustration only on how a service might determine the amount of fee relief to allocate a family and what the impacts will be for families in term of improving affordability. A family sends their five year old child to a long daycare preschool program with a daily session fee of $117. They receive the childcare subsidy which leaves a family to pay a daily gap fee of $116. The child attends the service two days per week for a total weekly gap fee of $32.90. The service operates for 40 weeks. The service will then apply the $52.75 fee relief leaving the family of a gap fee of zero but there is a remaining amount of $19.85 from the fee relief. So, what happens to the remaining amount of $19.85 per week that can't be used to reduce the family's fees? The service has any additional fees such as the $19.85. First of all, this needs to be provided to the families to reduce any fees. If all the family fees are covered, then the service is able to use the residual funds as per the spending rules for the program funding such as purchasing functional and educational resources or staff development. Next slide, please. In addition to other changes to the Start Strong Program, you may have heard that there will be a trial for three year old children in long daycare. The New South Wales Government has committed over $64 million to support the participation of three year olds in quality preschool programs in long daycare services. The trial will begin in early 2023 and run for two years. The trial is proposed to be universal. This means that all services eligible to participate in the Start Strong Long Daycare 2023 Program will be involved. The trial will provide funding for three year olds, however, the fee relief is not part of the trial. Similarly, to four and five year olds, loading will be applied for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and for all attending a service considered to be in an area of relative disadvantage. Details and guidelines will be provided soon about the trial. Next slide, please. I will now hand it over to Caitlin and Sonja to discuss some Start Strong guidelines that affect both community preschools and long daycare services.

- Wonderful, thanks Meagan. Hello, everybody. My name's Caitlin Anear and I'd also like to acknowledge that I'm coming to you from the lands of the Gadigal People today and add my respect to elders past, present and emerging. We've received quite a few questions about how the fee relief should be calculated and one of the main points that we wanna call out is that it's not to be applied for any specific day of attendance, it's really about being applied to their weekly enrolment. So, if we can just move to the next slide and I'll walk you through two different examples about what we mean. So, the first one is for a long daycare service that is open and operating for 50 weeks of the year. Child one attending this service has requested to access the fee relief from the service and because fee relief for long daycare services is not scaled for hours of enrolment, they're eligible for the full $2,110, regardless of how many hours they might be enrolled to attend the service. The service will divide the total fee relief amount of $2,110 over the 50 weeks of the year that they operate, resulting in $42.20 of fee relief each week for child one and their family. A second example is for a community preschool. So, community preschool B's open for 40 weeks of the year. Child two attends this service for more than 600 hours, meaning that they are eligible for the full $4,220 in fee relief. So, the service divides the total fee relief of $4,220 over the 40 weeks that they operate and this results in $105.50 of saving for child two each week. We just jump to the next one, thank you. We also had lots and lots of questions about what happens when children are leaving services and joining services throughout the year. And so, this example is to try to explain how the fee relief will work. So, this one is for a long daycare again and as in the other example, it's open for 50 weeks of the year and child one has applied for the fee relief and will be eligible for $42.20 per week of fee relief. However, child one ends up leaving the service after only 13 weeks of enrolment. The child has used $548.60 of the free relief, meaning there is $1,561.40 remaining. This money doesn't get paid out to the family of child one. The fee relief must be used by children that are enrolled in your service. So, the service needs to retain that remaining $1,500 until they have a child ready to take over that enrolment. So, in this example, child number two was on a wait list for the service and can commence as soon as child one leaves. They're really eager to get in. So, child two has also filled out the consent form and has asked to have the fee relief applied at this service and they're eligible for the full $2,110 over the entire year. So, because they've enrolled and there's only 37 weeks left of that year, they will be eligible to receive the remaining $1,561.40 that was left over from child one. So, they will receive the same amount of $42.20 per week of fee relief for the weeks that they're enrolled in that service. Where there might be a gap between child one leaving and child two starting up, the service can use that fee relief funding. It won't be very much, for $42 a week for a couple of weeks we'd be looking at just over 100, $150. That money can actually be used in line with the spending rules for the program payment. So, services won't have to try and provide that money back to the department for some gaps in enrolments for children that are accessing the fee relief at their service. We also had heaps and heaps of questions about multiple enrolments and we really wanted to provide some clarity about what service responsibilities are in this space and what they won't be as well so you can be comfortable with what we're asking you to do. So, services are responsible for distributing and collecting their parent declaration forms. They're responsible for ensuring that the fee relief is provided to the families who have requested it through that consent and declaration form and also for retaining copies of the declaration form for the audit purposes that both Meagan and Liam have described. What services aren't responsible for is monitoring families that they know attend multiple services, checking that parents are correctly claiming the fee relief, other than making sure they fill out the form, following up with other services to confirm whether or not fee relief has been applied at their service. Any sort of recovery action of overpaid monies to families where perhaps they claimed that fee relief incorrectly or repaying any money back to the department if it turns out that some funding was provided to ineligible parents. So, services won't have to play any role in that space at all, it's really just about distributing, collecting the consent forms and then making sure that the fee relief is applied based on the information that was in the consent forms and who had asked for the free relief to be applied. I will hand over now to Sonja to go through another couple of slides.

- Great, thank you Caitlin. Hi, everyone, my name is Sonja Herrmann and I'm the manager of Preschool Funding One. I am coming to you from the beautiful and very warm land of the Dharug People. I pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging as well. I will talk to you very briefly about implementation support and next steps in general. After that, we'll move on to our questions and answer section. So, implementation support, as previously mentioned, we will have that support in place before the end of term and further details will be shared with you about this very, very soon. The implementation support will be available for all eligible services and providers, which means that covers long daycare community and mobile preschool. During the September roadshow webinar we asked you what topics you'd like to hear about in future webinars and through other support content and we collected your feedback via Menti. So, on the right of the screen, you can see some of the key themes that were raised, which include budgeting, spending rules, acquittals and accountabilities, fee setting and communication with families. So, thank you very much for your submissions on the implementation support content. Your feedback will be shared with the contracted providers and it'll inform some more content. In addition to this, the services will also be able to access implementation support for individual service questions to assist you in your delivery of stuff and in particular the fee relief. Next slide, please. Here you can see an overview of what's been happening so far and what will come next. So, back in August, we held the sector consultations which informed the Start Strong program. The sector consultation reports that came out of those consultation sessions were released in September and you can access them on our website. They are on the Resource Section for Community Preschools as well as Long Daycare webpage. The Start Strong program guidelines were released last week as you know and are, of course, available for review online and if you have questions, you can, of course, direct them to us. Next up, we will be releasing funding notification letters and I'm sure you all are keen to receive them. So, these letters will outline our services funding allocations for 2023. So, they include your program payment, as well as your fee relief payment, so they will be separately displayed on the letters. The program will go live from January 2023 and payments will be progressed soon after the launch. So, a quick note here that the program payments for community and mobile preschools will be released in December as usual, so they won't go in January. The fee relief payments will, however, follow in early 2023. So, that's all we have prepared for slides and we'll now head into our Q and A element of the webinar.

- [Jeff] Thank you very much, Sonja. Now, there are a lot of questions coming through the Zoom call. Thank you very much to everybody who submitted them. We do have a few questions that we have compiled based on these ones submitted when you registered for this webinar. So, we'll address those first and if we have time we'll try to get through a few more in the Q and A. So, in the first question we have, "Why is the department limiting parent's ability to access fee relief to one service?" Joe, can we throw this one over to you?

- Sure, thanks, Jeff. So, I guess the first thing to say is that the New South Wales Government's committed to ensuring that all children in New South Wales can participate in 600 hours of quality preschool education in the year or two years before school, no matter their circumstances or where they live. So, we've put in place this declaration process to allow families to nominate the service where they wish to receive their fee relief. In part, what we're doing is acting on feedback from the sector and from families. We have also considered a number of other options for addressing the issue but it did come back very strongly through the consultation process that we ran throughout August that we needed to address the issue of multiple enrolments. So, the declaration form approach is modelled on access to at least 600 hours per year to a quality preschool program in the years before school, which obviously, as we all know, is a recommended minimum level of participation. The approach encourages continuity of care where that's possible and incentivises families to enrol their child in one service for more hours to improve educational outcomes. So, we do recognise there may be instances where families need to enrol their child at more than one service but this nomination process will ensure that the allocated New South Wales Government Fee Relief Funding is distributed once for all eligible families. Back to you, Jeff.

- [Jeff] Thank you very much, Joe. The next question that we had that popped up quite often, a common question, "What happens to fee relief if a child is sick or does not attend the service for the day?" Caitlin, can I pass this one to you?

- Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Jeff and it's a quick and easy one to answer as well. The fee relief is linked only to enrolment and not attendance. So, if a child is sick for a couple of days or doesn't attend the service, it won't have any impact on the fee relief.

- [Jeff] Fantastic. Unfortunately, we are at time now. If people are able to hang on for another 10 minutes, we'll keep going through the Q and As as there are quite a few to go through and we would like to get through a few more if possible. But obviously if you have other commitments-

- Yeah, Jeff, I wonder if what we do because we had made a commitment to the questions that have been sent in, if we can cover those off, I think we're probably going to run slightly over doing that. But the questions that have come through on the chat, we'll make a commitment to responding in writing. So, we have got a draft FAQ document that we've made a commitment to upload onto the website. So, what we can do is take the additional questions we've got today, respond to those in writing but if we can try and cover as many of those that have been sent in ahead of this session, that would be good.

- [Jeff] Sure thing. Let's see here. The next question that we had was, "Do I need to apply for this funding like I had to apply for free preschool?" Sonja, are you able to answer this one?

- Yes, that's obviously relevant, in particular for community preschool, than mobile preschools. This will not be an opt-in opt-out model like starting free preschool was. That means it will be integrated into the new Start Strong Community Preschool program from 2023. We do know though, if anyone has concerns or questions around this, if you haven't opted in this year and you have questions, please email us. Our email address is ecec.funding@det.nsw.edu.au and we'll happy to have a chat with you.

- Thank you, Sonja. Now, onto the next one. "Are we able to increase fees due to CPI or other cost pressures?" Catiline, perhaps one for you?

- Excellent, thanks, Jeff. I just lost... Fees are expected to be maintained at fee levels of previous years where fees were charged to families, adjusted for CPI across the time period. However, we do understand that the cost pressures that services are facing and there'll be circumstances where it will be necessary to adjust the fees that are above CPI, such as due to increases in operating costs or rent, those sorts of things. So, to be able to do so, services just must retain evidence to support the fee increase.

- Awesome, thank you, Caitlin. Now, this next question, "Isn't this inconsistent," this being the information provided in the webinar, "Inconsistent with messaging relating to the government commitment to introduce a universal pre-kindergarten year?" Joe, this one for you.

- Thanks, Jeff and it's a very good question. So, I think as most of you'll be aware, there was a government commitment to invest 5.8 billion to introduce a new universal pre-kindergarten year in the year before primary school for every child by the end of the decade. So, this investment will obviously make sure that all children, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, children in regional rural remote services and communities can access a pre-kindergarten year and are given every opportunity for a bright future. We're going to work closely with the early childhood education and care sector, with schools, with families and other experts to determine the delivery, the locations and the funding models for pre-kindergarten. The transition to that model, so from the current 600 hour model up to an up to five day per week model is significant. It's complex. There's infrastructure considerations. There's, as we said, funding model considerations and workforce considerations. So, it requires a lot of detailed planning. It's not a model we can just jump to but the key takeaway, I think, is that work will take place, the planning work will take place in consultation with the sector and wider stakeholders to ensure that that is implemented effectively.

- [Jeff] Thank you very much, Joe. This question, obviously, this next one came up quite often, so good that we're addressing this one now. "What support will be available to services that are transitioning to this new funding model?" Caitlin, please.

- I'll just reiterate, I suppose, what Sonja went through in relation to the implementation support that will be available. So, we're very close to being able to have that ready to go and we'll be sharing more details on that very, very soon so you can begin to access those services.

- [Jeff] Thanks, Caitlin. Let's see, last of the ones that we collected from the registered questions, "What information will families need to provide to access the fee relief?" Caitlin, back to you immediately.

- Yeah, that's me again. So, families will need to consent to the service sharing some of their child's information with the Department for Education and the Commonwealth Government and these details may include the child's name, date of birth and their child enrolment ID. The service will provide families with that declaration and consent form and that explains all of the information about what we're collecting and why we're collecting it. So, as soon as those consent forms are available, you'll be able to see all of that information and so will families and parents.

- [Jeff] Awesome, thank you, Caitlyn.

- Jeff, I just wonder because we've run over already and I had seen in the chat that a number of people do need to leave. So, I just wonder if what we do, as I mentioned earlier, is let's take the questions that we've received during this session and we'll provide written responses. There's no way we're going to get through all of them now and I think to do justice to the questions, it's probably best that rather than rush through them, we actually just provide written responses. So, there's a couple of things coming out of this session and based on the feedback we've got through the chat, so key that we get the declaration forms out to you as quickly as possible. So, we will definitely prioritise that. With regards to the FAQ, we will also prioritize the responses to the additional questions that we've got through this session today. So, both of those things will be coming out in the very, very near future. But I'd just like to thank everyone for their time. It's really, really appreciated for the additional questions. They too are appreciated and as I said, we'll get those responses out very, very soon.

- All right, well thank you, Joe. Sorry to everybody who submitted questions, we did have a few technical issues, well I did personally, hopefully that didn't impact too, too much. And yes, we will endeavor to get those questions answered in one form or another. Thank you, again, to everybody who took the time out. We know the 4:30 to 5:30 slot's a hard one to attend, so we appreciate you joining us today. But hopefully, this webinar has been of some use to you and the recording will be posted on the department's website in the coming days, weeks, we'll say, hopefully shortly. But until next time, thank you very much and all the best. Hopefully, we can provide answers soon. Take care, bye.

- Thanks, Jeff, thanks everyone.

Good morning to everyone who's joining. We've still got lots of people coming into the room, so we'll just wait a couple of minutes and then we'll get started.

- Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us. We'll give people a little bit more time. I can see the numbers are still going up. Wonderful to see so many of you here this morning. Thank you for joining us. And the numbers are still climbing. I may make a start. All right. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the New South Wales Department of Education's Webinar on the Safe transportation of children in Early Childhood Education and Care Services. This session has been developed by the New South Wales's Regulatory Authority in collaboration with Kids and Traffic, who are the subject matter experts in the safe transportation of children. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Louisa Coussens. I'm the Manager of the Quality Practice and Regulatory Support Team in Quality Assurance and Regulatory Services, Early Childhood Education in the Department. You may also know us as the New South Wales Regulatory Authority. I acknowledge this I'm meeting with you today from the lands of the Darkinjung People. I also acknowledge the traditional custodians of various lands from which you are all joining us today and pay my respects to elders past and present. And I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Highlander people joining us today. I think we may have a short video to show you now.

- [Kooloora preschoolers] We place our hands on the ground to acknowledge Aboriginal land. We place our hands in the sky that covers Aboriginal land. We place our hands on our heart to care for Aboriginal land. We promise.

- Thank you, Kooloora Preschoolers. That was gorgeous. So, first of all, some housekeeping. Your microphone, video and chat functions will be disabled during the webinar. However, we do encourage you to use the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen to ask any questions. You can type your question into the Q&A, and you can also see and vote on other people's questions if you'd like those answered by using the Thumbs Up button. We'll prioritize the questions with the most votes and try to answer those during the webinar. If we don't get to your question today, please reach out to our information and inquiries team who are always available to support you with any questions related to service operation. You can contact them on 1800-619-113, or by emailing ececd@det.nsw.edu.au. We'll be using Menti during this session. So please have your phone or another web browser ready to scan or enter the code on the screen when it comes up. So you can participate in the interactive components of the session. The session today is going to be recorded. In today's session then I'll be talking through the key regulatory requirements relating to transportation and education and care services, and some guidance available to support providers and services who may be new to transporting children. Today, we're particularly talking about transportation that is not part of an excursion. For example, when a service transports children to and from home, or to and from school. The regulations for this transportation differ from the regulations for excursions. The transportation of children is a high-risk activity. And as the Regulatory Authority, part of our role is to provide education and guidance to the sector on the regulatory requirements, which is what we are doing today. This information is important if your service is thinking about, about to start, or new to offering transport, or if you are new to a service who offers transport. I will then hand over to Louise Cosgrove from Kids and Traffic to explore some key risks and considerations when transporting children in early childhood education and outside school hours care settings and share practical risk mitigation strategies that you could implement at your service to keep children safe. Before I do that, though, I'm going to hand over to my colleague, Yasmina to say a few words.

- Thank you, Louisa. Hi everybody. My name's Yasmina. I am representing the New South Wales Regulatory Authority, a distinct business unit inside the Department of Education. I'll start by acknowledging that I'm coming from Dharug land. And I pay my respects to their elders past present and emerging. In terms of the Regulatory Authority For those that may be new to the sector, we regulate over 5,900 services. And in that we include outside school hours care, family daycare, long daycare, preschools, and vacation care. So today's presentation is relevant to any type of service that engages in those transport activities as explained by Louise earlier. Regulators traditionally focus their attention and efforts on areas of greatest risk, and they are mandated to do so. I would say today that I'm sure that providers and service staff share that focus with me. And this is exactly why we have decided to focus today's presentation on one of those areas of increased risk to children, which is transportation. As the New South Wales Regulatory Authority, we are mandated under the national law and regulations to bring these types of information sessions to you. And we are also accountable to families in New South Wales to ensure that they are able to trust and have confidence in the way that services operate each and every day. So today's session is therefore critically important in enabling your service to achieve consistent standardized risk management around this particular activity, and to embed routine practices around transportation of children as they attend your service. I'll hand back to Louise now. I hope you enjoy today's presentation.

- Thanks, Yasmina. When transporting children, you might have a service bus. Or, for some educators such as family daycare educators, you might transport children in your car. In today's session as you've heard, we're taking the time to acknowledge that transportation is a high-risk activity. Transportation process can present serious risks to children's safety. Transportation may present additional risks to children depending on how it occurs and how transitions between a vehicle and the service premises or other locations are managed. These risks apply equally to single trips or during periods of regular transportation. In some cases, poor practices can lead to tragic consequences. As a sector, we must all continue to improve safe practices, to prevent serious incidents and ensure the health, safety, and wellbeing of children on transport. As providers, leaders, and educators in your service, I'd like to acknowledge the work that you do to ensure children's health, safety, and wellbeing during the transport process. You each play a crucial role in ensuring that the children in your care are safe. This role includes understanding safe transport requirements, policies, procedures, and practices, and implementing best practice at your service. This is particularly important if your service is thinking about, about to start, or new to offering transport, or if you are new to a service that offers transport. This includes outside school hours care services who are considering applying for the Department's transport grant. The transport grant is currently available as part of the Department's 2022 to 2023 grants program. The transport grant funds transport solutions to improve access to before and after school care services. Access for children in small regional and rural schools is a particular priority of this grant. We'll provide a link in the chat for further information, including eligibility and how to apply. Let's start to think about transport requirements with a Menti poll and regulatory quiz. Firstly, we'd like to know more about our attendees at today's session. There should be a QR code on your screen. Using your phone please scan the QR code or go to menti.com and enter the code on your screen. There are three questions that you'll be prompted to answer in the Menti. We're interested to know what type of service you currently work in, and whether you are currently providing transport for children or will do in the future. This information is helpful for the Department to know which service types have joined us today. And how many of those services currently or in the future will provide transport for children. We'll have a quick look at the results as they come through. So what type of service do you work in? Okay. So most of you are from long daycare services. Have lots from preschool. Lots from family daycare as well. And outside school hours care. State regulated services. It's lovely to see such a wide spread of different service types here today. Great. Okay, let's move on to the second question. Does your service currently provide transport for children? Yes or no. The numbers are still climbing. Okay. Well it's almost half an hour. We've got a good cross section. That's great. Thank you. And how about in the future? So will your service provide transport in the future? And that could include the fact that you are already providing transport and you will continue, or if you aren't providing transport, but you will do. Okay. So for most of you, that's a, yes. You will be providing transport for children in the future. Okay. Good. All right. Thank you. Stay on Menti. We're going to move onto our regulatory quiz now. So these are a few questions to get us thinking about the transport regulations, but please note they don't cover all of the requirements. So the first question. True or false. I can include a one-off permission in a child's enrolment form to state that the child can be transported to and from the service. And this permission can be completed once and never reviewed. True or false? I can see most of you've answered false, and you would be right. So, the key information there, the key giveaway is, never reviewed. So for regular transportation, the authorization must be obtained once in a 12-month period. However, if your transport arrangements change and the circumstances are substantially different from before, you'll need updated authorizations. All right, next question. So regulation 102C lists everything that needs to be included in a transport risk assessment. Can you name three of these things? Okay. Route, yes. Type of vehicle. Location. Times. Mode of transport. Yes. Great. Number of adults. That's right. Restraints. Seatbelts. Great. That's right. Water hazards, yes. Good one. And the embarking and disembarking procedures. That's an important one. Great. All right. We'll move on to question three. Lots of great answers there. Thank you. So can you provide an example of when a transport risk assessment needs to be updated? Good. Yes, that's right. So a transport risk assessment needs to be updated when there's a change or changes in your transport circumstances, which mean the circumstances relevant to the risk assessment are no longer substantially the same, but for each occasion that children are transported. So yes. Some examples. Route changes. Destination change. Yes. That's right. If circumstances change. That's right. That's right. Good. Okay, so some of those circumstances can be the numbers of children being transported. Substantial changes in the route. Yes. That's right. Right. All right. Let's move on to the next question. Where can you find information regarding the requirements for seatbelts and safety restraints? Yes. Kids and Traffic. Well done. Good. Good. So you can find information about the requirements for seatbelts and safety restraints from Kids and Traffic, or by visiting the Kids and Traffic and Transport for New South Wales websites. Yes. I can see that. They're excellent. Good. We'll hear more about seatbelts and safety restraints from Kids and Traffic in the session this morning. Let's move on to question five. What needs to be considered to ensure effective supervision when transporting children? So what are some of the things that you might consider? And these could be context specific, so different depending on the circumstances of your particular service. So ratios. That's right. Children's needs. That's right. Picking up some great things in that word cloud. Fabulous. Thank you. I'm going to move on. We've got lots to get through this morning. Thank you very much for participating in that. It's important that service providers make the necessary considerations to ensure that your services transportation is compliant with the national law and regulations. On this slide are the regulations relating to transportation. The regulations apply only to services that provide or arrange transportation of children as part of the education and care service other than as part of an excursion. A common example of this is the journey with children between the service premises and home or school. It's important to know that these regulations apply across all service types. I'll talk through these four briefly. For services that provide or arrange transportation of children other than as part of an excursion, the approved provider must ensure that the service has policies and procedures for transportation. And these must be specific to transportation, not combined with policies and procedures for excursions. Regulation 102B states that a transport risk assessment must be conducted before the transport, before the service transports children. And regulation 102C specifies the matters that must be considered in this risk assessment as a minimum. ACEQA provides a template for this transportation risk assessment, Risk assessments identify and assess risks that the transportation of a child may pose and specify how those risks will be managed and minimized. Regulation 102D requires services to obtain authorization for a child to be transported. This authorization must be given by a parent or other person authorized by the parent and named in the child's enrolment record as having the authority to authorize transportation of the child. Regulation 102D also tells you the information that must be included in your transport authorizations. We encourage you to read these regulations to check your understanding of the specific requirements for transportation other than as part of an excursion. When transporting children, services must ensure they continue to comply with other key regulatory requirements. Including adequate supervision. Ensuring children are protected from harm and hazard. Following your services transport and other policies and procedures. Suitable staffing arrangements. Adhering to maximum numbers of children according to your service approval. Maintaining accurate attendance records. Preparations for responding to a first aid incident and other legal requirements and best practice standards. For example, ensuring suitable driver's licenses or seatbelts and child restraints. For further information on these requirements, including links to specific regulations there is a link on the screen, which we'll also provide in the chat. I'll now hand over to Louise from Kids and Traffic. Thank you.

- Thanks Louise. Alright good morning, everybody. My name's Louise Cosgrove and I'm team leader at Kids and Traffic. Thanks so much for joining us online today. I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land where I am today, the Wallumedegal Clan of the Dharug Nation, and also to pay respect to all of the traditional custodians of the lands on which you're placed today as well. To the people who live, work, learn, and grow in these places and to all who have come before them. So just to give you a bit of background about Kids and Traffic, we're the New South Wales, Early Childhood Road Safety Education Program. Our program's funded by Transport for New South Wales, and it's delivered in partnership with Macquarie University. We provide free road safety education professional development, resources, advice, and support to education and care services across New South Wales. But we're also part of a broader comprehensive road safety education program funded by Transport for New South Wales. That's implemented with our program partners in the New South Wales Department of Education, Catholic Schools New South Wales, and the Association of Independent Schools of New South Wales. Currently we have a suite of eight Professional Development Workshops for education and care services, which are either offered face to face or online. And in addition to our workshops for education and care services, we also work with TAFEs and the RTOs and universities to deliver workshops to pre-service educators. Kids and Traffic supports and works with a range of stakeholders around road safety, including local government police and health. And we also have a wide range of teaching and learning resources that can be used as part of your services road safety education programs. These include animations, stories, songs, books, and games. And we have loads of templates and samples on our website that are free to access. So as mentioned, we've been working with the Department on a range of resources to support the safe transportation of children, particularly as part of service provision. And that's what we're going to take a deeper dive into today. And it is great to see that so many of our participants have such a strong knowledge of regulations in this area. So what we'll begin by looking at are the key risks when transporting children. So firstly, that a child is unaccounted for. If we can just have the next part of that slide, please. So that could be that the child isn't at the collection point for after school care, or for an at home pickup, or that they're unaccounted for on arrival at the service. So definitely transitioning from one location to another, obviously carries greater risk for a child to be unaccounted for. Secondly, the risk that a child's injured or harmed. This could happen while in the vehicle when embarking or disembarking, and also during transition between the vehicle and the service premises or other location. But these times of key risk are also not mutually exclusive. And sadly we know there have been cases where a child who is unaccounted for has been injured or harmed as a result. So most importantly, what we are going to have a look at is how we can mitigate these very serious risks. We know services are required to have policies and procedures in place to ensure their practices protect children from risk of harm during transportation. So today we'll consider the important elements of clarity and communication to ensure these policies, procedures, and practices are implemented on every trip. So keeping these key risks in mind, we'll take a look at some of the broad mitigation strategies that can be implemented by services, and also the documents in the safe transport toolkit that can support you. We'll also consider some specific examples of practices from services that regularly transport children. Next slide, please. I would just like to say, I know we've got a lot of family day care carers in our participants for the session today. Throughout the presentation, I will be talking about having multiple educators or staff members check different things. Obviously in family day care it really comes down to you. So, please keep that in mind when we're talking about multiple educators, checking that to just relate it back to your individual circumstances, where you are the key educator in that situation. So we all know that when services provide or arrange for the transportation of children, it's crucial to ensure compliance with all regulatory requirements and the policies, procedures, and practices are in place to ensure children's health, safety, and wellbeing. Engaging with all relevant stakeholders, whether it be providers, leaders, educators, volunteers, families, children's schools, or other third parties is absolutely critical at the planning or review stage. Each stakeholder brings their own viewpoint and can provide a different lens to view policies and procedures through. So for this reason, it's really important to make sure the end users of the documents, the frontline educators and staff have input into their formation. Each service should have a process in place for familiarization, with policies, procedures, and risk assessments. Staff induction, and ongoing education and training should be provided for all involved. When services have established processes for induction and education on policies, procedures, and practices to minimize risk, all those involved in transporting children are more likely to understand their roles and their responsibilities. So this might involve including transportation as a regular agenda item at staff meetings, engaging Kids and Traffic Professional Development Workshops, reviewing policies, procedures, and risk assessments regularly, and including transportation in any induction for new staff. Working through these documents in a practical sense, rather than just passing on documents to be read by staff also enhances understanding. So you might consider including visuals with photos or videos of particular practices, such as the steps involved in checking and clearing the vehicle. These can really be of great benefit. Flow charts of processes to be followed when something goes wrong are also a beneficial tool to support frontline staff at times of heightened stress. So this might be the case if you have an emergency, like a crash, or a medical incident, or if a child's not present for collection. Processes for familiarization with policies, procedures, and risk assessments should be documented and added to the service calendar to ensure that crucial steps are not missed. Providers and leaders may work exceedingly hearted, ensuring policies and procedures are documented, but not have clear mechanisms for communicating these to the frontline staff who will be implementing them. So it really is crucial to take the time to work through these important documents together with all the people who will be responsible for implementing them day to day and to document that. So, you know, when it comes to assessment and reading you also have that opportunity to share that too. Okay, if we just go on to the next slide. Yes. That green one, that's it. Thank you. So I did mention having flow charts in place too, for those sort of incidents that might happen that might cause stress. So this is just a flow chart that can be found in the safe transport kit. And it's one of several, and it highlights the procedure for what we need to do if a child isn't at school collection. So it really points out who's responsible for which action. And there's also a timeframe included there as well. So those sorts of incidents can be high stress and also involve a lot of communication between the different parties and stakeholders. So it's really good to have those things made very clear. So do take a look at the documents that's in the "Policy and Procedure" document that particular one there. Next slide, please. Okay, we also need to have clear procedures and tools for documenting children's attendance. So this is really crucial to ensuring children's safety during the transport process. Services need to establish and explicitly communicate these procedures to all staff involved in the transport process. This should include how absences are recorded when notified by families, and also how any unexplained absences are investigated. Confusion can often be caused if a parent calls the service to notify them of a child's absence but the child's name isn't removed from the transport attendance register for that day. This situation is also quite common in outside of school hours care, but it's usually the case that the parent has notified the school of the child's absence, but not the service. So the result is understandably and unaccounted for child at after school care pick up. So this can really stretch out the duration of the whole transport process. Good communication between the school and the service around attendance can help to alleviate this problem, or at least minimize the impacts. So it's important that attendance registers are kept up-to-date and checked at beginning and end of each transport run. Rules for documenting attendance should be used at multiple times during the transport process, certainly at the point of collection or departure, when embarking and disembarking the vehicle, and when entering the service premises or other location. So some services also include a photo of each child along with their name to enhance the accountability of educators who are documenting attendance. This is a particularly good strategy when transporting larger groups of children, and particularly for ASH where children are all wearing the same school uniform and can quite easily be mistaken for another child. All right, so further using documentation tools and registers, regular headcounts are vital to ensuring all children are accounted for during the transport process. Head counts should be conducted and checked against the attendance register at multiple points during the transport process, but also by multiple staff. One educator might mark the attendance register while another does the head count, and then the two are checked against each other. This requires both educators to be actively engaged in attendance, checking processes. A head count check highlights very quickly if a child's unaccounted for and further investigation can occur immediately. Again, the processes here must be clearly defined as should the roles and responsibilities of each staff member involved. So where there's lack of clarity around who's responsible for head counts and role marking staff can become complacent and assume that someone else has completed the task. So clarity of roles and responsibilities is key. In the image on the slide there, you can see that the children at this out of school hours care service are aligned up there. They're having their names marked off once they're inside the service. The headcount check in this case was conducted as the children were exiting the vehicle, and again, as they entered the service gate. So you can see there's a well defined space where the attendance register's being completed as well. So it's important that the attendance register and headcount checks are done before children enter rooms or other shared play spaces. Okay, so transitioning from the collection location or premises to the vehicle and vice versa often requires engagement and communication with other stakeholders such as family, schools, or third party providers of activities. Establishing suitable meeting points to allow for collection and supervision is important, especially at school where there are often 100s of children coming and going at the beginning and end of the day. Equally important though, is establishing a procedure for where and how the service vehicle is parked or pick up and drop off. So ideally the vehicle will be parked close by to the gathering point and on the same side of the road as the school service or other venue. In the example in the slide, the gathering point for the children at this school was well defined. It was shaded and comfortable. And in this case, the children met the educator at the gathering point and they then routinely waited for some of the other foot and vehicle traffic to move on before walking out to the service vehicle. Having open channels of communication with other staff involved in the transport process at these busy times can also help to mitigate risk. So for example, using walkie talkies or mobile phone communication between the educator at the collection point, staff at the vehicle and at the service premises can assist with minimizing risk and providing safer transitions. So the service featured in this slide introduced walkie talkies for communication after they reviewed their transport procedures. And this strategy has really helped to make transitions not only safer, but also smoother. And those transitions, we want them to be times of minimal stress for the children involved as well. So the smoother the better. Alright. So moving on to authorizations. When transporting children as part of service provision, all authorizations must be current and in place. So tasking this to a specific staff member and requiring the process to be undertaken before transportation is vital. Regularly crosschecking the records held at the service and in the vehicle is also crucial to ensure that child family contacts and emergency contact details are current. This is particularly important if someone needs to be contacted where a child is unaccounted for. Similarly, the contact details of other stakeholders, such as schools should also be accessible. If a child is unaccounted for, when being collected from home or school, contact needs to be made with the school, family or emergency contact as soon as possible. This will also be the case if a child is being transported to their home and a responsible adult's not there to collect them from the vehicle. So these sorts of situations can not only cause inconvenience, but also be upsetting for educators and the other children involved in the transport run. Having up-to-date current contact information for all stakeholders in the vehicle helps to ensure appropriate action can be taken efficiently and effectively. And often when we do need to make those contacts, it's good if we can pass that responsibility back to someone at the service or at the scheme, if we're the person who's frontline managing the inconvenience and the stress that it's causing educators and children. Okay. So this one we know is really crucial. And unfortunately, sadly we know there have been instances where children have been left on service transport, and the consequences have been tragic. So clear procedures that outline the roles and responsibilities of individual educators at these times of heightened risk are crucial to children, safety and wellbeing. So again, we come back to those policies and procedures, but also the practices, the actions that we put into place. So the policies and procedures should outline clearly the specific checks that must be completed when, and by whom, and how these checks must be recorded. So after every transport run, a thorough check must be undertaken to ensure no child remains in or near the vehicle. The check should include a visual inspection of all areas of the vehicle. So all of the seats, including the driver's seat, under the seats, storage areas under and around the vehicle. The names of the children who attended the transport run can also be called out. And it's a good idea to make sure the vehicle engine's turned off so that there are no distractions that might interfere with hearing a child as well. A second educator should then conduct an additional vehicle check following the same procedure. And then both educators completing the vehicle inspections should also record written verification of the vehicle checks on the transport attendance record. As multiple staff members are involved in checking and clearing the vehicle. There again is room for complacency if assumptions are made that someone else has completed this task. So the clarity of roles and responsibilities is absolutely paramount when it comes to checking and clearing the vehicle. For family day educators, you'll be doing this independently, but obviously you'll be following those same methods of visual checking as well as listening out for children. And because you are usually dealing with lesser numbers of children, those attendance checks and head counts will really help you out in that space too. Okay, so talking about now our child restraints, booster seats, and seatbelt requirements. So to protect children from harm, when they're in transit, they should be appropriately restrained. So specifically transporting children in vehicles requires services to comply with child restraint legislation. So we have our New South Wales Road Rules. Child restraint rules vary depending on the type of vehicle being used. If the driver or any passenger is not restrained in accordance with the law, the driver can be penalized with demerit points and fines. So we do know that the use of dedicated child restraint systems prevents death and serious injury in a crash. Road safety authorities, including Kids and Traffic recommend the use of child restraints and booster seats for as long as the child still fits into the restraint. It's really important to match the size of the child to the restraint type that's going to offer them the best protection. So where vehicles can be fitted with child restraints and booster seats suitable for the ages of the children will be using them, risk of harm will be minimized. When transporting children in vehicles. It's really important to remember, we can't control what happens outside of the vehicle we can only control what happens inside the vehicle. So it's important we take steps to make sure children are restrained in the safest way possible. In the image on the slide there, you can see all the children being transported are restrained in forward facing child car seats. These have been professionally fitted into the vehicle by an authorized restraint fitter as well. And also in this case, educators were trained in how to check the restraints and how to adjust them to fit individual children. And each child used the same seat on the way there and on the way back to, so the seatbelts were then adjusted to suit that particular individual child. So it's really important to note that when transporting children in vehicles that say 12 or less people, it is the driver's responsibility to ensure they, and all their passengers are restrained according to the legislation. If services of transporting children in vehicles that are built to carry more than 12 people, this includes the driver, they should always aim to achieve the best safety outcomes for children by following child restraint recommendations. So we know this is an area that tends to cause quite a bit of confusion. So we do suggest services referred to the "Transporting Children's Safely Guidance" document in the safe transport toolkit. And of course you can also contact us at Kids and Traffic for advice on your specific circumstances. We can certainly help you work through the risk management around the use of age appropriate child restraints, booster seats, and seatbelts. Okay, so the subject of ratios came up when we were doing the Menti before. It was very much acknowledged the importance of supervision and obviously ratios will contribute to good supervision as well. So one of the most effective ways to minimize risk is to increase supervision, particularly when embarking and disembarking and moving children to and from the vehicle. So transition to and from the vehicle might also involve children walking through car parks on footpaths or crossing roads. So minimizing harm to children as pedestrians must also be considered as part of the broader transportation process. We'll always have pedestrian journeys as part of our transport. Parking the vehicle close to the premises, location, or school and on the same side of the road, again is a good risk mitigation strategy, but supervision is the best risk minimization strategy. Not only do increased adult child ratios allow for greater supervision, they also allow educators to have better quality interactions and conversations with children, which can really add value to the transportation process. Increased adult child ratios also promote greater supervision in the vehicle, including the educator's capacity for checking the children remain seated in the appropriate restraints throughout the journey. All right, so we come back to the importance of clear communication about the duties and responsibilities of each staff member involved in the transport process. And we know that this is really paramount to minimizing the risk of harm. The communication must be ongoing. It needs to happen before, during, and after the transport process. Transporting children as part of service provision may be viewed as business as usual for services who do this regularly. And as a result, unfortunately, processes and practices might not be revisited and reviewed as often as they should be. So it's really important that providers, leaders, educators, other staff, and any volunteers involved in transport regularly communicate about roles, responsibilities, and record keeping. And if there are any issues that everybody at any step feels comfortable to raise those issues, and there's a process in place for them to raise any issues. The image in the slide shows five educators from the off service there, having their daily pre transport run before after school care pick up. This meeting's really a good time to clarify attendance registers and to ensure that each educator understands their responsibilities. To check that each vehicle contains all the equipment and information required for the five bus runs that are just about to occur. Okay, so we know that under the education and care services national regulations, risk assessments must be carried out to identify and assess risk to children's safety, health, and wellbeing associated with transportation. Decisions need to be made about how best to manage these risks and plans put in place to ensure control measures are implemented. There are many factors that must be considered prior to transportation to ensure regulatory requirements are met. The most important consideration though, is to establish the severity of the potential consequence in order to determine risk mitigation strategies. So although the chances of the event occurring maybe deemed as low, consequences of transport related risks are often catastrophic. Providers, leaders, educators, and all other staff involved in transportation should regularly meet to review risk assessments. And all those involved should also be dynamically assessing risk whenever they are transporting children. As we know, risk may change often depending on external factors like changes in weather or road conditions, and also along with children's individual needs and behaviour. And that can change on a day-to-day, minute by minute basis. So that communication with families about children's individual needs their dispositions and moods is crucial as these can also change on a daily basis. So the "Transport Safety Risk Assessment "and Management Guide" in the safe transport toolkit provides risk assessment templates and best practice examples. And you can see an example of that up on the screen there. In the examples, each risk mitigation strategy recorded has a staff member or members allocated to its implementation. So that level of clarity is crucially important to ensure strategies are actually carried out. So again, it's translating that policy and procedure into practice and action, and really ensuring that roles and responsibilities are very clear. All right, transportation also gives us a wonderful opportunity to link back to ongoing road safety education. So engaging children and families in the services ongoing road safety education program is an effective way to keep transport safety high on everyone's agenda. Road safety education should be cross curriculum play based, child centred, and localized so that it's meaningful and relevant to children and families. For young children, obviously it's the adults in their lives who are responsible for their safety, but this doesn't mean though that we can't engage children in learning about all the things we do together to keep safe, like holding an adult's hand and keeping close, or being safely buckled up in a car seat or a booster seat. For older children, maybe our outside of school hours care children, road safety education will include their responsibility to ensure all of the safety practices that the service has in place are followed under the supervision of an adult. Keeping children safe is a unifying goal that educators and families will work on together. So instead of noting and highlighting families’ unsafe practices, we really try to focus on giving attention to all the safe behaviours that we observe too. So, as I mentioned before, there are loads of programming ideas and resources included in our Kids and Traffic Professional Development Workshops on our website. So please come along to a workshop to find out more. Transport for New South Wales fund our program to provide these to you free of charge. So, come along and make the most of this great service. Okay, so there's the documents in our safe transport toolkit. So it's the suite of documents that can be found on both the Kids and Traffic website, and also on the Department of Education's website in their Early Childhood Education Resource Library. Each of the documents does have a specific focus. So I'll just go through these briefly now. So the blue document, you can see they're on the left. "Transporting Children Safely" is a guide to help providers, leaders, and educators understand the legal requirements, not only of the Education and Care Services National Law Act and Regulations, but also of the New South Wales Road Rules and Road Transport Act along with best practice road safety guidelines when traveling with children. The pink document, "Transport Authorization Template and Samples" assist services to improve their understanding of the information required in transport authorizations. Then the purple document "Safe Travel and Transport" assist services to maximize the benefits of transportation, to children, families, the service, and community, and in particular to work efficiently and effectively with other stakeholders involved in the transport process, and to use transportation to support a whole of service road safety focus. The green documents "SAMPLE Safe Transport Policies and Procedures" and a checklist that services can use as best practice to model their own documents on. And then the last one, the orange document is a guide for "Transport Safety Risk Assessment and Management". So this document has the sample risk assessments that can, again, be used as a model for services to work from when documenting their own risk assessments. We're also really delighted to have added three safe transport practice example videos to our resource collection. And again, these can be found on both the Kids and Traffic and the Department of Education websites. The videos focus on centre based early education care excursions, family day care excursions, and regular transportation and out of school hours care daily transportation. And I would like to give a big shout out to the services who allowed us to document their processes and procedures in these videos. So Explore & Develop Macquarie Park, Bankstown Family Day Care, and Tilly’s Play & Development Centre in Rutherford. All right, there's our Kids and Traffic details. Please, if you do require support around policy, procedure, risk assessment, any advice on the requirements for child restraints, et cetera, or if you would like support for your broader road safety education program, please be in touch with us. We are very flexible in the way that we deliver professional development. We can do it after hours. We can do it in hours. We can do it online. We can do it face to face. So take a look at our website for more information about that, or just reach out and contact us directly. So, yes, thanks very much. I know we haven't necessarily been able to get to a lot of questions and answers at this point in a live manner, except for what's been in the Q&A there, but as the questions are often quite specific, yes, it's often good just to be in touch directly.

- Thank you very much, Louise. That was a fabulous presentation. Thank you. I hope you all found that as engaging and informative as I did. To finish off, I'd just like to highlight some of our resources that are available. So these resources are there to support you all with understanding and implementing the transport regulatory requirements. The Department has guidance on our website, which unpacks the transportation regulations and additional regulatory requirements and considerations. ACEQA also has a couple of information sheets on the safe transportation of children. And as Louise mentioned, the Department partnered with Kids and Traffic to develop resources to guide and assist New South Wales services in implementing best practice in the safe transportation of children. We'll share links to these in the chat. Please bookmark these pages and revisit them as needed. And finally, the Department's information and inquiries team are always available to support you with questions related to your service operation. So thank you very much for attending this road show session. I'd like to end by acknowledging again, the vital work that you all do on a daily basis to ensure children's health, safety, and wellbeing during the transport process. Thank you very.

- Thank you.

- [Kate] Welcome to everybody who's joining us today for the Transition to School: The Digital Statement, what it is and how you can make it work for your service and families. We're just waiting for people to join us. We've got quite a few people joining us today, so we'll give it a few minutes and then we'll get started. Good morning everyone. I can see we've still got a few people joining us, so we'll just give it a minute or so more and then we'll get started. Okay, good morning everyone. I can see the numbers are still going up, but it is 10:02 and we've got a lot to get through today. so we'll get started. Welcome to today's session, which is Transition to School: The Digital Statement, what is it and how can you make it work for your service and families. Very pleased to have everyone here today. I'm going to begin with an acknowledgement of country. We've got a short video to play for you which has been prepared by some children from Toukley, a preschool in Toukley. which I'm just about to play for you. Okay, wonderful. And with that I'd just like to go into a bit of housekeeping. As you'll have noticed, the microphone, video, and chat functions will be disabled during the presentation. You can ask us questions in the Q&A section, which is at the bottom of your screen. We will be using Menti during this session, so if you can have a device handy, we'll get you to scan a QR code or go to a website address and enter a code. And this session is being recorded and will be made available. I'm now going to hand over to Linda Augusto who manages our transition to school program. Thanks Linda.

- Thanks Kate. Hi everyone. I'm Linda and I'm a Wajarri woman. So before we get started, I to wanna acknowledge the lands that we're all on and today I come from come to you from Duray country, which is very, very close to the Georges River where our aboriginal people have fished and used the river to resource us and sustain life, before, well and still do today. I was going say before us, but still do today. I also would just like to acknowledge the ancestors that are here with us and with you guys and hope that that gives us a successful transition to school statement session today, while they're sitting with us. I'm an early childhood teacher. I've worked in the profession since I was 17 and yes, that means a very long time. Some of my colleagues will be on this call today. So I just want to say hi to those of you who I have worked with, but I also want to acknowledge all of you as early childhood education and care professionals and the work that you do. I'm going to try and say this without getting emotional because those of you who know me, know I'm a crier. But I do want to say that the work that you do every day and the work of early childhood professionals is incredibly valuable and it's such heart work as in, from our heart as well as being very hard work. But what I did want to say is I know for myself, I still carry every single one of those little children I've worked with in my heart with me today and think of them often. And what a difference they, that you are making to their life. And I know that they make to yours. I'm also acknowledging that it's tough right now and that we know that here in the department and my colleagues here in the department are very supportive of the work that happens and very, hold a lot of admiration for all of you, and the work that you're doing, when you show up every day. And there is a deep respect from me and for the work of the profession, in the work that we do here at the department. I just really want to acknowledge that and say thank you from me and my colleagues. Not just on the call today, but in the wider department for the amazing things that you do. Okay, let's get started. So in this session we are going to provide an overview of the transition to school statement and share what's new. We're going to go through some common facts from questions that arise regularly around the statement. We're going to go through a guide and I'll take you through a guide to completing the statement. We're going to share some stories from an early childhood education and care service, who's been part of a pilot that has happened here for transition to school digital statement from the very beginning. We're also going to hear from our digital team who are going to do a demonstration for us. And at the end, if time permits, we'll have a live question and answer session as well. Because we've no doubt there'll be some questions that arise. I also just want to acknowledge that, I was going to say something , there and I've forgotten, oh if, if when we start going through, if there's questions that arise for you or things that you want us to spend a little bit more time on or you feel like we haven't actually answered something that you really need to know, just pop it in the chat and my colleagues are there waiting for those and will let me know. Okay, so let's move to the next slide. The transition to school statement is an opportunity for early childhood professionals to share their knowledge of the, of a child's learning, and their development, and a picture of who they are. And so this is shared and, and collated with families and is sent off to schools. It also is designed to give the child a voice in their transition experience and to help link the EYLF to the early stage one syllables, syllabus. So for teachers that is important as well. That's the feedback that we've received from them. To get started, we're going to do a Menti. So we'll go to the next slide and I'll get you all to get your phones ready. So if you can scan the QR code, we're conducting a poll to find out what organisation you're joining us from today. And this will be shown on the screen, so you can all get a bit of a sense of who's here and who our colleagues are that are with us. So I'll give you some time to scan this or if you're on a computer you can go to menti.com and enter the code, which has just been put in the chat. We've got lots of early childhood professionals, which is amazing. I can see we have some school counterparts, government department people here today, which means my colleagues are watching me. peak bodies and not-for-profit corporate. This is fantastic. I can still see it going up, so we'll give it a few more minutes, but it's really helpful for me to know who's joining us, so that I can make sure I answer questions, that suit the needs of the audience. I'm also just saying we had a thousand people register for today, so I'm slightly terrified. I think this is the biggest group I've ever had to present to, but I'll do my best. All right, so it looks like, which we did expect, that most of our participants are from early childhood services today. So welcome, really pleased to have you and to all of our other counterparts that are here as well. All right, let's move on to the next slide. So the department's role in transition to school is that we want to ensure that every child is supported to have a positive transition. And we want to be able to support early childhood education, and care services, and schools, to get the best information possible that is needed. So our main purpose is to ensure that services are ready to assist children and support them in their transition, and that schools are ready for children. But in that process, we're engaging early childhood educators, teachers, primary school teachers, parents, carers, and families to share that information together, and work together for the benefit of the child's transition. Research tells us that children who make a smooth transition maintain higher levels of social competence and academic achievement throughout their lives. Initial success in transition, transitioning to a new school environment can lead to students that develop long term, positive attitudes towards learning and it positively influences their wellbeing later in life. So again, thank you for your contribution to that. Okay, next slide. So by digitising the transition to school statement, it makes the process a smoother process and early childhood education and care professionals complete the transition to school statement. This happens online, the statement is then confirmed at the service level, read by families, and sent through so that schools can access this, their primary school that the child is transitioning to. It aligns to the early years learning framework and captures a child's developmental progress. The benefits that we know are for children and communities, and this is for continuity of learning. That it outlines developmental outcomes for children, that it's a work in partnership with families and communities, and that there's transparency of information sharing because we know how important it is that families, services, and schools work together to share that information. There's benefits for early childhood teachers and educators in that it lifts the professional identity of early childhood education and care professionals. We know what great work happens now and how important it is for us to share that work. There is one central location to create, view, and send statements, it's secure storage and access. It also gives access to previously created statements. It's time saving and we hope that it will reduce administration. The benefits for school teachers is that it's a more efficient and reliable way to receive statements, that it's an increase of information sharing and improves communication between early childhood education, and care services, and schools. And again, that it's time saving and reduces admin burden. Next slide. So this has been the journey for us so far. Just to let you know that in 2020 we started with a pilot, where there were 31 early childhood education and care services involved and 504 digital statements were completed. This then was increased in 2021, where we had 347 services participate and 5,000 digital statements completed. And this year we're rolling out the transition to school digital statement to all early childhood education and care services to use. And at last count, maybe someone's going to need to text me that information, but I'm pretty sure we were sitting around 7,000 statements, which is looking fantastic, so thank you. What we do know is that there are 100,000 children who are anticipated to transition to school every year. And so we hope in the next few years or next year, to reach that number of statements going across to schools. We've received some extensive feedback and had some consultation with some really amazing services that have given us some really great advice and have guided the statement, as well as our department colleagues. I do want to acknowledge the pilot services that have worked with the department for the last two years to refine the transition to school statement in the current form that it is today and to also thank those people, especially if they're on the call today for persisting with some of the challenges that we've had and some of the kinks that we needed to get sorted before we released the statement out to everybody. Next slide. We've got another Menti for you and what we are keen to find out is who has used the transition to school statement, which will help me in the next section of this presentation. So again, scanning the QR code or putting in the, the code. Okay, so we've got more people who haven't, than have, so this is really good for me to know when I'm going through the next part. And we hope that after today you will. And, either, or, there's no right or wrong answer, it's just useful for us to know. Okay, thank you. So I'm going to go through some common facts now. We have, as I mentioned to you, we've had lots of conversations with our pilot services but also have met with some peak organisations and with some transition to school networking groups. So we know the kind of questions and comments that come through and we are going to address some of those early on now, and I'm going to talk to you about some of the answers for that so that they don't get in the way of us being able to have the next part of the conversation. So we thought it was a good time to address some of these common questions that arise. So who can access the transition to school statement? Currently, community-based preschools, department of education preschools, long daycare services, and government schools can access the transition to school statement. We very much value the contribution that family day care, playgroups, and non-government schools, allied health, distance early childhood education, and care services contribute to the education of young children. We know that you can't currently access the statement in the form that it is in and it's not because we don't value the contribution that you make towards that child's education journey. I'm going to explain to you why, currently, you can't access the statement and what we are doing to try and find a solution for that. So as most services will know, and I'm going to try and not spend too long explaining this, but each provider of early childhood education and care, has a SE number or a service number. And so that's the license provider that has that number, which often from a service perspective when we fill documents in, that's the one that we have to grab and I can never remember or I left mine, when I worked in preschool, but it's there somewhere. So that service number is what your email is linked to for the service. So in a service based environment, it means that the service registers for a transition to school statement process and the director signs up the teachers and educators in order to be able to complete the transition to school statement. For family daycare for example, the family daycare provider has the SE number, so they also get the email. But it means that there's multiple carers that are working with that provider in the households that are working to educate young children. So what it would mean is that we can only, because there's only that one SE number, it means that each family daycarer would need to or would be classed like a service in that each educator would be able to see the transition to school statements for all children, in all the different households for family daycare. And we would be worried about privacy around that. So just to let you know, we are working with providers in family daycare with some providers who are helping us find solutions to that, and we do actually have some ideas, and we're working with our digital colleagues to try and get that to happen. So for, we're very close to finding the solution for family daycare. In relation to playgroup or even for distance early childhood education and care services. We're still on the journey of finding a solution for that and we're, we're hoping that through the process of trying to solve this for family daycare services, we'll also find the solution for these areas. But also we've had some groups reach out to us and are working with those networking groups where there's representatives from people across the range of those service types and those supports for children that are trying to help us to resolve that. So in the future it's coming, we just need to find a way to make it happen and we'll get there. So please don't feel worried. We definitely are on the case. In relation to government schools being able to access the transition to school statement and non-government schools not being able to, I'm going to address that question as we go. So let me get to that one. The next question, who will use and complete the transition, the completed transition to school statement. So we know that school, teaching, school staff and teaching staff use the transition to school statement to inform classes and to get to know the children that are coming into their space. We're very aware there is some worry held by early childhood education and care teachers, that school teachers are not reading the transition to school statement. Here is what I would say to that. We know that early childhood education and care is unique and incredibly valuable and we bring amazing perspectives about children who are heading off to school. By completing the statement, we are sharing that valuable knowledge that we hold for each child with a school. Here in the department, it's our job to work with our school counterparts to keep promoting the statement and to ensure that schools and teachers are engaging with it. What I can tell you, is we've already begun that work and there is not a teacher that I've spoken to or a corporate representatives from schools, who is not highly impressed by the statement, what it can do, and has not noted how valuable that is for them in their work, over in schools. So we are just continuing to work with schools to ensure that the word is getting out. But the other thing is that through your partnerships that you have with local schools, it's a really good way to promote the use of the transition to school statement and that the statement will be coming. But also as part of the system, the transition to school statement when it is completed and sent through to a school, actually pings the school to let them know that the statement's sitting there waiting to be read. And so if that isn't necessarily picked up initially, a reminder email will be sent to school. So once there are more statements completed, once this process happens more and more, the transition to school statement and the process will become more widely known. So what I, I guess I'm saying to you is don't give up, let's keep going, because this is really, in the early stages and the more that people begin to learn about the statement and know about it and the more engagement that school has, the more value is held with what is coming across. I think that we'll find that those numbers will start to increase. The next one is how long does it take to complete a transition to school statement? So obviously this varies. The statement is designed to use information collected in your practice through observations, through family conversations, through all about me sheets, through family input, through enrolment forms. So we don't want this or expect this to be different to the work that you are doing. It is obviously going to be unique to the child and the family service context, in particular if you have children who have an additional need, who you will need to spend a longer time supporting that family through making decisions about transition. So it's going to look different and it's designed to do that. But generally the statement is designed to use the information that you do in your daily work to bring it into one space so that it can be shared easily. Our most recent feedback in particular from the pilot services is that this version of the statement is the most aligned to practice that is happening in early childhood education and care on a daily basis. So we have intentionally worked on that to ensure that you get something that is useful and usable and we continue to look forward to the feedback that you are giving us about this. Because this is not a tool for the department, this is not a, not a tool for anybody else other than you as early childhood professionals to complete and to share information with schools. Also, I do want to let you know, Martin's going to go through this later when he talks through the, the technicalities of what, what the transition to school statement looks like, is that school teachers actually get a different dashboard to what early childhood education and care teachers do and can engage with certain elements of the statement. So it might be that they look at the developmental area first or at the suggestions for future planning and then they can go back at other times and pull out other pieces of information from the statement. So it's designed from, for schools to be versatile in that way, that all of that information can be filtered through to get what's needed immediately. All right, next slide. Sorry, I talk too much too, so please, my colleagues who are listening tell me to be quiet. It's when I get excited. Okay, so next slide is the next question is, how is the transition to school statement shared with interstate and non-government schools? So currently it's completed digitally, so it completed the same way. And what we recommend is that you save a PDF and it can be emailed through to a non-government school or to an interstate school or it can be printed off and shared with the family and they can hand it to a school. So there are a couple of options there. In the future we are again working with our non-government school counterparts to find a solution to, to this being done in a more streamlined way. But for now we would recommend that it's done through email or PDF sharing. And will the transition to school statement replace transition practices that are already happening in early childhood education and care services? The answer is absolutely not. The digital statement is one part of and one tool to assist the transition practices. It's an information sharing and as I've talked about before, through your documentation processes, there is already a developmental summary that would exist somewhere in the practices that you have. And so it is meant and designed so that that information can be put straight into the transition to school statement, before it's sent off to schools. Your other transition practices such as your partnerships with schools, visits, the learning experiences your planning and your educational program information sessions that you're having in the community and with families, all of those things will happen at your local level in a way that suits you. But the statement is one part of the process of information sharing across the schools to make sure that we're sharing that really amazing work that we do here in early childhood education and care. Okay, next part, let's dig down into the nitty gritty. So I'm going to take you through a guide to completing the transition to school statement. Again, this guide was developed to be a practical tool. If you can move to the next slide guys and we'll bring up a QR code for people who haven't seen this. So this is something that I used in the work that I've done before to either support early childhood professionals in creating developmental summaries and, and pulling together information about a child. I actually used this myself when I was teaching in a preschool and completing developmental summaries for children before they headed off to school. And so really it is created to be the most practical and useful tool for you. It's also to help educational leaders and directors to work with teams. We know that people who are filling out the transition to school statement may have 50 years experience. They also may be straight out of uni and have one year experience and are feeling a bit nervous because it might be their first time. So this is meant to support either end of the scale with some information that might be useful for you. So you can use the QR code to access it here. There's also, it's also available on our web pages and in the Q&A section, my colleagues are going to put the links in for that. Again, we are really mindful that the work that you're are doing out there is for you, and for families, and for children. And this tool needs to work for you. So if you have any feedback at all in the, at the, in our last slide, we're going to give you ways to contact us. But we really want to know, we want you to come back and say to us, well this was not helpful at all or this has been really helpful for us. Can you add in X, Y, and Z? So these tools, the statement itself, is for the profession, it's not for us, it's for you guys to work to support children and families and to support schools in that sharing of information. So please let us know what needs to happen to improve it. All right, so let's talk about the next slide. So I'm actually, you can see the images on the right, on the right hand side is the guide, and it takes us through the questions to the transition that, that are in the transition to school statement. So the first section of the statement really is about family, and cultural context, and languages spoken. This information is comes from the normal processes and interactions that you have with families. So whether it's through discussions, enrolment forms, whether you do a specific all about me sheet, or a you know, who am I sheet with children, whether it's conversations that you have and you've taken notes, or whether it's observations that you've made, your family connections and those important relationships that you have, are what is going to guide this part of the transition to school statement. Some services have chosen to actually create a sheet and let families know separately that they're sharing this information in the transition to school statement, I would say as part of your normal processes, that it would be something that you, you will talk about families, you will talk about with families, so that they know that this information will be shared. But really there's nothing in there that is top secret. It's more about things, you know, things that are general about that child and important to know in the family context. Also in that is whether or not the child identifies as Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander, which is incredibly important and from feedback for us, part of the updates that have happened this year is to make sure that we note down what lands and community the child is connected to. Because that's incredibly important for our community and our kids. Okay, next slide. So in this part is who the child connects, who, who the child is, how they're connected to family, community, culture, and place. So this is where you would put in a brief summary about that child. So I've just read you here a little example is that you might say something like, Linda lives at home with her brother Charlie and her mom. She spends every second weekend with her dad and has strong connections with her extended family, including her great grandparents on both sides. Or it might say something like her extended family lives overseas. They're still connected to her through weekly FaceTime conversations and contributing to her early years education through sharing stories on Story Park. So little bits and pieces like that. This is where the quirky information about who that child is and how they fit in their family context and community is really important. And I would also say that in particular for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, it might say something there like, is deeply connected to her extended family and that her grandmother is regularly involved in decision making with the parents, along with the parents, as part of that child's educational journey, might be an example. This also, this section would share information about where the child might need additional supports. And that has also been updated this year because we're very aware that there's lots of different things impacting on children, particularly after COVID. So this isn't just relating to a diagnosed disability. It could have something to do with supports needed for self-regulation. If a child is experiencing anxiety, if they need support with separation, or that there might be some trauma background information there that is important to share for the to, to the school so that they're aware of what supports might be needed. Okay, next slide. So this part is to ensure that we're able to capture and share the child's voice, and feelings, and expectations about school. This is not a section where you would interview the child, where you'd pull them into the staffroom while you're completing the statement and say things like, tell me how you feel about going to school. This is through your natural normal organic conversations that you're having with children, in groups of children, whether that's at group time, whether that's through observations, whether it's through role plays that are happening in the service, whether it's through conversations with families. This has also been updated to reflect that we're very aware that some children won't be able to share with you how they're feeling, whether it's about their own communication needs and abilities, but there's also going to be some children who have an additional need and may require support with communication. And so this is where it's really important that that collaborative process between the family, child, educators, and other professionals supporting that child comes in and that you're able to, to include that information from a collection of information that's come through to you that can be shared with the school from all those valuable people. Next slide. So this is the area where we begin to include the child's learning and development. It has been designed as a holistic view of the child and is based on the early years learning framework. So each section, where you're putting in your developmental information and the learning information aligns with each early years learning framework and the sub-outcomes within that framework. In this section you'll see that there is an opportunity for you to put a little bit of a, a scale against each one of those sub-outcomes. And that might be where you choose to stop, at that information. You don't necessarily have to add information into the summary section. However, in order for us to share that valuable information that you are collecting throughout the year with your observations and documentation, we would recommend that you put a brief summary in there of each child, sorry, of each learning outcome, that is there. So you, you might comment on the child's development, their preferences, their learning styles, their abilities, and what intentional teaching strategies, and future planning opportunities that you are thinking for that child. So what is it that you do to support that child currently? What are some teaching strategies that you know work and what are some things that school might wanna think about to support that child in the future? Where are they headed? Because imagine us holding that information if when a child enrols into our service, we are given a little bit of a handover of that information of the best way that we can support the child. And we know that in early childhood, you guys are the ones who hold that amazing knowledge. So this is obviously again where you would pull from the documentation that you do. Some services do a mid-year summary and add to it or update it as the year progresses. So that might be where you grab this from as well. In there are also support, oh no, that's okay, I'll talk about that in the next slide. It's your choice, as I said, how much or how little you include in this section. You might put a few dot points or you might put a significant summary, that's up to you and that's up to the time that you have. But remember it's the child who benefits from the teacher knowing this information, knowing who they are and knowing what they bring into the classroom and to their new school environment. Next slide. So this section was designed as a support and I'm going to say I know this is not perfect. I know there's going to be a million people out there who say, why have they used those wordings or why have they said that or why didn't they just use the EYLF developmental areas? And we did, we actually used all of that to bring it into one document, so that you had one place where you could go to this document, make notes all over it, add your thoughts in it, add more information. So it's not meant to be an exhaustive or a complete list, but it is meant to be somewhere for you guys to start, where you can pull some of those dot points in to pad out your summary. And it just makes it a little bit more, I guess, handy for you to have a document here to, to support you to build this information. So it lists the developmental analysis descriptors to interpret and complete the questions on each outcome. And we've actually separated that out in outcomes for you in that support document. But one thing to keep in mind, it was really tricky, let me tell you, is that some of those indicators obviously crossover into more than one outcome. So you, we've tried what we can to, to capture that, but of course you guys will need to work on that and make it your own. It's linked to also to the general capabilities. So each outcome there, we've linked to the general capabilities from the Australian curriculum, that relates to each outcome area. So for this specific outcome, for learning outcome one, it relates to personal and social capabilities. And so we've made sure we've included that in there. So it, it helps with just thinking about what schools might be looking for within this outcome. An example I've given you of one of these developmental indicators and I, one of the reasons that we have included this to support the work that you are doing is, it can sometimes be really tricky for us to share information about a child where they might not quite be reaching their potential for that learning outcome. And so some of the wording that we've included there to support that is instead of saying something like, gives up and won't complete something that's challenging, one of the indicators there or the language that we've used around that is that, it might be that Sheree benefits from support from a trusted adult to persist with completing a task. It sounds so much friendlier, it sounds so much nicer. It's from a, the perspective of a family reading that as opposed to reading something written in a deficit is really important for us to, for parents to feel great about their child when they're moving off. And also a really good way for them to connect to things that the child is working on, things that a child is improving and also, where they might be able to fit in to do that. So that's also one of the reasons that we've shared this information and document with you is to support you with some of that wording where things can be a little bit tricky as well. So we hope that this in particularly is really helpful for you in your work. Again, as I've mentioned, please let us know if there's any ways that you think this can be improved. It is really meant to be a practical tool that you can pick up and use straight away and that educational leaders and directors and other support staff in early childhood education and care services can grab, in your daily work. We want to make life easy, not more difficult for you. I am now done and thankfully going to take a breath and we are going to share a little snippet of a video for Midson, from Midson Road Early Childhood Education and Care service, who have worked on the pilot with us and shared some of their journey from being part of the pilot and using the transition to school statement in their work. And thank you so much for listening.

- Hi, I'm Linda from the Department of Education and I'm here with Mel from Midson Road Childcare Center to talk about transition to school. Mel, do you want to talk to us a little bit about your role?

- Absolutely. I'm the educational leader and the director of Midson Road Childcare Center. I've been the director for the last 25 years, so since the center opened. So it's been a long time that we've been working with transition to school and each year we get quite excited at new prospects and new innovations.

- So tell us a little bit about your experience with transition to school statement.

- Absolutely, so we've always prepared some form of documentation to share our children's knowledge, and experience, and strengths, and areas that they might need some help with, with our local schools. We've worked hard to build up those relationships, so it's been lots of connections, lots of visits, inviting the schools in, and we just think it's really important that the schools have something to introduce each of our children as the individuals that they are. We find the transition to school document is really helpful because it's does give you that little bit of structure and you know, then sharing similar information that the other schools are sharing. So rather than getting off track or sharing information that might not be helpful, we find it's quite concise. It's similar to the information that we're already sharing with our families. So it's not a trouble for us to put together, it's not an extra workload. And it just flows into the transition to school statement quite easily.

- So you've been part of a trial with department of ed for how many years?

- I think the last two or three years. We're always excited to be a part of anything that's going to lead to growth or might streamline the practices or the processes. But also make it easier for the schools to get that information from us. So knowing that they're going to receive it digitally rather than us have to print it out, or rely on the families, or send the emails, we just find that we are looking forward to the opportunity to just press go and know that it's just going to get uploaded.

- So talk to us a bit more about the process of putting together the transition to school statement. What, what happens here in the service?

- Absolutely. It's a journey for us. So it doesn't just get picked up at the end, where we all panic and go, oh my goodness, we've got to prepare a document. We start back in term one, we already start the discussions around doing the research and the philosophy. We use the department's website. It's got so many interesting articles and, and the research to back up why we should be doing the transition to school statements. So I work with my early childhood teachers, but also anyone else in the center who's interested. I share all of this information across our whole team, because they always want to know what we are doing and why. So we complete an in-depth literature review, a deep dive, in term one and term two, to just understand the why. I don't think it's much point in study unless you know the why. Then we observe the children and continue to observe them. We do an analytical summary six months in anyway. So that's almost the same information that's going into the transition to school statement.

- And where do you pull that from?

- We pull that from the observations of the children, their work progress towards their goals, using their family's goals, using our observations. But we also use the developmental milestones. So we use the ASQ tool.

- So what I'm hearing from you is that it's actually part of your normal documentation process. Those analytical summaries that lead into the buildup of information you're gathering.

- Yes.

- About the child for the statement is part of what you would do, at the center.

- Absolutely. And that's across all age groups. So we write them from our babies all the way up. So it's not like it's a brand new document, it is already in place, it's embedded, it's a, it's a practice.

- That analytical.

- That analytical summaries. So it's very, very easy to continue that through and transfer the updated information. Because the children, they just continue to grow so much. So we begin in term three, the end of term three, we'll start to write ourselves a few notes, a few observations, but then we'll revisit them over the next few weeks before we start to set them in stone what we would like to share with the schools.

- What about things like families, and permissions, and getting some of the information that you need for the statement? Is that something that you get from the things that already exist in the service or are you asking specific questions of families throughout the year, how does that look?

- Being part of the trial group, we have found this year that we've had to be a little bit more systematic. In the past because we are looking at doing it digitally. So we needed to make sure we had the information that we needed for that. In the past we've always had no problems collecting the consent forms. But again, we keep our families very informed. So I also give them the why. So it's not just fill this form in. It's, we're so excited to be preparing your child's transition to school statement. These discussions start, we do term by term newsletters. Here's what we did this term, here's what's coming next term. We embedded that information in from the start of term one, term two, we revisit it in term three. So our families actually know already months and months in advance. It's not a surprise for them, but that's those honest and two-way conversations. The families are excited about the children starting school. Some of them are a little bit nervous, a lot of them are first time families. So they're very excited to get the information back. And again, we use the department's resources. So I always share the fact sheets, the information sheets, the research, the why, the what are we going to do with that information, where is it going to go? So we're not just writing it because we feel like it, we're writing it to help support your child as they transition to school. So we're very fortunate that our families are very, very open to getting involved with these sorts of things. But I think that's because we've prepared them months in advance. It's not a surprise and I think it needs to be a journey. It needs to be a two-way street.

- So, what do you think are the benefits of the transition to school statement?

- Absolutely, I think it's sharing the information about our children and what we know about our children with the schools. I think we all know that schools are slightly larger. So you know, our children are gonna go from a group of 20 to a cohort of up to a hundred depending on what school they go to. So how are we going to make sure that all those special little bits and pieces, and that includes some areas they might need some support in. How are we gonna get that information to the school, and to the teachers, and to the child's teachers, so that our children have the best possible start and the most positive start, to their next round of schooling.

- And in the process that you were talking to me about before, about what happens here at the service, you have a look at all the statements that educators and teachers complete.

- I do. I do. As the educational leader, I think it's really important that I'm checking the work that is, that is going out. We really value that information and so I like to make sure that I've reflected on it. That just means I can look at it with potentially a slightly different way, so that I can just tweak them and make sure the information is the best about the child.

- So Mel, tell me why you think it's important that, that we as early childhood professionals share information with schools in the transition to school statement like we do.

- Yes, I think it's all about elevating the profession. It's making those connections that what we are doing here in the early childhood years is so important and so crucial to set up that transition to school. If we weren't doing what we were doing and providing the successful steps, not every child would transition as smoothly as they do.

- Well tell me about what the, what the schools have said about the transition to school statement. Is that something they find valuable? Do you find all schools engage?

- I would say 70% of them definitely value it. We've still got the 30% that we're not sure if they read it. We don't get a lot of communication back. We've had to be okay with that. That's not us, that's the school and their processes. But it also means that we haven't stopped. So we still keep sending the emails, we make sure we print a copy of the statement, we email a copy of the statement. This year we're very excited to be digitally pressing go on the statement. I feel like if we just keep flooding them, they will eventually work out, that it's a really important document and that we're introducing each child as an individual. So we get to know these children so much, especially the ones who have been here since they're babies. We've spent half of their lifetime and then they're off to school. So we've got so much knowledge that we can share that we think it's really important. So we just don't give up. I think that's the most important thing.

- So why not? Because we, it would be really easy to say no one is reading them, it's not worth doing this statement.

- Easy to give up.

- Because there's a lot of work in those.

- There is a lot of work.

- Why do you not give up? Why?

- Absolutely because it's not fair on the children and it's not fair on their families. And I think a high percentage of them are beginning to value it more and more. I think with each year that's gone on, I do think that we are getting a lot better feedback and they're taking the time and they're asking for it in advance. So I think those last couple of schools that aren't quite sure, I think if we just keep going, we'll get them involved.

- Tell me a little bit about the design of the statement. It's set up under the EYLF outcomes.

- Yes.

- Does that work with what it is that happens in the service, through your documentation?

- It does for us. It's very smooth. It's very easy. The only thing that we have to think about, that's a little bit different, is collecting a nice piece of the child's artwork that they might like to share with the school. There's a question in there about that from the child's perspective. Other than that, if the information is what we were going to do in our analytical summaries anyway. So we've already done similar halfway through the year, we were going to do that anyway. That information just slides straight into the outcomes. It's very easy to use, it's very user friendly.

- And some of the information around culture and family language use, is that something that you would get from enrolment forms or do you have different processes as to where you would draw that from?

- We do get it in our enrolment forms. We also give families, little child profiles, that they submit and they update. This year, being part of the trial group, we've also asked our families those questions directly, so that their voice is represented back into the transition to school statement. So we could have gone and found it, but we also offered them the opportunity to give their perspectives if there's something more that they'd like to share. Because some of the enrolment forms were filled in a few years ago, things change or they might, families might want to have a different perspective put forward. So it was a great opportunity to connect with our families. Which we have lovely relationships with anyway. So it was very, very easy, to start collecting that information as well.

- So there's some of the, that's some of the pre-work that you were talking about before that you do.

- Some of the pre-work.

- Before the end of the year.

- Exactly, exactly. I think it's all about being a little bit systematic. I think, don't think that you could start at term four and not then feel like it is a little bit of work. But if you start thinking about the questions, open the document up, do your reflections, do your readings, you know what's coming, it's not a surprise. So we just did a little deep dive, worked out what questions we were going to need to ask, and we already had that planned weeks and weeks ago, so that when the time comes, it's just a transfer of information in. Rather than trying to write it on the spot. We definitely find that writing a draft first helps and then it goes through a few other teachers and then I read it. And that way it gets that quality control as well that we've been talking about.

- So it sounds like you've got a really clear process about the transition to school statement being completed, but all those steps throughout the year, all of those things happen to make sure that the, when it's statement time,

- Yes.

- That you're prepared and ready. That's exactly it.

- Hi, I'm Linda from the Department of Education

- Now we're going to hand over to my colleague for that.

- Good morning everyone. Thanks for your time this morning. So my name's Martin Dembeck. I'm the product owner and delivery lead, for the Transition to School Digital Statement. A little bit of background on myself. I've spent roughly a bit over 20 years within education, usually in a technical environment, both in Education Queensland and in New South Wales. So coming into this process has been pretty exciting and it's, it's quite a good project that we're running here. So what I'll be doing today is just walking everyone through the basics of the application. So the department has developed a digital version of the transition to school statement, as everyone's aware. The idea being to streamline the process for the statements to be sent to schools. So yourselves, early childhood teachers and educators can access the online platform and complete the transition to school statement and store it. And then you can send the statement to the school where the child will attend. And as part of this process as well, parental consent is obtained and the information provided to the intended school. So what we've found is that digitising the transition to school process has increased the utilisation of the transition to school statement and it's helped promote communication between families, early childhood services, and schools. And it's leading to more children being supported in their transition from preschool into the school environment. Now one of the asides as well, this is only very new information that's come through to us, but the transition to school digital statement application has just received a good design award. So it's an industry recognition for the design and the ease of use of the application and it, it really highlights the efforts that the team have gone into, into designing as much a user friendly application as we possibly can, to make everyone's lives easier. Okay, so let's dig in. So next slide. Thank you. Alrighty. So this is the transition to school's digital statement landing page. So you access this page via a DOE account and to gain that access, directors or a nominated supervisor need to create an account, verify your identity, and then you register the service. So the director can then create and manage accounts for the educators at the service who need to use TTSDS. And registration allows the authorized directors and educators to create, complete, and view the statements for their service. Okay, next slide please. Okay, so once a director has verified their identity and created a Department of Education account, then you must register the service with TTSDS. So on this page you can enter the service approval number or SE number and once you've done that, a pin number will be sent to the email address that was registered with NQAITS for the service. Now if you have any difficulties accessing that at that time though, you can resend the pin. It does last for about 60 minutes though, just in case you need that time, but can be recent, as I mentioned. Okay, so we'll jump onto the next page. Okay, so this is the actual service dashboard. So once you've logged on, this is where you'll land. So it displays the service account, sorry, the services that the account holder is linked to. And from here you can access both the educators dashboard and the statements dashboard. Okay, so we'll jump through to the next one. Okay, so here we can see the educators dashboard. So directors use this to create and manage educators linked to their service in the TTSDS. So directors can create an account for educators new to TTSDS, or you can link educators who have an existing account using the educator feature. So educators that are no longer at the service will also need to be removed from the educator dashboard. And that's also done through this page that you see here. Okay, so we'll jump to the next one. Okay, so this is the statements dashboard. So what this does is it displays a list of all the trans, a transition to school digital statements created at a service, for children transitioning to a school. So from here the statements are created, completed, and confirmed basically. So to create a new statement, you would just press the new statement button. You can also click on a child record to open any in progress statements and they'll be opened in edit mode. So you can work on them further if you need to. But completed statements are opened as a read only summary. Also from here, statements are stored securely in the TTSDS platform for seven years. So the advantage to this is it reduces the need for services to maintain backups as well. Okie dokie, we'll jump through to the next one. Okay, so creating a new statement. So to create the new statement, the child's details and parental consent must be entered. Currently digital parent consent is being piloted, with plans to make this an option for all services in 2023. The standard parent's consent method currently as, as some of you'll already be aware, is to upload the parents signed consent form, which is available from within the application. Okay, let's jump through next slide. Okay dokie, completing the statement. Okay, so TTSDS is divided into four sections to collect information about the child, their background, and their learning and development. And as Linda mentioned, it's aligned with the EYLF guidelines. So once all the information is filled in, a summary is for overview prior to confirming and sending the statement to the school. So you get to have a bit of a review of it. And as Linda has spoken in detail about the content of the statement, we, we don't have to dig too far into that right now, which is great. Okay, so we'll jump into the next, next one. Okay, so sharing the statement. Alrighty. So to support continuity of learning upon the transition to school, as you guys would be aware, this is really the driver of it. The statement is shared with the child's intended school. So if the child is going to a New South Wales public school, here is where you would enter the school details for the statement to be sent directly to that school. Schools can access the statement center then via the TTSDS schools dashboard. Okie dokie, so we'll jump to the next one. Okay. So, if the child is going to go to an independent school, Catholic school, or an out-of-state school for example, or if the school is currently unknown, when you are filling in the statement. You can indicate this and then you can manually share the statement with the parents and the school as required. Okay. Alrighty. So this is the TTS dashboard, that the New South Wales public schools see when their staff log on. So if you ever wonder what's happening on the other side of the fence, this is it. So using the dashboard, public schools can instantly access the statements sent to them by the services. The statements can be viewed online or downloaded, as required to then support their transition activities. Statements from previous transition periods can also be accessed at any time via the past cohorts tab. So they can always refer back to previous ones if they're required. And lastly, access for non-government schools. As mentioned, it's currently being looked at as a future enhancement for the platform. So we are continuing development of this application. It, it's quite, we're quite receptive to feedback and yes, this will be one of the things we're hoping to get stood up. Okay, so next slide. So, as with any IT product, technical support, So there is support available for all users of the transition to school digital statement. So the early childhood education directorate information and enquiries, that's a mouthful, but basically the I&E team available for support, via phone and email. There's also a comprehensive user guide, with FAQs available, and also support options are listed at the bottom of the TTSDS application pages. So they're pretty frequently available wherever you are in the system. Okie dokie. That's a very quick run through. Linda has covered off most of obviously what is involved in the content. So this is the actual how to with the statement. So what I'll do now is, we'll pass back over to Linda and we'll look at the Q&A side of things, I believe.

- Hi there. I've just been reading through lots of those questions. I am very, very mindful that we have taken up a lot of your time and that we are at time. I believe that's right, isn't it Martin, do you want to nod your head if I'm, we're at time.

- We are, literally bang on.

- Okay, so out of respect for your time in being here and I know that you will have allocated this time and had your relief time to attend. I don't want to spend too much time. Oh, oh I, we won't have time to answer the questions face to face. However I can see there's so many come through. So what we have put up here is ways to contact us. So there's a Yammer group and a Facebook page that you can join which shares information that's coming out about the statement, about pilots, about feedback groups, that are happening. So we would encourage you to sign up to these. Also, I know I can see that my colleagues have actually shared the email to the transition to school inbox, and we will be really happy for you to send through any questions that you are really wanting answered. I also know that there will be sheets available. Kate, you can nod at me or tell me yes, based on the questions that were asked in this session and shared out as well. What I do want to offer, I guess is something for, Emma and I will often get lots of emails where people are feeling a little bit wobbly about the statement or feeling really strongly about certain elements. And sorry, Emma is my colleague who works closely with me on transition to school and will often spend some time aiding through Zoom, talking through some of these questions and trying to find some solutions with services. So if you are really interested in having a session or for us following up with you at some point, really happy, again, use that email to get in touch and we may even organise to have, you know, some kind of group session or invite people to, to have a chat with us because this isn't meant to be something that's hard work. This isn't meant to be something extra. We want this to be something that can be done in the ordinary work that you do every day, in your ordinary part of your routine and practices. It's not meant to be super onerous. We know it's a shift. We know it's a change. We know it's tricky. I've been watching people talk about timeframes that it takes. So if it's taking that long, I think, you know, I, I know myself, I would spend between 30 minutes and an hour on every summary that I would send or complete for a child. So yes, that's standard. Yes, we know that happens. If you're really short for time, in particularly at the moment when under so much pressure. Maybe you don't put all of the information that you would like to in the statement and you send through a more brief summary at this point for this year. And that's okay too. So there's, you know, I'm certainly not saying that, that there are smooth, easy answers to all of these things, but we are really happy to have more conversation. Kate, I'm going to hand over to you to finish off, cause I'm continuing to ramble and get excited about the content. So thank you everybody for listening.

- Wonderful. Thank you to everyone who joined us today. This session was recorded and the video will be made available in the coming weeks once we've had the chance to, to caption it correctly. There will be a popup survey when you sign out. If you could please complete that for us. It gives us really valuable feedback on the roadshow sessions and what sessions you might find useful in the future. Thanks to our presenters today for a wonderful presentation and I hope everyone has a good afternoon. Thank you.

- Thanks everybody.

- Good morning to everyone who is joining. Thank you for making time for us today. We've got quite a few people joining us today, so we'll just give a few moments for everyone to join. Good morning, everyone who's joining. I can see the numbers are still going up. We're just on 10, so we'll just give it another minute for people to join and then we'll get started. All right, so we're just after 10 o'clock this morning, so I think it's about time to get started. Thank you, everyone, for joining our All About Allergens: Managing Anaphylaxis in Children's Education and Care session. We're very excited to have you all here today and we're also very excited to have our special guest, Sandra Vale, from the National Allergy Council here today to share some information with us all. Just before we get started, I'd like to begin by acknowledging country. We have a short video prepared with some children in the education and care service, so we'll get that one started now. Thank you.

- [All] We place our hands on the ground to acknowledge aboriginal land. We place our hands in the sky that covers aboriginal land. We place our hands on our heart to care for aboriginal land. We promise.

- And thank you to the preschoolers of Kooloora Preschool for their assistance in developing that acknowledgement. I, too, would just like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the country that I'm on today, the Dharug country, and pay my respects to elders past and present, and any aboriginal colleagues joining us today. Just a few things on housekeeping. You'll notice that the microphone, video, and chat functions will be disabled throughout the presentation. There is an option for you to ask us questions though through the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. You can also up-vote questions that you would really like to see answered by clicking the Like button. This will let us know which questions are the most popular so we can get to those first as time allows. We will be using Menti during this session, so if you can just have a device ready on hand so you can participate in the interactive elements of the presentation. And this session is not currently being... Oh, this session, sorry, is being recorded. Thank you for that one. Now, I'd just like to take this opportunity to introduce Sandra Vale from the National Allergy Council. Very, very excited to see Sandra on. I'm just going to ask Sandra to turn her camera on so that we can see and hear from Sandra.

- Hi, thank you, Kate. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for inviting me to present. If we can just go to my slide set. So I'm going to be talking to you today All About Allergens and managing anaphylaxis in children's education and care with a particular focus on managing food allergies, we know that's generally the most challenging allergy to manage in this setting. Next slide, please. The National Allergy Council is a partnership organization. We're a partnership between the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy, or ASCIA, and Allergy & Anaphylaxis Australia. And they're the peak medical and patient support organizations for allergy in Australia. The National Allergy Council. We were previously the National Allergy Strategy and we've changed our name to council because we are actually implementing the National Allergy Strategy. And the National Allergy Strategy is a blueprint that guides us to what needs to be done to improve allergy management in Australia and how we can achieve that. We develop a number of resources and when we do that, we do engage with all key stakeholders and we are consumer focused. So, in everything that we do, the consumer or the person living with allergy is at the center. So that helps guide us in terms of how we approach our work. Next slide, please. So just to give you an overview of what I'm going to cover today, talk a little bit about anaphylaxis, and is it actually an issue? What do we currently know about what's happening in the early children's education and care setting? Key areas of risk, and then I'm gonna talk a lot about the All About Allergens training and the resources that can help you to manage food allergies and the risk of anaphylaxis in your service. Next slide, please. So, what is anaphylaxis? It is the most severe form of allergic reaction. Not everybody who has a food allergy will have a life-threatening reaction, but some will. And the challenge is that we don't know with our current testing that's available for allergies, we don't know who is going to have a severe reaction and who's not. So, our clinicians generally make a best guess based on the testing available as to who's likely to be at risk. So we always have to be prepared that anyone who has a food allergy could potentially have a life-threatening reaction. Because it's such a rapid reaction and it does affect all body systems, it needs to be treated very quickly and adrenaline is the first-line treatment for anaphylaxis. It's usually given through an adrenaline autoinjector in the school and childcare setting. And once treatment has been given, the child does still need to be observed for at least four hours. So it is important that once you've treated a child, that you call an ambulance, and that they are taken to a hospital or the nearest medical facility to be managed and observed. And what's really important, again, is that we see the signs of an allergic reaction early. We recognize that it's anaphylaxis, if that's the case, and that we give that treatment as soon as we identify that it's an anaphylaxis. And that can be lifesaving by recognising it early and treating it appropriately. Next slide, please. So what are some of the common causes of anaphylaxis? So, food allergy, as I said, is the most common in this age. Children also can be allergic to insect, commonly bees or wasps and sometimes ants. And so they can have an anaphylaxis if they're stung or bitten. And medication allergy, again, not as common in young children, but some children do have medication allergies. And less commonly, allergies to latex. So you need to be aware of things like balloons that can contain latex or gloves. Sometimes just simply being cold if they go into cold water can trigger an anaphylaxis, and sometimes we actually just don't know what's causing their anaphylaxis and that is really hard to manage for the child, for the family, and also for the children's education care service. So, it's really important that any parent that tells you that their child is allergic to something, that there is medical confirmation of that allergy and that's usually through their ASCIA action plan. Next slide, please. So how common is food allergy in Australia? So Australia has one of the highest rates of food allergies in the world. We have 1 in 10 babies with a confirmed food allergy and that means that it's not just through blood tests or skin testing that they are positive for a food allergy, but they have actually had a food challenge where they've been given a small amount of the food and they've had a reaction. So that's what we call confirmed food allergy, and 1 in 12 to 25 preschoolers. We don't have the best data for food allergies or even anaphylaxis in Australia, and we're working hard to try and improve that. So the data for the preschoolers is a little bit less certain than it is in babies, but we know that some allergies tend to be lifelong. And so, while we have 1 in 10 babies with food allergy, many of those babies will continue to have their allergies into their preschool years and sometimes into their teen and adulthood. Next slide, please. So what are the most common causes of... or the foods that commonly cause food allergy? So, there's 10 foods in Australia that are most commonly associated with food allergy and that's sesame, wheat, the various tree nuts, milk, peanut, fish, egg, crustacea or shellfish, soy, lupin, and molluscs, so things such as oysters. But what's really important to note is that while these are the most common foods that people have a allergic reaction to, people can be allergic to any food. So, you might see some children that are allergic to peaches or watermelon or bananas, and they are true food allergies, and they can also result in anaphylaxis. So, again, if a parent comes to you and says their child is allergic to a food, it's really important that you do have the medical confirmation of that, so through their ASCIA action plan. But it is important that you take any food allergy seriously. Next slide, please. So while there's those 10 common food allergens, in young children, and this is data based on babies, so children up to one year of age, these are the most common allergies. And we all know about peanut, you know, we've been talking about peanut allergies for a long time, we hear about peanut allergies in the news a lot, a lot of deaths from food allergy have been caused by peanut, but it's really important, if you could just click for the next, thank you, and the next one as well, it's really important that we take notice that egg is actually the most common food allergy in babies followed by peanut and also by milk. So, it's not just about nuts in this setting in young children, it is very much about egg and milk as well. And they can be much harder allergies to manage in a children's education and care service, particularly cows milk. So, it is important that when you're looking at ways to manage food allergy in your service, you are not just focusing on the nuts. Next slide, please. So, what do we know about what's happening in children's education and care services in Australia? Next slide, please. We conducted a survey in 2021 and we actually had repeated this, this was a repeat survey, so we had conducted it on two previous occasions as well. But this is the results from the 2021 survey and this was conducted in October 2021. So we know that 89% of long daycare services have at least one child with a food allergy, and peanut, egg, and milk are the most common food allergies being managed in those services. Of those services that responded, 42% exclude foods when children with food allergies attend. So that means that on the day when there's a child with peanut allergy attending, they exclude peanuts from their menu. Or on the day that there's a child with milk allergy attending, they may be excluding milk from their menu. We also know that almost 14% report using lactose-free milk for dairy-allergic children. And this is quite concerning because lactose-free milk is suitable for children who have lactose intolerance. And a lactose intolerance relates to the sugar 'cause lactose is a sugar in milk, not a protein. When children are allergic to milk, they're allergic to the proteins in milk. So a lactose-free milk, which has removed the milk sugar or a type of milk sugar, is not going to be safe for a child with milk allergy. So, we potentially have an area of risk here. We also know that there are high levels of confidence, even though they're reporting low levels of training. And this is really concerning as well. It's almost one of the most dangerous situations because it's a case of you don't know what you don't know. And so, it's really important that we can get the message out that training is vital, food allergen management training as well as anaphylaxis training. So, two different types of training that need to be taken. Next slide, please. What else do we know? About 50% of services have had no staff complete All About Allergens training. And in 15% of the services that responded, only one staff member or at least one staff member had completed All About Allergens training. It was at least encouraging to see that 10%, so 1 in 10 services that completed the survey had required all of their staff to complete the All About Allergens training. And All About Allergens training, which I'll talk more about in a moment, is food allergen management training. So it's specifically looking at how you manage food allergies in the food service that you provide because that's what a childcare service is doing, it's providing a food service with the food that you are giving to the children, even if parents are providing food to the center, so every every child brings their own food, you still have to manage food allergies. And the All About Allergens training is still important to undertake because you have to manage the supervision of those children eating their food. And what also came clearly through this survey is that staff want clear policies and procedures to follow to help them manage food allergies and anaphylaxis, the risk of anaphylaxis, in the service that they're working. Next slide, please. So why is this a problem? Next slide, please. So, I'm just going to talk a little bit about risk management here. So, the Swiss Cheese Model, what it does is it highlights where, every day, things occur that might be a risk and lead to a child having an allergic reaction. But at some point in the lineup of events, something happens that stops that child either basically being exposed to a food that they're allergic to. And you can see with the Swiss Cheese Model there, that the holes in the cheese, when the holes all line up, that's when you have a problem because the risk is continuing to progress. There's no step along the way that's stopping that risk from progressing. And if you go to the next slide, please. The worst situation is when it goes all the way through, every step of the way where we could potentially stop that risk from occurring, goes all the way through and an incident occurs. And so, when we talk about risk management and having good policies and practices in place, we're talking about looking at every step of your activity in your service around food provision, around managing the risk of children with food allergies. What are the potential areas where a risk exists? And how can you stop that risk from progressing so that the child doesn't get exposed to something they're allergic to? And potentially, it could be a fatal reaction, that's the worst outcome and nobody wants that. But even if a child has an anaphylaxis and recovers, that's still very, very traumatic for the child, for that child's family, and also for the staff that work in the centre. So, it's really important that you do look at how you are managing each activity and where the risks are for children with food allergies or any allergy. Next slide, please. So the key areas of risk, you can click, yes, no policy or procedures in place. So, having no policy or procedures in place is obviously a risk because there's no guidance for staff about how to go about their daily work and how to manage those potential risk situations. Second to that is that there's a policy and procedure in place but nobody knows about it or nobody follows it. In addition, children at risk are not identified. So if you don't know who has an allergy, and particularly, a food allergy, then you can't put good risk minimisation strategies in place. Risk minimisation strategies, there's a whole range of strategies that need to be put in place, not just one. And certainly removing the food from the service is not an effective risk minimisation strategy on its own. And in many cases, we would actually say that it increases complacency rather than helps to manage the food allergy risk. So, if there's no good, effective risk minimisation strategies in place or they're not communicated, that poses a risk. If there's no emergency response plan, so nobody knows who does what and when they do it. When someone's having a reaction, that's not the time to work that stuff out. You need to do that in advance and you actually need to practice it. Like you practice fire drills, you need to practice your emergency response plans as well to make sure everybody knows what they're doing. Time is really important with anaphylaxis. The reactions happen very quickly and the sooner they get treated with adrenaline, the better chance they have having a good outcome. Inadequate staff training, and, of course, that's one of the things we're going to talk about today. So, as I mentioned, there's two different types of staff training. I'm going to focus on the All About Allergens training, which is about managing the provision of food and supervision of food. But anaphylaxis training is also important, and that's about how to recognize an allergic reaction and how to respond, but also how to prevent exposure. So looking at all of those different types of risk minimisation strategies that can be put into place. Next. Adrenaline injectors not being stored appropriately. So, this is part of your emergency response plan. People need to know where the adrenaline injectors are stored and they need to be easily accessible. And I know in the early children's education care setting, everything needs to be locked up, all the medications need to be locked up. But there is an exemption for adrenaline injectors because they are a first aid device, so they don't need to be locked away. And it's important that they're not because you need to be able to access them quickly. So, they need to be out of reach of children so that they're safe from that perspective, but they can't be under lock and key. And lack of communication and education is also an issue. So it's really important that you communicate within your children's education and care service. So talk to each other as a group of staff, but also communicate with your childcare community as well. Let people know that there are children at risk and what they're allergic to so that they can also support your risk minimisation strategies. And you can do that by having a good policy. And I'm gonna talk a little bit about lack of incident reporting and follow-up. So incident reporting is not about placing blame on anyone, it's actually important because that's how you learn about what happened and how you can improve things so that it doesn't happen again. So, incident reporting is really critical and that's where you can find all of those little steps that could have been changed to stop that Swiss Cheese risk of happening where the arrow goes right through. So, that's the importance of incident reporting and following up. Next slide, please. So now I'm going to talk about the All About Allergens course for children's education and care, and I think we had a Menti set up for this one. So, if you can jump onto that Menti and enter that code in there, and there's a couple of questions that we want you to answer. Okay, so this is the question. Have you heard of All About Allergens? So, the majority of you, from the looks of things, haven't heard about this course. So it's great that I'm here talking to you about it today so that you can find out more about it and how you can access it. And I will say it is a free online course, so, it is accessible for everybody who has access to the internet. So there we go. The next question is, have you already completed it? So this will be interesting because we've had around 60% say they haven't even heard of it. Nice to see that we've got some planning, too. Okay, and a small number of you have actually completed the course. Okay, that's great. Okay, so we've still got the majority who haven't completed, but a nice number of people there that are looking to complete it. Okay, so who is this course for? Well, it's for everybody, basically, working in the early children's education and care setting. So whether you're in long daycare, family daycare, preschool or kindy, outside school hours care, vacation and occasional care, or any other education care service, this course has been designed for this setting. We've designed it, we've piloted it with people working in children's education and care to get feedback and make sure that it meets the needs of this sector. So, it is really important. Why do we say that it's for everybody, it's not just the people preparing the food? Because in this setting, we are well aware that you have a cook or chef preparing the meals, but it's often they educators and teachers that are supervising the food. So that's really important that they understand about the risks of... with children eating food, the risks of cross-contamination, sharing food, making sure children get the right food, those sorts of things. So, and sometimes educators have to step in and cover for the cook or chef if they're off sick at the last minute. So, it is really important that everybody working in children's education and care complete this training. Next slide, please. So what's in the course? I'm just gonna go through the different units in the course to give you a little bit of an overview of what the course covers. So, the first unit is all about understanding food allergy and the consequences of serving the wrong food to a child, understanding the difference between food allergy and a food intolerance and celiac disease. And this is not to say that food intolerances or celiac disease are not important, they are and it is important that they are managed really well. But food allergy has a different level of risk because of the risk of an immediate, life-threatening allergic reaction. It's important to know what all the common food allergens are, but also as I said, the fact that any food can cause an allergic reaction. Being able to recognise the signs and symptoms of an allergic reaction and what action you should take, understanding the responsibilities of the child's parent and the staff and the service itself. So, when we talk about managing food allergies, we talk about it as being a shared responsibility. So the parents have responsibilities, they have to communicate their child's allergies, they need to provide you with an ASCIA action plan. They need to give you one of the child's adrenaline injectors if they've been prescribed, and any other medications. So, there are responsibilities of the family and they also need to be educating their child too in an age-appropriate way about how to manage their allergies. But staff and the service itself also have responsibilities, and we walk you through the different levels of responsibilities. And then also, applying tools to check food allergen management practices in your service. So we have developed some resources, which I'll talk a little bit more about in a moment, to help you make sure that your service has good practices in place to manage food allergies. Next slide, please. The second unit is all about communication and supervision for allergy management. So, it's looking at the importance of communicating with parents and staff about food allergies that your service is managing and how you can do that, and also, again, provides you with tools to support you, identifying common ways that young children might be exposed to foods that they're allergic to. So it's quite challenging in early children's education and care because children are very messy eaters at that age. They're not particularly good hand washers at that age either. So, you do need to be a little bit more vigilant in how you manage their allergies, their food allergies in particular. So, we talked you through all of that, I'll walk you through all of that. Identifying and implementing strategies in the workplace to ensure that the right meal or drink is given to the right child with the food allergies. So, you might be managing lots of special dietaries, it may not just be food allergies, like I said, there could be intolerances, there might be other special dietary needs such as cultural, special dietaries, whether they're vegetarian or vegan as well. So, it's really important that you have a good system in place to make sure that you are providing the child with a food allergy the right meal so that they're not accidentally getting someone else's food, which will lead to a reaction. And then also understanding how to report incidents because, as I said, it's from reporting those incidents that we're able to learn and sometimes it's reporting within your service and then reporting to your governance body, so ACECQA, and then sometimes it's actually reporting to the local council because you are as a childcare service, you are a food service provider, and they also need to be informed. And again, it's not about placing blame, it's about everyone being able to learn from it to make sure that it doesn't happen again. Next slide, please. The third unit, and this is quite a detailed unit, it's looking at menus and food labels. So, providing you with information about how to provide accurate information to parents about the food allergen content of your menus and the different ways that you can do that. And I'm gonna talk through a few of the resources that we've developed to help support you in a moment. Understanding the food labeling laws in Australia. And we've had a change to the food labeling laws over the last 18 months. So, we have two labeling laws in place at the moment. So labels under the old labeling system or the old labeling laws can still be around for another few years. So, we have labels that are probably less clear, still on the marketplace, on the shelves in the supermarket, and therefore in your pantries, as well as foods that are meeting the new labeling laws, which are much clearer around identifying food allergens in the product. So, it's really important that you understand how to read food labels that are for foods that meet the new legislation requirements as well as the old ones. And so we take you through all of that. And then also being able to identify food allergens in products, recipes, packaged foods, ingredients, and things. So, it is a really useful unit, that one, very practical, and also talks about how you can manage the risk in terms of from a communication perspective as well within your service. Next slide, please. And unit four, the last unit, which is the practical management of food allergens. So, this all about what you do on a day to day basis, not only in the kitchen where the food is being prepared, but also in serving the meal and supervising the meal. So how to prepare the foods so that they're suitable for children with food allergy. And this is with good risk minimization strategies in place. We know that we can never have zero risk. It's all about managing the risk. Identifying and managing areas with possible, sorry, cross-contamination in food service. And also looking at strategies in the workplace that can minimise the risk of an allergic reaction. There's a lot that goes on in a kitchen when you're preparing food, and there's simple things like separation of space and time that can help manage the risk, but you have to work within the facilities that you've got. And so we do provide some practical strategies to accommodate that. Next slide, please. So now I'm going to talk about some of the resources that we have available to help support you. Next slide, please. And I will mention that all of these resources are available from a central resource hub, and I'll provide that link at the end of the session. So, the food allergen ingredient substitution table, this is a really useful tool. It does need to be used with caution. It's there to provide you with guidance about how you can replace a food that contains an allergen, for example, wheat, if you've got a child with wheat allergy so that you can provide them with an alternative that's wheat-free. But we want to alert you to some other possible allergens that might be present in that alternative because you might be managing lots of different allergies or the child might have multiple food allergies, and that's not uncommon in young children for a child to have more than one food allergy. So this tool is there to help guide you, but it doesn't replace checking the ingredients of the product. So for example, if you've got a child with wheat allergy and you choose to use a soy flour because they're not allergic to soy, you must still check that the packaging of that soy flour to make sure it doesn't have anything else that they're allergic to, whether it's an ingredient, so, in the ingredients list, as an intentional ingredient, or whether there's a precautionary allergen statement such as, may contain something. So that's really important. Next slide, please. We also have developed a food allergen menu matrix and this is a sample of the matrix. We have a template that you can download for free from the website, and this is where you would list all of the different menu items that you offer in your childcare service. And you go through, according to the ingredients and the labels on the ingredients, or if it's an ingredient that comes from a supplier that's not labeled, they should provide you with a product information form. So you would use that to identify what allergens might be in that product. And so you go through all of the ingredients that make up that menu item, and you can make a note on your matrix whether it contains, so, putting a C, contains the allergen, or whether there's a precautionary allergen statement, one of those may contain statements for the allergen, so that you then have a quick reference sheet that provides you with the allergen information about all of your menu items. Now, this is a really effective tool if it's kept up to date. It's really important that it is kept up to date. So if for some reason, you have a different product has been supplied because the product you normally use is out of stock, you must go back and update your matrix if it's going to be a regular supplied product now because the other one is discontinued or something. So, this tool is only useful if it's kept up to date. And we do have an animation that actually steps you through how to complete this matrix tool. Next slide, please. And so, that's an image of the animation there. The animation is included in the training course itself, but it is also available from the resource hub. And you can see there that we've got the sample that you can download, as well as the template as well. Next slide, please. So now, I'm gonna talk about standardized recipes and I can't stress the importance enough of standardised recipes. They're important for a number of reasons. They're very important from an allergen perspective because if you are using the same recipe every time with the same ingredients, that will help you to complete your matrix. It will also mean that the same food is provided every single time this recipe is prepared. So the risk of a reaction is going to be reduced because you know what's in this food. It is still important, however, that your recipes are kept up to date because, again, if there's a supply issue and you are using a different beef stock, for example, you need to make sure that the allergen information is updated. Again, whether it's an allergen as a intentional ingredient or if there's a precautionary statement for the allergen. But these also help you in terms of managing your costs, calculating your costs and things like that because, again, you're using a standardized recipe and you know how many portions you should be getting from this recipe. So there's lots of good reasons from an allergy perspective as well as a business management perspective to be using standardised recipes. Once again, we have a sample, if we go to the next slide, we have a sample of the recipe. So I'll just talk about this first. At the bottom of the standardised recipe, we do have this summary of common allergens so that you can actually clearly identify whether it's an allergen included as a intentional ingredient, so it's in the ingredients list, or if it's from the precautionary allergen statement. And this, again, allows a quick reference and allows you to do a quick update if a ingredient changes, which will then allow a quick update of your matrix. We separate out all of the tree nuts now because that's part of the new labeling laws, that all of the individual tree nuts need to be identified, so we've included that. And then we include a nutrition information panel there so that if you need to calculate that information for your nutritional requirements, you can do that as well. But if we go to now to the next slide, so this is where I was going to say we have a standardised recipe template. We have an animation to step you through completing the standardised recipe template. We have an example and, of course, the template that you can download and use in your service. And they're designed as templates because we know that everyone does things slightly different. We don't want things to be too different because standardising it is what makes it effective. But you might want to put your own center logo on it. You need to be able to fill it out in terms of entering the information, and also signing and dating. And it's really important that things like signing and dating these documents is done because then you know when they were last updated. Next slide, please. We also have a food allergy record template and you can provide this to parents to complete when they tell you that their child has a food allergy. So they should be providing you, as I said, with a copy of the ASCIA action plan. But this will allow you to collect other information that will help you to provide a safe food service for that child. So again, this is available as a template that you can download and you can customize it. There might be some additional information that you would like to collect, but we've included in there, the minimum sort of information that we think you would need. Next slide, please. Now, this is the audit tool and the audit tool is a really important tool. It's designed to help you look at what you are currently doing around providing food and managing food allergies in your service, and see if there's ways that you can make improvements. So, if you already have practices in place, this will help you to check whether what you are doing is considered best practice, and whether you've thought of everything that needs to be done. So it allows you to improve what you are already doing. If you have nothing in place, then this is a really good tool that will help you to identify what you should be doing. So, it looks through every... or steps you through every aspect of a safe food provision from identifying what food allergies need to be managed to where the parents are providing meals and how you store those, because in some circumstance, if you've got a child with multiple food allergies, it may be better for the parent to provide food for that child than for you to provide it. And that's a conversation that you would need to have with the parent. But if they are providing foods, then you have to have good practices in place to make sure they're being stored appropriately so there's no risk of cross-contamination during the storage or when you heat and serve the food as well. So, there's lots of things to consider and this is, as I said, it's a little audit tool that just helps you go through step by step to think about all the things that need to be in place. Next slide, please. So, we've looked on the previous slide, the ordering, this is the receiving of the products and checking the storage of the products, and then also meal preparation. So if we go to the next slide. All of the different steps with meal step preparation, but then also meal delivery, so serving the meals to the child and making sure that there are appropriate processes in place. Next slide, please. And then if you have a breakfast station, these are potentially high-risk. So, if you have this almost sort of free-for-all breakfast station for children that haven't had breakfast before they get to your service, it's wonderful that you are providing a breakfast option for the children. But you need to be mindful that children with food allergies probably shouldn't be accessing their breakfast from there. And then you might have to have a separate provision for them. Next slide, please. And then another form that we've developed is one that looks at how you can map the different food allergies that you are managing, or all special dietaries that you are managing, but particularly the food allergies, for all the children that are attending your service. And so we've created this template as well. And this is a sample version, so it allows you to work out who has the allergy, what allergy it is, what meals you are providing, and where they are in the service, so, who's providing meals and who's supervising? And it just allows an extra check that that child is gonna get the right meal. Next slide, please. So we also have a range of videos. Many of these are included in the training, but they're also available from the resource hub. So, a range of different things there. Next slide, please. And there's some more, most of them are animation, some are videos as well. And just to finish up, I wanna talk a little bit about a best practice approach. So this is an overarching resource, "Best Practice Guidelines," that we released late last year, specifically for children's education and care services. It was undertaken with a robust consultation process nationally. We engaged with the overarching bodies, as well as with parents and staff working in children's education and care to develop best practice guidelines that would meet the needs for this sector. Next slide, please. Part of that is the development of a resource hub for children's education and care as well as for schools. But there is a children's education and care specific section and it's the Allergy Aware website. And this resource hub has all of the resources that you could possibly need to manage the risk of anaphylaxis and food allergies in your service. Next slide, please. So it has the guidelines and all of these templates that I've been referring to, next slide, please, as well as linking you to all the training that you would need to access. So the anaphylaxis training, for example, next slide, please, links to animations about how to use the devices, all of those tools that help you to have an effective management process in place, next slide, please, resources to help educate the children, and also resources for yourselves as staff, next slide, please, the ASCIA action plans that I referred to and also a range of resources available from ASCIA. Next slide, please. And we also have a section there for parents and guardians and I just wanted to alert you to that, too, because this is where you can direct them. If they've got lots of questions, you can direct them to this website as well so that they can be better informed. Next slide, please. I just want to note that we've been able to develop all of these amazing resources and provide them free of charge thanks to government funding, so, from the Australian Government Department of Health. Next slide, please. And now I'm happy to take any questions.

- [Kate] Great, thanks so much for that, Sandra. We've had a few questions coming through. One question that's really great to see is that we've had a lot of people asking where they can do the AAA training, so I'm just going to drop the link into that chat. But if you want to just talk briefly about where people can find that, that would be good.

- Yes, sure. So, you can either go to the Allergy Aware website or you can go to foodallergytraining.org.au. And if you go to the food allergy training website, make sure you click on the All About Allergens for children's education and care so that you're doing the right course. When you complete the course, you will get a certificate of completion that you can provide to your employer and also keep on file for yourself, and the resource hub that has all of those resources that I was talking about as well is also available from that food allergy training website. So, yes, there's so much information there that we hope will help make this much easier for you to manage. Thanks.

- [Kate] Great. So we'll drop those links into the chat. We've had another question just around whether a family daycare educator should keep an EpiPen.

- So, with the family daycare, I guess it depends on how many children you have and if you're a bit remote from medical care would make a difference. I think you need to look at the risk management of it. Having a general use EpiPen or Anapen, there's two devices now available in Australia, available there in case someone has a reaction for the first time, can be helpful, but it really just depends. You have to look at the level of risk. I think for a center that has a number of children, you know, the risks are potentially higher. With a smaller number of children, the risks are lower. If there's a child that already has a known food allergy, they should be providing their own device. But certainly if there's a concern about getting access to an ambulance service quickly, then you would definitely need to consider it.

- [Kate] Okay, great. I've got two separate questions here, which I'm going to combine because I think they're relevant to each other. The first is, how long does it take to complete the training? And the second being, do you recommend all educators complete the training annually?

- Okay, so the training takes about an hour. We've tried to keep it as short as possible. You don't need to do it in one sitting. The way it's designed is you can jump in, do one module, which might take you 10 minutes, and exit the training and then when you go back in again, you'll just pick up where you left off. So, but it does take about an hour for most people by the time you go through the quizzes at the end of each of the units, as well as the final quiz. And in terms of how frequently, we would say you should do it at least every two years. We know that some services do recommend that the training is done annually. And I think if you are managing a lot of different special dietaries, a lot of different allergies, it's helpful to do the training more regularly. But at the very least, it should be every two years. And bearing in mind that on top of that, you need to do your anaphylaxis training as well.

- [Kate] Great. Now, we are coming up hard against 11 o'clock. I think we've got time for just one or two more questions. What I will note is that we've had a couple of comments and questions coming through regarding, I guess, the need for all of the paperwork, with some people commenting that it feels like quite a lot of additional information and paperwork. My understanding is that the resources have been developed in light of the fact that there is a recognition that there is a lot of work that needs to be done in this space. Do you have any comment around that, Sandra?

- Yes, I think that it does... I know it does look like a lot of paperwork, but what you need to think about is the fact that initially setting it up, yes, it's going to take you time, but maintaining that paperwork is not a lot of time. So it's worth investing the time initially because it will make an enormous difference to how you manage the risk. And I think you also need to come at it from the perspective that if a reaction did occur and you had to show what you have in place to protect children who are at risk of anaphylaxis due to a food allergy, you've got clear documentation of how you manage your risks. So, I think it's worth the effort, noting that initially getting into the swing of using standardized recipes and completing a matrix, yes, that is gonna take a bit of time initially. And share the load. There's some work that needs to be done by the person who is the cook or chef actually preparing the meals, and there's other work that needs to be done by administrators. So you can share that load.

- [Kate] Great, thank you. Now, we are at 11 o'clock, but there's just two more questions that I wanted to quickly address before we go and we can send around relevant links and resources to people who have attended today. One question was, does it cost? And I know, Sandra, you mentioned earlier that it's a free training that's available. The other one that I just thought is relevant to touch on is how relevant is this training for preschools where parents provide children's food? It sounds like it's a lot about services who provide food. So, I think that refers specifically to the training.

- Yes, I think, yes, the trainings are available free of charge, all of the resources are available for free. With regards to services where the parents provide food, it's still really important that you understand good risk minimisation for food allergies. And so, while you may not be preparing the food, you're still supervising the food. If parents are providing the food and then you are having to serve it, that's another level of risk there as well. So, it is important. I think this training just gives a really good overview of all of the risks around children eating in this sector and what you can do to reduce the risk. So I would still suggest that you do it, yes, I would still suggest that you do it.

- [Kate] Perfect, thank you very much. Now, Sandra, I'm conscious that we are now at time. I think there should be... if we click again, Josiah, there should be some details that pop up on the slide for Sandra with some contact details, which we can also pop into the chat. But thank you to everyone who joined today for your time. We hope you found the session useful. Apologies for those whose questions we haven't got to, but we will get a report at the end of the session, and get back to as many as we can. And thank you once again, Sandra, it's been an absolute pleasure having you again.

- Thank you so much.

- [Attendee] Thank you.

- [Attendee] Bye.

- [Attendee] Bye, everyone.

- And center- And some practical ways that they've been able to work on pay and conditions and wellbeing as well, so we know that workforce attraction and retention are central issues to the early childhood education and care sector because quality early learning depends on a quality workforce. We also know that during COVID and all of those things, the community has been able to recognise well and truly the absolute centrality of the work of early childhood education educators and teachers, but we also know that there's real challenges. There's a sense of fatigue by many in the sector. There's challenges in terms of both attraction and retention, and we know that we have to work, you know, between governments and with the sector in partnership on how we solve for some of these issues and how we continue to grow and learn from each other. So we got you to go on the Menti now that we're all experts at QR codes, and we'd asked you a question about what do you think is the biggest challenge is facing the early childhood education and care workforce? Just a small question that I know that you are the absolute experts on, and so you could see that Menti picture always comes up in big writing, some of the key issues that many of you are raising. So it's interesting to see documentation and time management, some of those sort of administrative burden issues coming up loud and clear, paperwork, and then, of course, some of the key issues in terms of finding staff, retaining staff, shortages, but, also, and, really, you know, it's really important to see this is those call outs about burnout and fatigue and that sense of exhaustion and how do we keep motivating and re-motivating. So look, these are the big, hot topic issues, and it's unsurprising but important to see the different themes that come through in that discussion. So as we go through, we hope that we can talk about some of the first steps of the next stages of our work in New South Wales and at the Commonwealth on assisting with some of those issues, and then, of course, we'll have the opportunity for you to be asking questions in the chat. As you put questions in the chat, I'm really conscious. We might not get to answer them all in our discussion or in responses on the chatline, but we still think it's really valuable, and we hope you'd find the value in that, too. We have the information of everyone who's joined today. So if there's extra information and advice that we can package up together and provide after this session, we will do that, and in addition to that, we, of course, regularly send emails out to the whole of the sector, and it helps inform our work in the department in terms of your identification of key issues. So plenty of opportunities for feedback as well as, I hope, some really helpful information for you today. So in terms of early childhood space, we are really conscious, as I said, that what we need to work on here is the interplay between what the Commonwealth has responsibilities for, what the New South Wales Government has responsibilities and can assist with, the higher education and VET sector including registered training organisations, peak bodies and unions and employers. and I know that many of you would be familiar with the National Workforce Strategy, and it seeks to identify the valuable, important roles that all of those players make. So if we move to the next slide, I just wanted to give you a bit of a quick summary of what the New South Wales Government is doing in terms of early childhood workforce investment. Now, for those of you who have been to other sessions in this road show, you would've heard or have heard in the news and in various ways, the really significant budget commitments that were made by the New South Wales Government to the Early Years Commitment. A key part of that commitment was direct investment in attraction and retention of early childhood educators and teachers. That specific budget commitment is $281.6 million over four years, which is a really significant uplift in that specific investment. I hasten to add that the whole reform agenda that was announced in that budget is many billions of dollars, and there are a range of ways where those investments, the broader investments, are also about how we can create the conditions for quality staff, attraction, and retention. So to give you a couple of examples of that, we got investment in the affordable preschool. I'd get you to go back one, sorry, person too quick on the uptake. The affordable preschool money, which is the follow-up from the COVID Free Preschool program, but that affordable preschool funding is available in both the long daycare preschool context as well as community preschool context, and so that's going to be built in to the Start Strong funding. So there'll be a way to think about your investments through that baseline funding and affordable preschool, and in addition, there was the announcement of a really significant, affordable, and accessible childcare fund, and in that, when we talk about affordability and access to early learning and childcare, we obviously need to be thinking about the attraction and retention of the workforce, but to get specific about the 281.6 million, we've got specific workforce investments and money that we are keen to get out the door in a way that's really supportive of the sector, and so that's what this slide gives you an indication in some of the first steps that we've taken in terms of scholarships investments. A number of you may have been aware of our previous scholarship programs. These are turbocharged. We're now able to offer really significantly additional numbers of scholarships, and we're able to build in some incentives for retention in those scholarship programs. So you'll have seen in the chat and also down there, we have the web links so you can check out and find out some more information about those scholarships. We have overall scholarships for ECTs at the moment. We have Aboriginal scholarships and inclusive practice and education scholarships as well. We are working, and we'll hear more from our VET colleagues, but on a range of ways of incentivizing uptake on the VET side of thing as well as early childhood teachers. So if we move on to the next slide, this is what I mentioned before, which is that I'm really conscious that it's the workforce investments in terms of us thinking about attraction and retention of itself, but, also, how we can utilise our Start Strong funding, the fund, and think about workforce in the context of the universal pre-kindergarten commitments. So we're making some down payments in the kind of work that we can do with the sector now, but this is going to be a long-term journey, but what's really exciting, I hope, that you'll all be feeling about this reform journey is it's about emphasising the centrality of early childhood education and the value of the professionalism and the focus and the commitment of early childhood educators and teachers. So I'm not sure... I've got lost on my slides, Daniel. Do I have another slide?

- [Daniel] No, Gil, that's it. Now, it's Jacinda's turn.

- Great, I will give just a little bit of a plug before we move to Jacinda that as we go through the session, we will be hearing, as I said before, from my training services colleagues, and that will give you a really exciting insight into some of the VET fee-free places that we have on offer, which is a really important part of the picture and a really strong partnership between the Commonwealth and the states. So Jacinda will be able to speak to that. So, yes, I will hand over now to Jacinda. What's a really great thing, at the moment, in terms of the momentum about early childhood is the Australian Government and state governments have worked closely together over a number of years, but there's an absolute commitment and the level of reform and excitement that's coming out at the Commonwealth and the state level to bring that even closer together. So we're working really closely with Jacinda and team on workforce and a range of other initiatives, and we're delighted to have you here to hear about what the Australian Government's got on offer.

- Thanks, Gil, it's lovely to be here. Can everybody hear me? It's always the first test. Excellent, thumbs up, perfect. Okay, good afternoon, everybody. It's lovely to see, well, not see everybody, but to be able to speak to everybody on a Tuesday afternoon. My name is Jacinda Still, and I head up the workforce, preschool, and quality branch in the Federal Department of Education. Before I start my presentation, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which we meet today and pay my respects to elders past, present. I acknowledge the ongoing connection that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have to this land and recognize them as the original custodians. I would also like to acknowledge any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that may be present today, and thank you very much to the New South Wales Department of Education for having me along. I'm very excited to speak to this group, and hopefully, the information I'll give you will be really helpful. I'm going to cover a few different topics and supports that are available to the early childhood education and care workforce, and those are programs that are currently sponsored by the Australian Government. I'm also going to touch on a few of the measures and commitments that we have planned for the future as well, but broadly speaking, our goal is to build a bigger, better trained, and more productive workforce to boost income, living standards, and create more opportunities for Australians to get ahead and achieve their goals, and we work very collaboratively with the New South Wales Government and other governments across the country to address those workforce issues, and that's the acknowledgement, but these issues are really complex, and they require solutions that come not only from governments working together that the whole early childhood sector working to find those solutions. Our education ministers, the honourable Jason Clare and Dr. Anne Aly, understand that early childhood education and care workforce are critical to achieving the goals. Minister Aly has hosted a number of round tables with key sector stakeholders in Australia in the lead up to the National Jobs and Skills Summit, and I'll speak a little bit about that in a second, and then there is, of course, the focus of the Summit, which was to bring together all Australians including the unions, employers, governments to address our shared economic challenges and to help shape the future of the Australian's labor market, and, of course, this includes the really important issue of addressing workforce shortages, and I'll speak to the Summit a little bit more as well, but as part of this, I'll cover some of the programs available to the workforce and the work that is underway to attract developed, retained support, our high quality staff that we need. This includes a number of actions under the National Children's Education and Care Workforce Strategy, and some of the other programs that are available across the Australian Government as well. A number of the programs I'll talk about are looked after by other departments in the Australian Government. So I may not be able to answer all of your questions, but we will certainly provide links that you can go and get information from as well, and finally, before I get further into the presentation, I'd just like to acknowledge that the government has made commitments to address paying conditions in female-dominated sectors, such as the early childhood and education care sector through reforms to the Fair Work Commission, the Fair Work Act, and enterprise bargaining arrangements. These are big changes, and I'm expecting the implementation timeframes and implications for both governments and employees will be worked through over the next 12 to 18 months. Okay, so this slide is all about the round table discussions that the minister held in the lead up to the Job Summit, and she did this because attendance at the Jobs and Skills Summit was pretty limited. So ministers were encouraged to meet with stakeholders prior to the event to understand the key issues facing the various sectors. Our minister, Dr. Ann Aly, was very enthusiastic about holding round tables with the sector as well as meeting with young people. She held three round tables including one in Sydney with attendees from sector peak bodies, providers, unions, and most importantly, early childhood educators and early childhood teachers. They were very successful and the minister came away with a lot of renewed enthusiasm and energy. Some of the key things from the discussions focused on issues, many of you are currently facing such as retaining and recruiting educators, early childhood teachers, and future leaders. Other themes that were discussed included what more governments could do to remove barriers to skilled migration such as adding educators, sorry, to the skilled migration list and build the public profile and recognition for the early childhood educator professional widely. A lot of these broad strategies were discussed in terms of how we will address the challenges, and some of those are on the screen now, and I'm sure everyone would agree how vitally important they are, not only to the sector, but to the wider community, and these outcomes have been shared with the Federal Treasurer as well. Can I get you to go to the next slide, please? So to provide a little bit more detail about the Jobs and Skills Summit, it would come as no surprise that yes, the early childhood education and care sector was really a key topic of the event, and we did say that it really should have been the easy, easy show 'cause it was referenced so often throughout the conversation. It was acknowledged that numerous times that a high quality, affordable, and accessible workforce is an enabler of children's learning and development and an essential support to parental employment. In his opening address to the summit, the prime minister acknowledged early childhood education and care workers are not only doing a vital job in the face of pressures and shortages, but are also making it possible for millions of other people to do their jobs, too. You were the heroes of the pandemic. 36 immediate actions from the summit will be progressed to build a bigger, better trained, and more productive workforce to help deliver secure jobs with growing wages, boost income, and living standards and create more opportunities for more Australians. The key outcomes relevant to our sector are on your screen now and include the identification of priority areas where governments can collaborate to better support outcomes across our system with a particular focus on workforce shortages. 38 additional priorities were also laid out for further action, and these are intended to promote full-time employment and grow productivity for the benefit of Australians. There are recordings available if you want to go and have a look at them, and they're about the Australian Government treasuries website. Next slide, please. An important product to this sector is the 10-year National Children's Education and Care Workforce Strategy that was developed by all governments in the sector. Strategy, as you know, was released last October on the Australian Education and Care Quality Authority website or also known as ACECQA, and included 21 actions intended to address the long-term and persistent issues, which impact our ability to attract and retain a quality workforce. For example, key actions of the strategy include improving professional recognition and lifting the public profile of educators, promoting careers in the sector to new entrants, improving access to professional development, and supporting educator wellbeing. This takes us to the strategy's implementation and evaluation plan, which was also endorsed by all governments and released earlier this month. Similar to the strategy, ACECQA coordinated the development of the implementation plan through a rigorous design process involving governments, employers, peak bodies, higher education institutions, and other key stakeholders from the sector, and importantly, it commits all governments in the sector to taking the strategy's actions forward as a priority. This will be an important step forward in our effort to retain and improve the experience of those working in the sector and attract new entrants, and it's intended to compliment the additional workforce supply measures that are being discussed today, and that both the strategy and the implementation plan are available on the ACECQA website. Next slide, please. I want to talk now about the recruitment services that are offered through Workforce Australia, which is managed by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations. The services are designed to be simple, effective, and provide a valuable service for businesses, including early childhood education and care services. To understand how Workforce Australia works for you, we'll look at a user journey, and this is Anna's. Anna is the approved provider of a childcare service and needs to recruit new staff, which I'm sure, all managers online today have been in Anna's shoes. Workforce Australia online is a no-cost, digital platform that Anna can use to find, attract, and recruit educators, early childhood teachers, and center managers. It allows providers like Anna to advertise jobs and include tools and filter options to help us search. It's a really effective tool, and if we skip to the next slide, you'll see that there's a little bit more detail available as well. What this can do is help you look through and filter by candidates with recent experience, skills, and qualification, licenses, and more, and you can also keep up to date pools of suitable candidates that match your needs by saving candidate lists or recent searches. I encourage you to have a look at this site. It's quite user-friendly, and hopefully, you will find it very useful. Next slide, please. Another support available is the Apprenticeships Incentive System. We all know that apprenticeships and traineeships play a critical role in creating a sustainable pipeline of skills in the Australian workforce, and unfortunately, as many of you are experiencing, Australia currently has persistent shortage of skills in many industries, and data will tell us that 38% of skill shortages are occurring in occupations with a vocational pathway. So this is a key focus for the Australian Government on quality spending and investment in priority occupations. So the Australian Government has invested a significant amount of money into this system, and there's a lot of detail on this slide, but it's quite a useful snapshot of what it does, how it can help, and some of the pathways available. All this incentive scheme is also underpinned by the Australian Apprenticeships Priority List, which includes 77 occupations and skills shortages, and that includes early childhood educators. It also includes wage subsidies for employers and direct payments to apprentices and trainees. I think that's what I'll cover on that slide. I'll get you to move to the next one. I'd like to just quickly talk through the implications of skilled migration of visa processing, and I'm sure we are quite interested in this one. The broadening visa options are only part of the solution, and it's also important to remember that a migrant's decision to come to Australia generally includes considerations of factors outside of the visa process. The Department of Home Affairs is investigating opportunities to streamline skilled visa settings and improve those processing times, and a lot of announcements were made post the Jobs and Skills Summit to that effect. The Department of Home Affairs also has business and engages, sorry, through business and industry by what they call the BIRO office network, which is business industry in regional outreach, and BIRO engages directly in the stakeholders to help fill some skills gaps where Australian workers are not available, and information on the screen at the moment gives you some updates in terms of three pilots that have been run out of the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations to assist with future policy design in this area, and hopefully, the pilots will not only be successful, but that they will then be rolled out on a more permanent basis, and finally, I'll get you to go to the last slide. This last bit is about the Be You program, which is a national mental health initiative delivered by Be You Home in collaboration with Early Childhood Australia and Headspace. The Be You program is there to support the sector. It's available to all educators and learning communities who work with children from birth to 18 years across the country. It's intended to support educators from early learning services and schools to develop a positive, inclusive, and resilient learning community, and there are a range of resources and tools available on the website. They provide mental health supports, educator wellbeing, and a whole range of other initiatives. You can sign up to be part of a Be You learning community and access a full range of resources and consultant support. So there there's a lot of information both on screen and at that link, and I encourage you to go and have a look and do that, but I also wanted just to thank you for the time to bring a couple of these programs to everyone's attention, and there's also a lot of information on our department's website at education.gov.au and just follow the link through to the early childhood section. Thanks, Gil.

- Thanks so much, Jacinda, and what a great and important one to end on with Be You, and I know we've been trying to answer lots of the questions and the chat and a lot of going to burn out and wellbeing issues. So really encourage everyone to take up the opportunities with Be You, only one part of the solution, but a really key resource for all of the sector. Conscious of time, we're moving on to the wonderful Jo Barton. I had the privilege of meeting Jo only very recently. She was talking to me about her preschool, and, you know, there's still challenges, but how they've, you know, built up, attracting and retaining their workforce and taking some real ownership on paying conditions. So we thought it would be delightful to have Jo here today. Now, everyone comes from a range of different service types and regional metro context and not one size fits all, but I think it's really valuable to hear from Jo's experience and see what parts might be relevant to your own service and your own role. So thanks so much, Jo, for being here, and over to you.

- Hello, thank you, Gil, and thank you, Jacinda. I'd like to acknowledge Muringura land where I am on today, pay my respects to elders past, present, and emerging. Look, it was really great to hear Jacinda speak about the National Workforce Strategy, and it's great to see that it aligns with some of the actions we've been trying to implement here to attract and retain staff. I do hope we can provide what has worked in our context and it might assist some of you today. So basically, strategic planning is key in ensuring the continuity of the staff. You need to gather information through a variety of surveys with staff and families that can include orientation surveys, just general family exit surveys as well as induction and exit strategies from surveys from your staff. Our sales investigate in enterprise agreements. You can liaise with unions and sector supports such as through the IEU or CCSA and an appointed agent for bargaining and to help navigate the enterprise agreement process 'cause it can be quite complex. Make sure that you always consider the department funding guidelines. They're essential to understand how best you can structure your service to maximise funding because if you need that funding money and most of it, what you can get to implement some of your strategies. Use a SWOT analysis, which is identifying your strengths and weaknesses, and plan for any opportunities and threats within your service context. Next slide, please. So the main point on this is that we do have longevity as staff who are very satisfied with their paying conditions and feel valued by management personnel and the practice and procedures that we implement because we seek their opinions and we value their opinions. These factors obviously contribute to our retention of staff and the retention of staff is also supported by our family surveys, which identified our major asset was our qualified staff and the relationships that they can develop with us. Identified issues with longevity also comes a lot of educators and ECTs getting closer to that retirement age. So we realize that we do have to plan for succession. We're not gonna be here forever, and another identified issue was something that everyone identified before, and that was that documentation and planning and non-contact time. More time is needed to complete all those tasks. So they were definitely identified issues through our surveys. Also, external factors, such as affordability, funding, government policy, economic conditions, and the predictive workforce shortage all have to be considered when developing your action plan. Our next slide, please. So in our action plan, we did identify opportunities, the main ones being valuing our staff, and to do that, we decided to investigate pay parity for our early childhood teachers and also for educators to a higher pay level. Maintaining conditions in light roles is really important. So investigating some of those awards and enterprise agreements is crucial. Retaining the dedicated staff that we have and recognising the benefits that having those relationships and continuity of staff has to our service. Also, attracting applicants when we do leave that are going to have the similar philosophy to the educators and ECTs that we hold dearly here and our families, and that will benefit the preschool community as a whole, and also recognising that the effort contribution and continuing high standard of all our staff is invaluable and making sure that they know it's appreciated. So next slide, please. So this is our journey, specific to our context, on how we address the issue of improving wages. Basically, it takes time. It's small steps to implement as well as a commitment to work towards pay parity with a committee of management support, utilising information from your surveys as a basis, and your family's also recognizing that they may have to make up any shortfall in budget projections by paying some fees. We now have been able to maintain pay parity. You can see our journey there from where we negotiated our first enterprise agreement. We then moved towards structuring percentage increases to reach parity across the board, and we've also been now lucky enough to maintain pay parity and improve working conditions supported by the additional funding we have received with the introduction of Start Strong Free Preschool as well as continuing not charging fees to our families. Our next slide. So as I said, maximising funding is crucial for strategies to be enabled. You need to ensure that your enrolment structure supports maximising eligible children attending for the 15 hours a week or 600 hours a year as a first priority. Creating a realistic budget and then monitoring and making adjustments where necessary to make sure you stay on track and utilise grant opportunities. There is a myriad of brand opportunities out there through the department itself such as the quality learning environment grants, your local councils, subscribing to GrantGuru, or similar similar services, and they can locate the suitable grants for you. When you develop and maintain those relationships with your community and families, it provides opportunities to network, increase your profile, encourage participation, and skill sharing, and with all that, they will then donate time, resources, and engage in mutually beneficial projects across your preschool. Next slide, please. So improvements to conditions, so with succession planning and staff development and training, ensure that you make plans in collaboration with your other staff. Involve them in the process. Partner with universities and RTOs to facilitate student placement. If you mentor students, it also provides then an opportunity to recruit. If you find a good one, you may be able to keep them, which is fantastic. To increase allocated non-contact time, that is not always an easy thing to do. So you have to use any time that you have to your best benefit. We have restructured staff meetings to ensure that it's team-based collaboration, and we use that time wisely. We don't get a lot of whole group staff meetings. So we try and focus on PD and reflection and growth, and address the everyday housekeeping type items in emails or team chats, and increasing time for ECT programming or educated documentation, try and do this when you're over ratio, you may have someone who comes in to cover lunches, perhaps getting them in an hour earlier and implementing rosters will allow educators and ECTs to have additional time to complete those tasks, and wellbeing and morale, we have had a big focus on that like everyone else, I guess, over the last two years with the challenges that we've had. I think it's about utilising those support programs that Jacinda mentioned, too. Be You is a big one that we've engaged with. Safe Work also have a transitioning wellbeing program. We have provided access to a staff employee assistance program, and most of all, it's, you know, enjoying each other's company. We're at work for a large proportion of our lives. So whilst, you know, you are professional, and you provide the education and care to the children to the best of your ability, you also wanna have a sense of humour, respect differences, and celebrate milestones and achievements within the team. That all contributes to staff wellbeing, and it makes the workplace a happy and supportive environment. Involving your staff with the journey along the way is essential. They take ownership, utilise their interests, and their passions, and, you know, give them the opportunity to explore those further, and basically, you know, I thank you for including us in today's presentation, and I hope that it has helped some in beginning their own journey to advocate for the value of early childhood teachers and educators and improve conditions within their own communities, and if anyone does have any further questions or would like assistance, feel free to contact me. Our email address is on our website at Albury Preschool, and I would love to assist in any way possible. So thank you.

- Thanks so much, Jo, and I'm really conscious. There were a couple of comments in the chat about there were some things that Jo covers that are maybe specific to community preschools, but I hope that everyone could see that there's a lot of the kind of strategy and planning that Jo was bringing to that work that's approachable for any part of the sector, and I've read it in a couple of comments, but I just wanted to really emphasise that there's been a bit of concern in the chat about how Free Preschool isn't available to other parts of the sector. Now, very conscious, it isn't available to family daycare and OSH because it is about that preschool delivery, but the Affordable Preschool program, which is replacing Free Preschool, will be open to long daycares offering preschool programs for funding from next year as well as community preschool. So we were really excited about that being part of the budget commitment. Excellent. So I know there's information overload. Thank you so much for the questions. We're trying to get through so many of them, and there's a wide variety of topics, but we will quickly move on to our next and final key part of today's session, and that's with Stacy, from our skilling for recovery initiative, our training services part of the department. I know there's been some questions about visas and fee-free VET programs, so Stacy's our woman to take us through through that work and perhaps answer any of those questions through her presentation or she might be able to pop some additional answers in the chat. So thanks, Stacy. Over to you.

- Thanks, Gil, very much appreciated to be here. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Stacy Mitchell Bales from Training Services New South Wales Workforce Development Team, and I'm presenting to you today on the lands of the Wiradjuri people, and I wish to pay more respects to elders past, present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal people joining us on the call. So today, I'll be touching briefly on a range of programs and services that Training Services New South Wales that can assist your business to scale and attract a workforce. If you'd like to engage with our team to find out more about the opportunities discussed today, please ensure you complete the poll at the end of our session, and a representative from our team will be in contact to discuss your needs in detail. Can we click over to the next slide, please? So the workforce development team was created on the back of the bush fires and in response to COVID and was set up about 22 months ago to support new and existing New South Wales businesses with customized workforce development support to assist with talent attraction and scaling initiatives to help businesses create, sustain, and retain a viable workforce. Our workforce development teams work across a handful of sectors and early childhood education being one of those. Workforce development takes a statewide approach and predominantly supports new investors and large and multi-regional employers, but we also have about 20 local skills brokers that are located across New South Wales in our regional offices that support local initiatives. So when you engage with workforce development, we provide a concierge service and really like to understand your business' needs and goals with regards to workforce and skills, and we develop a customised workforce development plan projects to support the achievement of those needs and goals. When we develop the workforce development plans, the projects are usually related to talent attraction and skills or developing partnerships and connections, and so when you look at the slide, it really represents a range of services that we offer. Our service offerings, really, I suppose, in the middle, they really showcase that, as we know, it is quite difficult to attract a workforce, and we've got to get really smart around where we attract our workforce, and so when we develop strategies, we have connections with our local, regional industry education partnerships team, and we have 25 senior project officers across the state working with schools to develop linkages with industry to showcase what the future career opportunities are and how, I suppose, early childhood is a preferred opportunity for a career for some of those students, and so the REAP officers develop programs and create awareness opportunities for students to really gather the information that they need to make informed choices about their future career and not only the students, but also the parents and the careers advisors as well. So there's some really great opportunities that are happening across the state at the moment with REAP programs and connecting industry to schools. We also have quite close connections with our federal government with regards to Workforce Australia, and so we're actually have a few programs at the moment running specifically with the transition to work cohort or the parents' next program, and so we have connections where we can actually develop job profiles and send it out to our connections and promote those opportunities across those connections that we have. Also, we have higher ed connections. So if it's to develop connections with higher ed or it's to develop graduate program or to, I suppose, attract alumni from higher education, we can definitely develop those connections as well. We also have a number of training services programs, for example, the Refugee Employment Support Program, and we also can attract vocational education and training alumni. So we have over 300 training organizations in New South Wales that deliver smart and skilled programs for Training Services New South Wales. So we can actually attract VET alumni when they're coming out of those, I suppose, programs and finishing up. So in the middle, it really shows you the cohorts of people that we try and attract into developing a pipeline of talent and skills for New South Wales employers. We also really focus our programs around skills, and we're able to develop skill sets and micro credentials. So when we talk skill sets is we can develop sort of customised programs that are part qualifications suited to up skill your existing workforce or can develop pre-employment programs to attract a new workforce. We also can develop specialized training programs, and so I'll touch a little bit more on that in the next slide, but we've actually developed some programs like the diploma to degree bridging program. Sorry. It's jumped. Can we go back, sorry. I didn't mean for us to go to the next slide, but thank you. Also, we like to develop partnerships. So we've got connections through to specialist advisory services, Investment New South Wales, and Global New South Wales. So we really take that sort of concierge approach to really identify what their needs are and connect you. We have a range of funding to support workforce development opportunities, and they can be accessing training and attraction and also for non-accredited development of programs, but we take a really whole of government approach, and so when we are developing the programs, we reach out to other governments and to actually make sure that we are creating programs that are best fit for industry and also what the priorities are, and we've done that in a number of programs recently. If we can go to the next slide, please. Thank you. So there's a number of skilling strategies that are available to your business to engage and attract a new workforce or to upscale your existing workforce. Some of these include pre-employment programs, as I mentioned, and they're a great way to attract a new workforce where a student can undertake a few units of competency, sort of a bit of a taster program, out of early childhood education. Usually, those programs are matched with a work experience element. So it gives the student an opportunity to really get a good understanding of what the industry is about so that they can really transition into maybe a traineeship or a full qualification pathway and start working in the sector,, but it also gives you, as an employer, an opportunity to see if they're a really good fit for your workforce and for the industry. We also have Summer Skills, which is a piece that's actually underway at the moment going through promotion, which is a short skill set promoted to school leavers, and that doesn't actually include a work experience element, but there are many providers across New South Wales that have actually put their hand up to participate and deliver early childhood short skill set. So they will be conducted over, I think, the next couple of months, because their students will be, I suppose, completing their year 12 and leaving school and looking for their first career. Where I've got early intervention skill set, so just recently, or, sorry, not recently. We've undertaken one program, but there are four programs scheduled for term four in early intervention, and this is, I suppose, was a partnership developed in with TAFE New South Wales to develop an early intervention skill set, which is a non-accredited micro skills to support early intervention skills, which was identified as a gap in the train package that was released last year. So there are four programs that are actually happening across the state next term. We've also got Certificate III and diploma traineeships, which I'm sure majority of your services are engaged with. Also, we can develop customized skill sets, and there's also school-based traineeships, so where you can engage a student at school over their year 11 and 12 to undertake a traineeship whilst they complete their HSC, but, also, they can work one day a week with you, and also complete their Certificate III early childhood education care over their year 11 and 12. They usually would have to do an about a 100 days over the term over those two years for them to then be signed off, and then they're actually complete, ready to start working in your service. If we can go to the next slide. So under the New South Wales Job Trainer program, the New South Wales and Commonwealth government are funding fee-free training places for existing workers to complete the diploma of early childhood education and care up until the 31st of December this year, and the New South Wales Government has just announced an additional 25,000 fee-free places until June 2024 to allow workers to up-skill to the diploma of early child education and care. So within true requirements there, if a student is actually living and working in New South Wales, they are eligible for the training under smart and skilled, and if they hold a 2013 or a 2021 qualification, they can go directly into the new diploma fee-free option. If the student holds a qualification before the 2013 package, they will be required to upgrade to the most recent Certificate III before enrolling in the diploma. Now, the New South Wales Government announcement with the early childhood qualifications are fee-free. So this will be at no cost to the student, and this can be achieved through a recognition of prior learning process if the student has been working in the industry, and the relevant experience is noted. So trade packages in Australia change and keep up to date with the developments in industry and the diploma of early childhood education has the prerequisites of those two qualifications previously mentioned. The new Train Package was reviewed between 2017 and 2020, and the entry requirements were deemed as being the pre-entry requirements for the diploma. So the older iterations of the early childhood certificate were not included as they were considered to hold outdated knowledge and relating to child protection and national regulations, but so to enrol somebody into the diploma with experience in the industry, they would need to contact their training organization that the candidate wishes to complete their diploma with and need to first enrol them into the newer Certificate III qualification to upgrade their qualification. So there is also our workforce development email that's listed on the flyer and, also, will be in the Q&As for us. If you want to engage more on a discussion on what that looks like and to actually have some supports and connections, we can definitely have a discussion around those entry requirements and connect you with a registered training provider to look at a recognition of prior learning process. If we go over to the next slide where-

- [Gil] We've only got a couple more minutes left.

- That's all I've got?

- Yes.

- Thank you, this is my last one, thank you, and so on the poll, we really wanna identify your workforce needs and how we can assist you, and I know that I've rushed through so much today, and there is so much on offer, and I could talk for probably an hour, but I'd like to sort of launch the poll for companies who are interested to connect with Training Services New South Wales. We can, I suppose, connect with you after the program if you can list your details, your contact details, number of employees that you've got, the post code, and answer four quick questions around your workforce needs, then we will be able to connect with you after today and really drill down to what your workforce needs and attraction needs are and work on some specialist programs and workforce development plans that will assist in executing those needs and goals for your business. So...

- Fantastic, and look, there were a few questions in the chat, Stacy, that I think you answered in terms of that older qualification. So we've been receiving that question a number of times, so that opportunity to be considered for prior learning is fabulous, but we are gonna make sure we continue to get the comms out on that question because it's been raised a number of times. Someone from Eurobodalla Shire said, they've tried to be in contact with your team or another team before. So we'll definitely make sure we get them their information in the polls, and overall, thank you, Stacy, as people are filling out that poll, there is a rich sort of theme of questions and comments coming through that chat. There's some, which I can see, there's real frustration in the sector if there's things that you think you've been arguing for for a long time or there's some burnout, but there's also some cross collaboration that's going on in the chat, and I think a sense of that there are some opportunities that maybe some people weren't aware of or that they can hear that there are some new opportunities, et cetera. So what we are going to do is make sure we really have taken all of that on board. It will guide some additional advice that we provide out to the sector. We're really conscious that we have people from all different service types here, and we have people that... I noticed some one person in chat saying, "I'm on the floor," and so there's the perspective of the individual employee all the way through to center directors. So we'll make sure that we are taking that on board in terms of future road shows and future collaborations, and that's probably the final point I wanted to mention, which is we find road shows really valuable, and we hope you do, too, to do both information sharing, but, also, in addition to information sharing, to hear what's on your mind, challenges, opportunities, and to have some level of engagement, but, of course, it's not the deep and detailed engagement that many of these issues rightly deserve. So I just wanted to emphasise that as we do our work in workforce and across all of the reform agenda, we are doing deep dive sessions with serviced services from a wide range of different contacts and backgrounds. We're looking at the potential for some regional, deeper engagement across metro and regional areas. So your services may get involved in that, and we are always open to you getting engaged with us through those different email links and to reaching out to us in a variety of ways. If there's things that we covered in today's sessions or in other road show sessions that you're interested in learning more about. So it's 5:30 on the dot. I don't wanna keep you all back from busy normal lives on a Tuesday. Thank you very much to my colleagues from across this department and the Commonwealth and a special thank you to Jo from Albury Preschool for joining us and sharing her direct experience. Dan, anything else you needed to cover at the end?

- [Daniel] No, not at all, just thank you for everyone for attending and hope you enjoyed the session.

- Thanks all.

- [Daniel] Bye.

- Hey, good morning everyone. We're just going to give everyone a moment to enter today's session. I can see lots and lots of people joining in today. So welcome to today's session. We won't start just yet, we'll give everyone a moment to join in. It's great to see that there's so many people joining in today. Looking forward to a very busy and popular session this morning. So I can see that there's lots of people still joining us. We'll just give it a few more moments. People from everywhere across the state. Thanks for your good mornings. And I can still see there's lots of people joining in, so we'll just give it a few more moments before we begin. It's great to see that there's so many people that have made the time to come today. So just a few more moments and then we can begin. Okay, so I can see it's just a few moments after 10:00. And we might get started because there is a lot for us to talk about today and those last few people I can see are joining in. So welcome to everybody that is here this morning. My name is Nicki McDowell and I'm today's host of this session that's called Documenting the Program, Making Children's Learning Visible. I'm an early childhood teacher and I am currently an early learning advisor with the Department of Education. I'm part of the curriculum in early years primary learners team. And my colleagues in ECE have asked me to come along today to talk to everyone about documentation. Such a hot topic and it's really grateful to see, I'm really grateful to see that there's so many people that have joined in. Before we go any further today, I would just like to acknowledge that I am joining you today from the land of the Dharug people. And at the Department of Education, we recognise the traditional custodians of the lands and the waterways where we work and live. We celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' unique cultural and spiritual relationship to Country. And we acknowledge their significance to culture in Australia. And we have a short video for you today with some children with their beautiful acknowledgement.

- We place our hands on the ground to acknowledge Aboriginal land. We place our hands in the sky that covers Aboriginal land. We place our hands on our heart to care for Aboriginal land. We promise.

- So thank you so much for those children and their acknowledgement for us this morning. So just while, oh, here we go. So just some housekeeping for today's session. So there is a large number of participants today, which means your microphone and your chat and your video functions are all disabled during the webinar. However, you can interact, there'll be a few different ways that you can. The first thing you can do is post any questions into the Question and Answer box down the bottom there. And again, due to the large number of people joining us, we will prioritise these questions. So vote if you see a question that you think you might like answered and we'll try and do that live throughout the presentation or towards the end. We have some allocated question and answer time. Any unanswered questions, we'll follow up in a response sheet that can be emailed out to all participants that have joined in today. Questions in regards to specific service operation won't be able to be answered today. However, you can reach out to Information and Enquiries who are always available to support with any questions that you do have around your specific service operation. And those details will go into the chat box for you to see. The next thing is that we'll be using Menti during today's session. So in preparation for that, please have your mobile phone so that you'll be able to scan the QR codes and join in. And the last point there is that this session is being recorded. So following on from this morning, it will be made available on the website. Before we go any further, I would just like to say that I am very much a hand talker, so I will try my best not to do too much of that and distract you from the content. Okay, so let's get started, into the real meaty stuff. Why are we here today? This session today is around the very hot topic of documentation and I've titled it documenting the program and around making children's learning visible because that's really the focus of the session today, how documentation can inform you to make curriculum decisions and how to make learning visible for the children that attend your services. So you will examine three things across the hour. It will really be around the requirements, what you're required to document. It will be some information around documentation to inform your programming decisions, and then, documentation to make children's learning visible. I'd also just like to call out that there'll be some, that today's session really isn't about telling you as an individual how you should document, and that's because it looks different in all the different settings and contexts across our service and our sector. So what it is going to offer you is, I guess an opportunity to reflect on what you're doing in your practices and maybe some areas of improvement or some strengths that you can identify and that you can work within your everyday practice. So there won't be any templates or checklists or digital platforms. It's really just a series of reflections for you to make those decisions yourself. So why do educators document? And I guess documentation is more than a professional responsibility. And there's this quote here from the guide to the NQF is that documentation "promotes relationships between children, educators, and families and it demonstrates professionalism." So yes, documentation is a professional responsibility. You do have that role as an educator to collect and collect children's learning, their skills and their understandings, but it's more than that. It's also knowing and understanding what you need to provide for children's learning. And when we think about documentation as a professional responsibility, there's many, many layers to this. And the first that we're going to explore today are, what services are actually required to document? So what does the law and what do the regulations say around documentation? So you can find this information in more detail at the link that can be placed into the chat now. But there are legislative standards around the educational program and practice for educators in the Early Years sector. And we're just going to have a quick refresh on the three regulations that really focus on documentation in practice for you to deliver that program. So the first is Regulation 74. And Regulation 74 is really about keeping records of what children know, what they can do and what they understand. So educators must document each child's needs, interests, experiences, and participation. And when they document this, that documentation will show the progress that children make against learning outcomes. It will take into consideration how long a child has been enrolled at the service. And then it will also take into consideration what's going to be done with that documentation, how it will be used, and how it will be understood by others. The second regulation that is specific to documentation is Regulation 75. And that means, Regulation 75 is aimed at making documentation accessible and available to others. And in particular, it's documentation about the educational program of a service being displayed in an accessible location for families to see. And the keyword in here is accessible. And that's accessible is going to look very different across all the different settings. So how do you ensure that families have the time and multiple opportunities to access that information? Are families asked what works for them? You may have an idea about how to do that, but is that actually responsive to your family's needs? Is there a tailored approach for individual families? Because one method of making the documentation accessible might not work for another family at your service. So things like languages, home languages, access to tech, technology, literacy skills within homes, all of these things need to be taken into account. And how do you ensure that documentation is shared sensitively considering a family's and a child's right to confidentiality? So that's the key focus of Regulation 75. And then the third regulation in regards to documentation is Regulation 76. And it's focused on families being informed of all the information that's collected in Regulation 74. So it really means that the the program is displayed and that families can see what's being planned for their child and that they have information about their child's learning and how they participate in the program. And again, it's around making it accessible. So how do you share this with families? Does it work for families? It has to work for them as well as working for you. Is it understandable for families? Is it presented in a way that they're going to understand the meaning behind it and the importance of that learning? And is it meaningful for families? Does it acknowledge things like individual families, cultures, and identities? Does it acknowledge what families find is important for their own child? And are they able to see that learning in that documentation? So that's just a really quick run through the three regulations that relate to documentation. Apart from the regulations, there's also some expectations. So under the National Quality Framework, there are the National Quality Standards and it's an expectation that all educators in early education and care settings meet these standards. And in particular, in relation to documentation, we're looking at quality area one, the educational program and practice, and then again, more specifically Element 1.3.1 assessment and planning. And you can see that the language of this standard includes the word documentation that each child's learning and development is assessed or evaluated as part of an ongoing cycle of observation, analysis of learning, documentation, planning, implementation and reflection. And that's direct from the NQS. So really this means the educators use the assessment and planning cycle to develop a planned and a reflective approach in designing and delivering programs for children. And we're going to explore that a little bit more. But before we go any further, it's time for you to use your phone or your device or whatever you have there with you, or you may even use the link there. So if you scan that QR code, you'll be taken to a multiple choice where you can answer this question. How confident are you to meet the requirements for documentation? So I'll just give everyone a moment to access that poll. If you can't use the QR code, you can go to menti.com and you can enter that code and it will take you to the interactive feature. Okay, so you can see we've got a very clear answer here that most educators, so I would even say majority of educators feel confident to meet these requirements, but I think what's also important to acknowledge is that there are some educators that this might be very new to. And it's about, thinking about who in your service or which person or what role is in your service that could support you with this to understand those requirements so that you can actually be meeting them. Some confidence to meet the requirements. Yes, it's quite a lot of information, but again, who in your service can support you with this? Is it your director? Is it your educational leader? Can you work within your team to get more of an understanding of this? Lots of people who feel confident to meet this and really great to see that there are some people out there who feel extremely confident and that they're exceeding their requirements. That's fantastic. And I think this is something to acknowledge that maybe you don't feel this way overnight, especially, if you are really uncertain of some of this, is that you need to take some time to develop your practices and to develop your skills so that you can feel that confidence in your own practice. I think, we'll move on from this. The other thing that can sometimes impact on our confidence around meeting these requirements and these expectations are some of the misconceptions because I think as a teacher, I'm very aware that there are a lot of common misconceptions and misunderstandings around what is required in regards to documentation. So I've just pulled four of those together today and I just want to make it really clear that these are actual just misconceptions and they can sometimes, I guess, cloud our views, and our understandings of what is a requirement. That the first common misconception around documentation is that you must have a quota or a certain number of pieces of documentation per child, per month or per term or whatever it might be. So in those regulations, that is not specified anywhere. It is a misconception. What I do want to say is that many services and many contexts have their own ways of ensuring that there is adequate amounts of documentation. And I think the question that you need to think about is the why. Why are those systems in place? And why do you have those numbers? And if it's working for you, then that's brilliant. If it's not working for you, what else can you do? Because it's not an actual requirement to have a set quota or a target. The next common misconception is that you must store all documentation where families can see it. And I think it's important to acknowledge there's a big difference between making documentation accessible to families, but also protecting and respecting their right to confidentiality. So there's some of that information that isn't available for all families to see. That is a misconception. However, what systems do you have in place so that families can see that information when it's important to them? Another misconception is that only the teacher is responsible for documentation. So again, nothing, none of that language in those regulations or those expectations specify roles. It is all educators who are responsible for documentation that will be led in different ways and there will be different levels of understanding. But it doesn't mean that one person isn't responsible and one person is. As an early education and care educator within the sector, these are all the expectations of you. And the last common misconception is that documentation must always be a written observation. And again, nothing in those regulations that specifies that, there are many different ways to document children's learning. And a common misconception is that it needs to be that written observation. And as today goes on, we'll have an opportunity to have a look at what some of your other options might be for you to capture children's learning in different ways. Okay, so we're just going to keep moving on here. And the next part of today's session is really focused on the role that documentation plays in the assessment and planning cycle. So if you've never seen this image before, I hope that you can take it today and really use it in your practice. This is taken directly from the guide to the NQF and this is the assessment and planning cycle. And this is what educators are required to do to deliver a quality program for children and individual children and groups of children in their service. So there's a short definition there that the assessment and planning cycle is used, is the process educators undertake to develop a planned and reflective approach in designing and delivering the program for each child. So it's really that way of making sure that you don't just do whatever you feel like you do, that your program is informed by children's learning and that's reflective and it's delivered in a very specific way. So how does documentation fit into this? I think the first thing that we need to explore is that documentation is a practice, it's a skill or a tool or an action that educators undertake that can inform their decision making. And on the screen is just, I hope a little bit of a graphic to help you to understand what I mean by this. So documentation allows educators to gather knowledge about what children know, what they can do and what they understand. This documentation is then used as evidence to inform future planning that you can reflect on your teaching, it helps you to make judgments about learning and then respond in appropriate ways. And then it just continues on. Again, you collect new documentation, which then allows you to gather new knowledge about what children know and what they can do and understand. And then that new knowledge that you've collected then in continues to inform your evidence. It becomes your evidence to inform your planning, to reflect on teaching and to make those judgments. So I think if you can see that documentation is a practice that can actually inform your decision making, then you can see how it fits into that assessment and planning cycle. And on the next slide, we're just going to explore what that can look like at each stage of that assessment and planning cycle. Because it's really important that when you are planning for children that each of those steps becomes part of your focus. So we're going to start at the top in a red box here. So I guess this is, I guess when you think about documentation, this is where your mind goes to first. Documenting observations. So this is the gathering of information about children's learning. This might be all the information that you collect about what children know, what they can do and what they understand. But documentation doesn't actually stop there because the next stage of the assessment and planning cycle is the analysis. So documenting the analysis of learning, interpreting what children know. So from that evidence that you've collected, that from those observations, what do you understand about that child? And you need to document that down. And I do have to say, I'll say this many times throughout today, is that not every piece of learning needs to be documented and analysed and go through each step of this program, of this cycle. But it is important that you've got evidence of this in, for all different children and to show their progress. So the next stage of that cycle is that you're documenting your plans for learning. So you've collected the evidence about where they're at, you've analysed what that means for each child and you've recorded or documented that in some way. And then you're going to document your plans for learning. What is your program going to be about and how are you going to present that or teach that to the children that are in your care. The next step of the planning cycle is that you are actually going to implement that. So you are going to document what happened, what strategies did you use when you engaged with the children? Was it spontaneous learning? Did you use intentional teaching strategies? But you're going to make a record of what worked and maybe what didn't work as well. And that's that last section of the planning cycle is that you reflect, you record some information and some documentation about what areas of learning were really successful and what didn't work so well. And you might begin to identify why that was so in those reflections. So you can see that documentation is a really essential element at every part of that assessment and planning cycle. I can see that there's some questions coming into our Question and Answer box. I'll just take a moment to have a look and oh yes, I can see. So maybe as the session's going on, I can try and address these or at the end, we can just spend some time to go through them all. So I think, keep them coming if you've got a question. Okay, so the next thing that I'd like for us to examine today is when you are documenting what actually needs to be visible? What should be in your documentation? So at each section of those, of that assessment and planning cycle, what should you include? We've given a little bit of insight already, but what should documentation demonstrate? And I guess documentation, the key purpose of documentation is really around outcomes or impact. And when we talk about outcomes or impact, I guess you can define that outcomes are what is used to measure children's learning. We've got the outcomes of the Early Years Learning Framework that gives you a guide. And then you've got your impact. How is that learn- what happens and how does that contribute to overall progress for children? So when you're thinking about outcomes or impact, you're thinking about what children can know, do and understand. So in your documentation you have information that shows that to somebody. In documentation, the other thing that you may consider that you need to make visible is what children are learning. What skills and what development are they making around those outcomes and that impact? How does it contribute to their overall progress? The other thing that can be visible in your documentation is progression of learning and development. So this might be that progression towards learning outcomes, that bigger aspiration, it might be progression towards a very specific individual goal that might be part of an individual learning and education plan. There are lots of different goals for many different reasons, but your documentation can show how children are making that progression towards whatever goal or outcome that might be. That's a little bit about what to include in your documentation. The next thing to consider is how, how to make that visible? What are the documentation methods that you can use to make those outcomes and that impact visible? So I guess there are many, many different ways that you can do this. And I think when you consider collecting a range of documentation or using a range of different methods, it supports you to develop a more holistic image or understanding of a child. So as the screen comes on, who else is- So, photos. Photos are a great way that you can collect information about children's learning. You might use videos and then you can see how children are engaging and interacting with others or with outcomes. You might even use an audio recording. And then you can listen back and analyse that learning and you can identify what strategies you've used that were successful in your implementation of that. You might collect work samples. So creations or things that children have made themselves. And you can make some annotated notes to that to show that there are different ways of learning. It could be that it's a written observation that you use to collect information about children's learning. You might use something like a mind map that's developed over time that really demonstrates that progression towards a goal, towards an outcome. You might use learning stories, particularly, around group, groups of children and group learning. Learning stories can really capture the collaboration that can happen in those experiences. Your collection of information might come from a conversation with a family. So you need to remember that families have all of this knowledge about their own children and that can be used to inform how you make decisions and how you plan to reach outcomes and measure impact. Or it could be a series of jottings. You know, you start making some notes over a couple of days or maybe over a few weeks and suddenly you can see how it's all connected and you can use that series of jottings to demonstrate that, to show those outcomes are being made and progressed towards. And there are more. There are so many more other methods that you can use. And I think what this demonstrates is that the legislative and quality frameworks are not prescriptive about how documentation is completed. And they are open for the reason that documentation can come in many forms. It's not always that written observation. And that's because children learn in many different ways and that you need to have many methods to capture that over time. So we've talked a little bit about what needs to be visible in documentation and how you can make that visible. And I guess that's probably important to acknowledge that there are many ways again, that you can make that learning more visible again. And we talk about that as being rich and meaningful documentation. And that's a really big mouthful, a very open ended concept, rich and meaningful documentation. So what is mean by that? What do I mean by that? And it's around using the outcomes, using the Early Years Learning Framework to make that learning visible, because that's what it's there for. That the rich and meaningful documentation requires educators to understand the learning that's expressed in the Early Years Learning Framework because that's what that framework is for. The language of those outcomes in that framework, prompts educators to know what they are looking for and the language that they can use. So in particular, I'm talking about this column of those outcomes. And you can see that educators use the language and the outcomes of the framework to create that rich and meaningful documentation, that content in that documentation that shows the children's learning and it identifies their strengths and their skills and their understandings. And a very quick example of that, for example, is that if a child was engaging with an outdoor activity like an obstacle course, you can see there in Outcome 3, it might be that you're describing what that child is doing. And you know that that's important because here it says here in Outcome 3, that children engage in increasingly complex sensory motor skills and movement patterns. And that they're developing their spatial awareness to move themselves around the environment in a confident and safe way. So the language of the outcome is there to support educators to make that learning visible in their documentation. So on the next slide, we have an example. So this is just one example and I've got, actually, sorry, I apologise. We've actually got two examples of some documentation. And I must say that this is in no way the way that you should be documenting. This is again, just one example from one educator in one setting, and this is some of their practice. Your documentation may look very different to this, and that's okay because remember there aren't any prescribed methods or ways, you really need to find the methods that work for you. But I think what I would like to highlight is it's how, it's the making the learning visible. So here in this first image, you can see that we've got a child who is drawing, and underneath we've got a reference to often people shorten these outcomes. LO5, children are effective communicators. Children express ideas and make meaning using a range of media. So it's initially got that language of the outcomes, but really it's not an accurate representation of the learning for that child because where does it actually reference what that child is doing towards achieving that aspirational, bigger outcome of being an effective communicator? Whereas if we look a little bit closely, and another example here, it's just a small change in their practice that this educator has taken on, but you can see they've just gone a little bit further. So they've included a description of how that child is demonstrating the learning of the outcome. And it's a little bit hard to see, but the text in that description there is that, "This child communicated she was going to draw her family. As she drew each member of her family, she describes something significant about the picture." So she was saying things like, "She has long hair but not as long as mine." "We're wearing polka dot dresses and I'm balancing potatoes on my head," "Mum has the same hair color as me." But then the educator goes on a little bit further to say that "This child is demonstrating ways to be an effective communicator. She is using the creative arts, drawing to express her ideas and to make meaning." So it's using that language of the outcome to show how that child is working towards that. So again, that's just one example of how you can make that documentation rich and meaningful. So we're going to stop again and I'm going to stop talking for just a moment. And I guess, now we've talked about what you need to make visible in children's learning and how you can do that. We really need to think about who it's for. So who needs to see the learning in your documentation? So we've got a QR code there again, and you will be able to select and answer around, and I get there is I want just say that you choose what you think. So who do you think needs to see the learning in your documentation? And you can see on the screen there, we have a very clear winner in this. And yes, documentation is for families, but it's more than that. Documentation is for more than just families. It's a very important element to your documentation and part of your responsibility as an education and care educator is that you're meeting those regulations and that you're showing that to families the progress that children are making. But I guess it's more than that too. And I can see there are, I'd be interested to know what everyone's understanding of other is. And maybe that's something that you can talk about in your teams who are the other people that need to see your documentation. Just give everyone a few more moments to put their answers in. Yes, other, all of the above, very true. I can see that's been put into the comments there, into the Question and Answers. So on, I guess I've taken a quote directly from the NQS here. Who needs to see learning? That, "Documentation of children's experiences and their responses to the environment makes learning visible to children, educators, and families. And it promotes shared learning and collaboration. So children, educators, and families were all options. So you can see that there actually isn't just one answer. Families are very important in sharing documentation too, but it's also really important to share that with children and educators and by others. I guess my interpretation of others could be people like authorised officers who are coming to make assessments about how you're meeting or exceeding or working towards those quality standards. It could be other professionals within your community context, a speech therapist, an occupational therapist, a child health nurse, a representative from DCJ. It could be that it's the Kindergarten teacher at your local school and when children are transitioning to school, you're sharing information about what type of learner they are. So I guess documentation has purpose for lots of different people within our sector, but I think we'll just spend some time unpacking three. So educators, children, and families because that's our main priority when we're documenting learning. So why make learning visible for educators? Because when you make learning visible for other educators, for your colleagues and for your team, it means that when you write meaningful information about children's learning, plans for teaching and learning, and evaluating this, it helps all educators to support children's learning all children's learning. So for example, if you weren't there one day, who else would be able to implement learning for that child? If you've got it documented well, then someone else will be able to do that, someone else from your team. Another reason to make learning visible for other educators is that it allows educators to foster continuity of learning. And it can help children to transfer learning and adapt learning from one context to another. Because we all know that we all can't be everywhere all at once. It's physically impossible. But if you've got some methods in place to share learning, it means that no matter where those children go, whether it be within your service or even outside of your service, if your documentation captures the important information about their learning, then others can apply that as well. And the last reason that I can think of today that you could make learning visible for educators is that it allows educators to work collaboratively, and you can mentor each other and you can support each other to interpret and to analyse and improve your own practice. So sharing your documentation with other educators, getting some feedback, do you think this captures what this child can do? Can you add to it so that it can be clearer? So they're just a few reasons why you can share your documentation, make that learning visible for educators. What about making learning visible for children? So again, they're there. That's the centre of our practice. It's the reason why we're there and those outcomes and that impact for children. And when observing and collecting information, it's essential to create opportunities to capture children's voices and ideas. And the best way to do this and to make learning visible is actually with children themselves. And we know that when you make learning visible for children and when you include children in that learning and that analysis of learning and planning for learning and evaluating learning, it promotes their agency and it fosters those opportunities, those dispositions for learning. That's a really fancy word to say. Things like shared thinking and collaborating and all of those skills, those 21st century learning skills that children are going to be required to have as they make their journey through their lives. So when you make learning visible for children, you make opportunities for them to be a part of that. And the third stakeholder, or the third group of people that you can make learning visible for that we'll focus on today is for families and documentation for families. It's a huge part of our practice. And when making learning visible for families, it's essential to provide information that's focused on learning and growth over time. So again, back to those regulations. And I think the key thing to call out here is that it's not a description, it's not just about what children have done, it's actually capturing the learning in the documentation. So using the language of those outcomes and making decisions and professional judgments around what that child is learning and how they're progressing towards a goal or an outcome. When making learning visible for families, it also means that your access, actively seeking input from families about what their children know and understand away from your care. So what can children do at home or what can they do when they're out with their families? Because that's just as important to know that, is what they can do when they're with you. And it means inviting families to be involved in goal setting for children's learning and reviewing their progress because then families begin to understand why those early years are so important and foundational for learning for the rest of their life. I'll just, before we look at the next slide, I'll just say that unanswered questions stay, because I can see that there's a lot of questions that are building up in the box there. We will, so specific questions won't be able to be answered, but we will spend some time at the end I guess coming back to those general type questions that people might have around documentation and we'll also follow them up in that response sheet after the session. Okay, so how do you make learning visible for families? Again, this is just one way that you can do that. There are many different ways that you can make learning visible for families. And I think the other really important thing to say is that not every piece of learning can be made visible for families. It's just not possible. When you're documenting, you need to be able to find ways that you can manage and sustain your documentation. You don't become overwhelmed or overloaded with your documentation. And it's, I guess part of that is reflecting on what is important to be documented and what doesn't need to be documented because that is what's going to contribute to making that documentation manageable and sustained. So again, just one example of how one educator has made learning visible for families. It doesn't need to look this way, this is just an example. So again, that Regulation 74, sorry, 75 and 76, to make it accessible for families and to show that progress and that learning. So this educator has used photos and a written paragraph to do that. I think it's important to acknowledge that photos are a great way to document children's learning. And sometimes a photo on its own is enough, especially if there's been lots of communication around how a child is working towards a goal or how they're showing their progress once, one photo or a series of photos can really capture that. But I guess if you are sharing just a photo, is that enough? Because, and it's what you say or what you talk about with that family in that photo. Because if it only described the play that was happening and the name of the outcome, then it wouldn't make that learning visible for families. So, you know, if you were just describing children like to play puzzles and do drawings, and this is important because of Learning Outcome 4, Learning Outcome 5. It's a great start, but it doesn't actually show the learning. And what you need to consider is what method do you have in place where you can describe the child's interests, their strengths, and the progress that they make towards achieving those outcomes and the learning that's happening. So this educator has, I think this was part of like a summary, so a summative documentation piece. Over a period of time they had identified that this child was becoming a strong and effective communicator. She can ask for help from educators and love to role play using dramatic play. She enjoys small group interactions with peers and in particular funny rhymes. In the photos, so to the left, she's followed the rhyme under the web and she's used symbols in her drawing to link to the storyline. So there's that key documentation that demonstrates that learning to that family and makes it visible. And again, this is just one way of doing it. It might be that information that's shared in that green box. For you, it might be a conversation that you have with a family. And that conversation might be at arrival or at pick up time. You might be able to talk to a family about how a child is demonstrating some learning. Or it might be that you make a phone call, you know that the parents know that there's a child that's been particularly focused on a goal and all of a sudden you can see that they've made this great progress and that you make that phone call and you communicate that learning to that family. It doesn't always need to be a written observation or a written piece of documentation. That's just one way of of doing that. And I think it, there're really unreasonable expectation, that every photo and every moment that you capture would be shared with families that way. It would make that documentation load very unmanageable and very unsustainable. And I guess the last part to this section is, when you're thinking about making learning visible for families and reflecting on your practice around documentation for families, maybe it's a good opportunity for you to think about if you share a daily, "this is what we did today" summary. So remember that you do need to make the program and learning accessible to families and lots of services do this in a daily summary. And for some contexts, that's a great way of doing that. But it's important that you know why, why you are doing that. And does that summary really capture a learning that happened, the learning that has happened in a day. So if you're, you know, if you have that type of system in place, you might like to think about why, what are your reasons for sharing it this way? And do you know if the families like it? Most families do, but when they are looking at that and when they're reflecting on their child's day, is the learning visible or is it just a description? You really need to think about how you're going to promote children's learning to their families. Does it have meaning for individual children and their families? Because we know that for some children, for whatever reason it might be, they can't be part of that sharing. So how do you meet the needs of those families? And I guess as a teacher that's been in the classroom, is it the best use of my time? You know, I've been there, I've been there at 2:30 in the day thinking about how am I going to get this out to families who are going to be arriving within the next half hour? Is it taking my time away from the children? Is it the best use of my time? And is it meeting the needs of that sharing and making learning visible? So it's certainly not saying that this is something that you shouldn't be doing. For many, many services, it works, and it works for many families. But do you have a good understanding of why you are doing it and how you're sharing that information with your families. I'm very mindful of our time and I can see we have about 10 minutes left. So I guess it's time to begin to think about everything that I've talked about today and critically reflecting on your practice. So really, thinking about what's being said today. I would encourage everyone that's been listening today and that is ready to take some time to reflect on how they document and what they document. Maybe these are the steps that you'd like to follow. What will be documented? Because not every moment can be captured. How will you decide what's important for a child or a group of children? What will be the focus of your documentation? It can be the first step. The next step in your reflection could be how. How will that documentation be recorded? We've talked about some of the methods and there were many different options there. You might have some more. It might be photos, observations, the child's voice. How do you collect that background information for families? The next thing that you might like to consider when you are reflecting on your practice is, how will it be presented? What will you do with that information to make it accessible, meaningful, and understandable to those key stakeholders, to children, to other educators, to families, to people that are coming into your service to see and you can showcase your practice. What will you do to ensure that's being presented in the best way possible? How will the documentation reflect the individual? Because remember, documentation needs to show the learning and it needs to show what children can do, what they know, what they understand, and what in your documentation will communicate that. And last of all, how will the documentation showcase the learning? Is it a quality, is it rich and meaningful documentation or is the focus on a quota? You're just collecting these pieces of information because you know you need to reach a target, but is that information you're collecting, showing the learning for children and for groups of children? So these might be some questions that you take time to consider on your own. It might be some questions that you take to your team or to a colleague or maybe a mentor or a mentee that you have and spend some time really having a clear understanding of why you are doing what you are doing and how you are doing it and how you're showing the learning in your documentation. Okay, so we're nearly at the end, but I guess now it's an opportunity for you maybe to share some documentation practices that work for you. So if you have a practice or if you have a strategy or if you have a way of making documentation really effective, you can scan the QR code and it will take you to a text box and you'll be able to just enter some of your thoughts and ideas around documentation. While you are doing that, I'll just take a moment to have a look at the questions that we can answer in our next five minutes. So I can see lots and lots of suggestions and coming up photos, videos, group observations, great. It's a great way to make it sustainable and manageable for educators because we know that our time is so stretched and it's so valuable. So what strategy can you use? Things like observations, conversations, a reflective journal. Yes, that's a great way to doing it with the children. Perfect. Because it means that you're capturing their voice in that and you are demonstrating to some learning to them as well. And they can have a good understanding of what their own learning is. Learning stories, jotting. So I can see lots of people using things like digital platforms, daily reflection, diaries. Work smarter, not harder. Absolutely. Really easy to say, sometimes really difficult to apply, but this is a good opportunity for you to actually maybe pause and think about some of the things that we've talked about today and reflect on why you document in certain ways and what is it achieving. If it's really unachievable and those expectations are too high, what can you do about it? Who do you talk to about it? Yes, mixture of anecdotal observations all in one, photos, videos, jottings, recording conversations, a fortnightly curriculum. Yes, definitely. There's nothing that says that planning cycle needs to happen weekly. It might be something that could happen in a day, across a month, across lots of months. You might have many planning cycles happening alongside each other at the same time. That can be one way that you can think about how your time can be spread and shared evenly across your work. Yes, so displaying those work samples and capturing the children's voices in that display, making that learning visible to whoever's coming into your service. Lots of people talking about floor books. So yes, there are some really great examples there. All right, so what we might do is just keep moving. And I can see, I've got my colleague Bridget here today and Bridget's been working really hard behind the scenes and she's been looking at the questions in the question box. Hi, Bridget.

- Hi Nicki, lots of questions.

- Yes. So what we're going to do is I've, there's some links to some resources around documentation and each of those QR codes can be scanned and you can take them to the link, it will take you to the information. So we've got an e-newsletter from the Early Childhood Resource Hub, produced in collaboration with ACECQA. We have unpacking the planning cycle there. So another resource for you to dive into that a little bit further. The ACECQA Fact Sheet, guidelines for documenting children's learning. And I have to do a little bit of promotion here. So I also put a link to the Early Learning website and on that website there are, there's a catalogue of professional learning and included in that, is some information around documentation. There's also podcasts and all sorts of resources there that can support your practice in the early years. So while you are just accessing those resources, Bridget's going to read out some of those key questions that got answered today and I'll do my best to answer them live. If we don't get to your question and if it had lots of likes, and it's been promoted up, then we can reply to it in our response sheet as well. So Bridget, I might hand over to you.

- Thanks, Nicki. So quite a few questions about using technology to document and whether that is sufficient, whether hard copy is also required and just using those different platforms to communicate with families.

- Yes, so I think when you are thinking about digital platforms, this is really around accessibility. Who is that digital platform accessible to? Because if it meets all of those accessible needs, then I would imagine that you are meeting those regulations and those requirements. However, who in your service, whether it be children, families, other educators, authorised officers, whoever it may be, is it access to everybody? Because if it isn't, how are you going to solve that? And it might be that you need to have hard copies as well. So I guess there isn't one answer to that question. It's really deciding, as a service, how are you meeting those regulations using those platforms. Excuse me. And can you be confident in saying that, yes, I am or do you need other strategies in place as well?

- Thanks, Nicki. A more specific question, but just explaining curriculum and program and whether they're the same thing. A few likes on that one.

- Yes. Yes, absolutely. So your curriculum is everything that happens within your day and within curriculum is your program. So maybe you'd like to think about it that way, but definitely, I know that there are a lot of services that swap out that word to that your curriculum, your curriculum decision making is informing your programming as well. So very, very similar terms there.

- Okay. Trying to choose now.

- [Nicki] It's all right.

- Some suggestions for educators who might struggle with documentation in written form for various reasons and maybe different methods that could be used and whether that's appropriate?

- Yes, absolutely. Again, those regulations don't actually prescribe that documentation must be written. So what other methods can you use to capture the learning? So remember it's not about the way it's presented, it's about the content that's presented. So how, what method can you use to demonstrate children's learning? And we know that you don't have to write something down to communicate something. You might use a recording, it could be a series of images and you're taking language from the outcome, you know, you're using different ways to demonstrate that learning. It doesn't need to be that written observation. And I guess it's a way of educators really playing to their own strengths and knowing how they can do that in different ways and acknowledging that individuals can be very creative and can do that in different ways.

- And maybe with the 30 seconds left, Nicki, if you have any words of wisdom on engaging families to actually read, I guess, and engage with the documentation or the information provided?

- Yes.

- Challenges.

- Yes, it's a challenge. I think that's probably maybe one thing you could say that is a challenge across the entire sector because you're always going to find groups of people for whatever reason that are really challenging to engage with. So what strategies are you using? Are you expecting that all of the families in your service are going to engage the same way or do you need to tailor your approach a little bit more? Is it that a lot of your engagement with some families is over the phone or are you expecting that all families will come to a set time or a set meeting with one of your educators, but how are you going to reach out to that family that can't get there for some reason? And what are you actually telling the families when you are talking to them? Are you just giving a broad general description of their day and, you know, they've had a great day or are you actually talking about the learning and the progress that their child is making and is that important to them as well? So really understanding what families are looking for when they are talking to you and when they're wanting information about their child. Because what you might see as a priority could be very different for a family for many different reasons. So having a shared understanding around what you're working towards. And I think if you can consider that then some of those families that are a little harder to engage with you might have some more success, yes Okay. So I'm really mindful of the time. And I know we've gone just a few moments over. I would like to say thank you to everyone for coming today and I know it's not always easy to make time to move away from working with children in the room or in the playground, but it's also really important that you make some time for some critical reflection. So thanks for joining and this will be made available to you in, after this session. Thanks.

- [Kate] Good morning to everyone who's joining us for today's session, and welcome. We're just going to wait a couple of minutes to allow everybody to join. We've got good numbers for today, so we'll be starting in just a couple of minutes. For those of you who are joining now, welcome. We're just waiting a couple of minutes until we get started. You'll notice that your microphone, camera, and chat functions have been disabled for this session. We'll tell you a bit more about that shortly, but that's just due to the high volume of participants we'll have in today's session. So welcome, and we'll get started shortly. Good morning, all. I can see the numbers are still climbing of participants. Welcome to today's session. We're very excited to have you here. We will be starting very shortly.

- Great. Thanks very much for that, Kate. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the New South Wales Department of Education's webinar on critical reflection. My name's Belinda Wakeford and I'm one of the state operations managers in our quality assurance and regulatory services, which sits within the early childhood education. You may also know us as the reg authority. As we begin this morning, we have a video we'd like to share with some children acknowledging country.

- We place our hands on the ground to acknowledge Aboriginal land. We place our hands in the sky that covers Aboriginal land. We place our hands on our heart to care for Aboriginal land. We promise.

- Great. Thank you. Thanks for that, Kate, and I'd like to acknowledge that I'm meeting you today from the beautiful Dharawal land on the south coast and I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the various lands on which you're all joining us from today and pay my respects to elders past and present. I extend that respect to our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants and colleagues that are joining us today. So to get us started, a few housekeeping bits. As Kate mentioned, your microphone and video and chat functions have been disabled for the webinar today. During the registration process, you were invited to send through some of your questions, and we had a huge response to this and received well over 300 questions from the group, which is fantastic. For that reason, we deliberately made a decision to close off the Q&A function just for today. What we have done though is use some of those common themes from your questions to inform what we've included in today's session, and we'll talk directly to a few of those popular questions towards the end. Please do note though, the Q&A function will remain in place for the remaining Roadshows. We acknowledge some of you would like to know how do we document to get exceeding. I have that question frequently when during A&R, and we've been asked directly, what do the department want to see? What are the officers looking for? And I just want to start by saying the purpose of critical reflection is to support your continuous improvement journey to enhance your service quality and practice, leading to improved outcomes for children, and that's what we're going to be focusing on today. This is not about us as a reg authority. It's about you and your service. If by the end of this morning's session we haven't been able to address your question, there will be further opportunities for you to connect with our team, and we'll share details about how to make contact later in the session. For any questions that you might have relating to your service operation, you can also contact our information and inquiries team who are able to support you. I'm just going to get lovely Kate to pop the details into the chat for you now. We're also going to be using a few interactive features during today's session, including Menti. Hopefully you're familiar with that if you've been to some of the other Roadshows this week. So can I please ask you to have your phone or another device to scan and have that ready? The code will pop on the screen so that you can interact with us, and finally, as you would've been informed when you came in, this session is being recorded and you'll be provided with information about how you can revisit the session once our Roadshows have completed. So today, we will look at reflection versus critical reflection, and our focus is to understand the difference between reflective practice and critical reflection in order to support your continuous improvement journey. So what is critical reflection, when is reflection more of an evaluation, and how does critical reflection drive your practice and quality improvement journey? This morning, we'll hear from Alison, who's one of our experienced authorized officers, as well as a service leader from the sector who has kindly joined us this morning to share with you their critical reflection journey, and we're hoping after today's session that you'll walk away with a deeper understanding of critical reflection, and importantly, how this might drive your quality practices. We know critical reflection is part of the National Quality Standard. If we look within Quality Area 1, Element 1.3.2 speaks directly to critical reflection of children's learning and development. Critical reflection is also one of the three themes that services need to demonstrate at the standard level to be rated exceeding the NQS. Some of the participants online with us today submitted questions around what's the difference between critical reflection in relation to 1.3.2 at the element level and critical reflection as one of the exceeding themes, and we weren't surprised to see this question come through commonly, as we know that this causes, broadly, some confusion across the sector. We acknowledge it can be confusing with the same terminology that's used for both. So I guess to look at what the difference is, I think I need to start by noting what's the same, and that is they both require critical reflection which involves closely examining all aspects of events and experiences from different perspectives. Critical reflection outlined in Element 1.3.2 is about how educators critically reflect specifically on children's learning and development, both as individuals and in groups, to drive the program and their practice. Some examples of how we focus on children's learning and development is through reflection in action, such as altering experiences where they're not, our children not engaging, or adapting the program to include all children, rather than adapting a child's routine or requirements to fit the program. We may also document critical reflection of the program and our practices by analysing our teaching strategies to determine if they're supporting our learning goals that we've created for individual children, or analysing if group experiences and learning goals are being achieved. So as you can see, critical reflection in this capacity has a focus on how children's learning is being evaluated and analysed and what changes are made to support their learning and development within the program. Exceeding theme two, practices informed by critical reflection, involves a deep level of regular and ongoing analysis, questioning, and thinking that goes beyond evaluation and review. Critical reflection informs practice when the continuous reflection of all educators individually and together informs decision making and drives continuous quality improvement. It's about the how and the why we do what we do and it's a universal theme that can be applied across all standards of the NQS, and it's not specific to children's learning and development per se. I'm now going to introduce you to Alison Hendry. Alison is one of our amazing authorised officers in the continuous improvement team, and Alison came to the department with extensive industry experience. She has a clear passion for critical reflection and quality improvement practices that are informed by theoretical and philosophical research in this area. Welcome, Alison. Thanks for joining me this morning.

- Okay. Hi, everyone. Great to see so many of you participants are online with us this morning. Before we deep dive into critical reflection and what that actually means, I'd like to hear from you all. I'd like to hear, what do you think critical reflection involves? So we're all going to use Menti now, if you could. Could you tell me in a few words what you think is involved in critical reflection? You can use the QR code on your screen or go to menti.com and enter the code that is on the top of your screen there. Then type in a few words, and I'll give you a few minutes. We'd love to see your thoughts and it is anonymous, so please feel free to join in. Great. I can see some of our words coming in and they are fabulous. A lot of people are saying analysing, which is exactly right. Thinking. Oh, I think a lot of you are really on the right track there. Look at all these responses. Fabulous. Thank you so much, everybody, for providing these responses. That's great. I can see that analysing is clearly something that's at the heart of what a lot of people believe is involved in critical reflection. Fabulous. Okay. So now we're at a point where we're going to look at what is the difference between reflection and critical reflection. What we want to understand is what is reflection and when does reflection transform into that critical reflection space. So theorists tell us that reflection is deliberate. It's conscious. It's a way of making sense of what we've been doing, and realistically, it's a way that we learn from the experience. John Dewey, who I have affectionately named the grandfather of critical reflection in education, most famously said, "We don't learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience." So if reflection is about meaning making, then what's critical reflection? Again, theorists tell us that critical reflection is the relationship between theory and practice or theory and experience. ACECQA reminds us that critical reflection really is multifaceted. It's multilayered. So it's no wonder we all, at times, find it hard to break this down and have a really good understanding of what's involved and then how we engage in the process. This is not easy. So if you find critical reflection smooth sailing, you might not be examining deeply enough. Critical reflection involves critical thinking and multiple perspectives. There's purpose in it and it's used to support enhancements or change or refining practice. Critical reflection is the link between thinking and doing, and my favourite part of these theorists' quotes is that "critical reflection can truly be transformative." This is where we see it come alive. Maybe potentially Freire sums it up best when he notes that "Critical reflection on practice is a requirement of the relationship between theory and practice. Otherwise theory simply becomes 'blah, blah, blah,' and practice is pure activism," but I'm sure you all want to know what the grandfather of critical reflection will tell us. Well, he tells us that critical reflection requires active, persistent and careful consideration of the conclusions that we draw and the knowledge base that we've relied upon to come to those conclusions. So if we now know what reflection is and what critical reflection is, let's see what it looks like when we put them side by side and try to identify what is the difference. We know that reflection is a very practical, in a very practical everyday sense is looking back on an experience to learn from it. Therefore, we know that reflection is a means of building knowledge. However, we know that there's a change to reflection to make it critical. The Australian Institute of Radiography has actually given us a very simple way of looking at when that change from reflection to critical reflection occurs. We know that critical reflection is a process of analysing, considering and questioning experiences within a broad context. Critical reflection can therefore be broken down into a continuous cycle involving the process of practice, reflection, viewing these two elements through a lens of theory, and then reflection or analysis on what we've discovered in that process. From a pictorial view, this ongoing and continuous cycle looks like this. If we start at practice, this is all about the things that we are mostly doing on a daily basis. We're noticing. We're observing what we're feeling. We're thinking about what we're doing. It's really about evaluating. For example, did the environment set up support the learning outcomes? Were the children engaged? Did the new routine work for the morning session, or are families able to understand and access the rostering structure? The next step is also probably something that many of us are doing in terms of that reflection step. We're recording. We're examining. We're confronting the situation we're experiencing and challenging why we're doing what we're doing. We may be writing in a journal or discussing at team meetings why something isn't working and collectively decide to make a change. For example, does the environment allow for children's agency? Collectively, we decide that it doesn't, as children are unable to access resources independently, so we decide to add an open bookshelf so that they can house resources that children can independently obtain. The element that needs to be added to this cycle in order for this to become critical reflection is theoretical influences. The reason why it's important that theory or philosophical influences become part of this ongoing continuous cycle of critical reflection is because these perspectives will underpin the why of what we're doing. It will guide the change. It informs the practice or informs the shaping of a new practice through research or exploring theoretical perspectives. We might read various articles or guiding documentation, such as recognised publications or other sources sharing best practice. We might meet and talk with some subject matter experts or attend professional workshops to learn more about the area that we're critically reflecting on. When we put together our original practice or evaluation and reflection with theory, we're able then to make an informed analysis. This informed analysis is another form of reflection whereby we could rewrite or re-evaluate or critique or challenge those original beliefs that we held or the original way that we did things in order to close the loop and inform our ongoing practice. Realistically, the process of critical reflection needs to take the first two steps of practice and reflection and review those through a framework of theory or philosophical influences in order to analyse critically what we're doing now and what we might do in the future. As I said, the magic happens when we close the loop and use our critical reflection or analysis based on theory to inform, improve or change our practice. As such, the outcome of our critical reflection, or simply the results, might include an uplift of practice or a creation of a new practice, creation of a new policy, a change to the environment, or a refining or affirmation of current practices. It's only when we close this loop that the process of critical reflection has been completed. These outcomes are important and they are examples that demonstrate how your service practice has been informed by critical reflection, which aligns to the exceeding theme two under the NQS. I would just like to give you some additional examples from published research and also recognised bodies who have tried to clarify the difference between reflection and critical reflection. So Dr. Jan Fook, who is an internationally renowned scholar widely recognised for her work on critical social work, practice research and critical reflection, tells us that the difference between reflection and critical reflection lies in that analysis step that we've been talking about, as this brings together the theory with our original reflection, and together, there is likely to be some transformative change, change in our behaviour or change in our practice. Effectively, this is an informed change of practice. Similarly, ACECQA reminds us that critical reflection occurs when educators consider, question, analyse, research, utilize recognised guiding documentation, and re-evaluate planning and decision making that informs practice and process. ACECQA also reminds us that the concept or culture of ongoing self-assessment and continuous improvement, as we've just viewed on the previous slides, the continuous nature of the cycle of critical reflection, all of which ultimately aims to lead to improved outcomes for children, families, educators and service leaders.

- Oh, thanks very much, Alison. That was really great. I think that summarises that really well, and really key for me is that connection of theoretical influences, or simply put, who and what's guiding our practice on our reflection or evaluations and then challenging these. So that's great. Thank you very much for that insight, Alison. I'm now going to introduce Bernice Mathie-Morris, who is the director of early learning at Bomaderry Community Preschool. Good morning, Bernice, and thank you for joining us. It's really lovely to have you today.

- Morning. It's lovely to be present and to be able to have the chance to share some of our practices that we engage with at Bomaderry Community Preschool. Before I start, I'd like to acknowledge that I'm meeting with you today on the lands of the Dharawal people on the beautiful south coast of New South Wales. So yes, I'd just like to start by saying at Bomaderry Community Preschool, we love to engage in critical reflection. I think that comes back to, and reflection, it comes back to our love of learning. So we always say that it's important to involve children and impassion children to have that love of learning, but as adults too, it's really, really important. So that practice of reflection and critical reflection for adults is something that continues to drive us and to want us to learn more, which then helps us, as in a practice, to drive that critical reflection and also those outcomes and that best practice. So at Bomaderry Community Preschool, we reflect every day, but we do choose, you can't possibly choose everything that you reflect on to critically reflect on. As Alison has said, and Belinda, there is so many things in that process, so you can't engage deeply with every single little thing that you want to reflect on but choose something that you think will have the greatest engagement with your staff, but also something that's going to create those quality outcomes for your children and your families and your whole centre. So we too have a great connection, I guess, with John Dewey and his work. So we always say we just don't learn from doing, from that experience. We learn from reflecting deeply on those experiences that we engage with every single day. So today, I'm just going to share with you two questions that we have recently used to deeply critically reflect on and to walk you through the steps of how we have done that, and every centre, every program will look very different. This is just something that we find works for us and it guides us through in a very, well, I guess, a very organized space to get to the outcomes that we want to get to. So if we could have the next slide, so two of the questions that we've recently engaged with in with critical reflection was, why is it important to understand the conceptual mathematics development as educators and teachers in the early years program, and how do aesthetics and relationships within an early education program impact on the cognitive, relational functioning of educators, children and families? So we also, we always start with practice. What does that look like for us in our service? So that is educators noticing, so noticing what's going on with the children, the families, our environments, our interactions with each other. The feelings. How is everyone feeling? That is a really big part, so making sure we're taking note of that as well. How are the children feeling? How are the families feeling? As educators, what are we feeling? How do we approach that? Then questions, lots of questions. We always encourage everybody to question each other, and it's not seen as a negative in our service. It's a positive. So I will often walk through our rooms and be with the children and the other educators and say, "Tell me more about this," and we really encourage that with all educators to be able to do that. Our wonderings, share our wonderings, and they are really valid in this process as well, and we also ask educators to reflect on their own teaching strategies, the resources and the environment. Conversations that we have are really important in the process as well, and then our intentional and spontaneous programming. So there's so much that goes into our days that helps us inform and to be able to critically reflect as we move through. So you wonder what, you say, "Well, how do we document all of this?" And you can't possibly be able to document every single thing, but we do, the next step for us is that reflection step. So we have something called a reflective document and it is a Google Doc that we just use and everyone can have access to that, and we all have different colours and everyone writes in that and we make comments on each other. So that's where we document our noticing, our feelings, our questions, our wonderings. We also then bring them to a team meeting and then to our whole team meeting and discuss every single one of those. Everyone has a voice, and then we also use, obviously, those conversations with families and children, and we document that in there. So it's not a formal document. It's just something that we add to. We might think of something and just quickly write, type it in there, and the beauty of a Google Doc is that everyone can see that and have access to it. So we're constantly thinking about that. I encourage also in that reflection process is evaluations and critiquing on our planning and our documentation as well. So anything that we're thinking about within that reflection evaluation, we pop into that Google Doc as well. Educator meetings is a great time to have great, robust conversations around what we have written, what we have thought, and what we have been discussing in that critical reflection document, and robust conversation sometimes can be really challenging. I will acknowledge that this process is not an easy process, but if you look at it as a point of being able to move forward and I always get so inspired because I know I'm going to learn more. So that's why it is something that's very passionate for me and for our team. Can we have the next slide, please? Thank you. So then, as Alison and Belinda have talked about before, we move on to that next step of theory. This is where a lot of people go, "Oh, this is a little bit too hard. This is really challenging," but it's not. It's inspiring, and as Alison and Belinda has said before, there's so many things within this theory section that we can tap into and learn so much from. So we use lots of different readings, academic journals, sector publications, Department of Education, Bedrock, Pedagogy+, Rattler, textbooks. We have a lot of university students that come to us, so we also tap into lots of resources like that. So what we often do is, as educational leader, we will choose something and it might be three or four documents and we share that with the whole team and they reflect on that and then bring that to a staff meeting. Another great way is to connect with your colleagues at conferences, at webinars, in-house presentations, from sector leaders, other colleagues that have a passion in a space. So it could be as simple as when we talked about aesthetics in our space, we got someone to come in and talk to us about the importance of that. Engaging within our community. Not all of us live close to a university, but the use of webinars and connection through the internet has created a whole other world for us. So we engage as much as we possibly can with universities in projects. So we did a mass project with Wollongong University. So put yourself out there. Make connection with those universities, and they're always doing beautiful projects and really engaging projects that I think your teams will learn so much from, and then once we've taken that, all of that theory, then we link it to our reflections, previous reflections, and our wonder, that first stage of reflection and practice. Then we put it all together. So that analysis, how do we do that? So we come together, as I said, at that team meeting and we discuss the most important questions . What did we learn and what did we get from all of those readings, from those engagements with other professionals? Is there anything that we need to change? If so, how and how are we going to do that? Is there any policies that need to change as a space in there as well? Environment changes. Is there anything that links to our environment that we need to change? And then we make some decisions around what we're going to do to move forward as a result of that whole reflection process and our practice and then engaging with theory, because often when we engage with that theory, there's so many things that come up that we have not been, we did not know, and so many people have very different opinions and thoughts. I think the most important thing with that is to make sure that you're reading some great, reputable documents that are something that you can rely on. So that's another just important little tip. So then we make those decisions, and some of the easy ways to document that in terms of having that, I guess, that documentation so that you can share that with the department when it comes to assessment and rating, we always record on audio, on iPods, and we keep that critical reflection document. We always save all the readings that we've done and just annotate them. It doesn't have to be any formal documentation, but just annotate. Keep all your staff meeting records, all of those types of things and all of that is just then available. It becomes part of your everyday practice and then it's available for anyone to see when they come in and you can share that with them. I would say it doesn't, sometimes it takes a long time. It doesn't mean you have to critically reflect in two weeks. Sometimes it might be months, so enjoy the journey. That's what I would say. Enjoy the journey of critical reflection, because it is something, once you really start getting into it, you become very passionate about it. It challenges you, but you get to the space where you just keep wanting to go because you keep learning so much more. So thank you. I hope that I have been able to shed a little bit of light on how that critical reflection can become an integral part of your journey and that it can be something that you can easily achieve.

- That's wonderful, Bernice. Thank you so much for sharing with us really great examples of how your service engages with critical reflection, and I'm sure that many of our colleagues joining us online have found this really beneficial. I think it's really interesting to see in your practice and reflection subject areas some of the practical things that your educators, some of the educators online would be able to recognise and relate to. So you've mentioned about observations and evaluations and looking at your teaching strategies and interactions, but also the use of the collaborative documentation used to support your critical reflection. It sounds like that Google Doc work is working really well for your team.

- It certainly does. It's something that was a little bit of a adjustment for some people that had never used a Google Doc before, but it's very easy to use. It's just very versatile, so everyone can have access to it. Everyone can see in current time as people write in it and it's not a critical thing that we go, oh, that, you don't have to worry about spelling and grammar. It's just writing it. So it just takes that pressure off everybody.

- Beautiful, I love it, and you made really clear how theory is recognized as an important part of the process together what the end result or action, and I really loved hearing about your overall approach. I can see the excitement and passion that you've shown us would be inspiring for your team. I literally think I could listen to you all day, Bernice. So thanks so much for joining us. That was really, really informative.

- Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity to share.

- Lovely. Okay, so we've covered a lot of things this morning. We're just going to move on now. It's time to get a bit of a pulse check to see what we now know about the difference between reflection and critical reflection. If I can just have the next slide, please. Thank you. So you won't need, oh, I'm going to give you three scenarios. So I'll share these with you and I'm going to ask you to use the poll that's on your screen. It'll just appear. You won't need to use your device for this one. I'm going to give you the scenarios and ask you to identify and think about each example to tell us whether you feel that it's an example of reflection or critical reflection. So we'll have that pop up. The poll will just appear on the screen. Thanks so much to the lovely support team who are doing an amazing job in the background there today for me, So the first scenario is during Assessment and Rating, a service shares their daily critical reflection sheet, which includes evaluations of the daily program, such as routine times and placement of furniture and layout of experiences. The sheet is also used to inform where experiences may be set out the next day, where additional supervision may be needed, or what the experiences are that are not being utilised. So I'm just going to get that poll up for you. So if you can use that to let us know whether you think this is an example of reflection or critical reflection. Great. Thanks so much. Just give everyone a moment to have a little look at that. Gosh, we've had a good, big group on today, which is great to see. Okay. How did we go with this one, Alison?

- Okay. So Belinda, this is an example which highlights evaluated reflection, where the daily happenings are noticed and observed. While the program is evaluated and used to guide future learning opportunities, placement of both resources and supervision and engagement of children, it does not include any theory-based analysis that's being used to change, shape or uplift practice. Something to think about, if you're using a form or document with the term critical reflection in the title, it doesn't necessarily ensure that critical reflection is occurring. This scenario is a scenario demonstrating reflection.

- Excellent, thank you, and we'll move on to our second poll question. Wonderful. Thank you. So during an Assessment and Rating visit, an authorised officer asks to see evidence that supports a stated key practice, that is, that indicates that critical reflection has been completed on changing the service programming template. So the ed leader at the service explained that the educators decided the programming template was no longer working for them and they've chosen to move to using an online programming application. The authorised officer asked what process was undertaken in changing that template, and the ed leader advised that one of the educators who'd been on a prac placement saw the online programming application and that service was awarded exceeding in Quality Area 1, so the team decided to change over to the application as well. I'm just going to get the poll to pop up for you. If you could let us know, do you think this is an example of reflection or has it moved to critical reflection? And that will just pop up for you in a moment. Wonderful. Thank you. Yeah. Where are we at? Excellent. Our poll's being quite tricky and putting all three up at once this morning, and that's okay, showing our flexibility and adaptability.

- That's right.

- So how did we go with this one, Alison? Where are we landing with this?

- There's some good results here, and I've got to say, I think people are starting to, are understanding what is involved with reflection and critical reflection. However, scenario number two or poll question two highlights reflection where a change of practice has occurred, although that change of practice appears to come purely from an operational decision and it's not driven by any theory-based reflection or discussion on practice and there's no evidence of any analysis occurring. So whilst a change did occur in practice, it wasn't driven through that theory and analysis, so this is an example of reflection.

- Excellent. Thank you, Alison, and our last one, I think some of you might have already completed this one, but I'm going to go through it anyway for those playing along in order. During the Assessment and Rating visit, a service explained that they're on a journey to embed inclusive practice, which was instigated when a child enrolled with mobility restrictions. So the educators hired and trialled specialised equipment that the child would need to assess their accessibility and barriers and identify barriers to learning. They met with the child's family and their specialists to develop strategies for inclusion, and the educators attended a workshop and consulted current research to expand their knowledge on inclusive practice, and they reviewed and updated the inclusive practice policy. Through the journey, a broader understanding of inclusive practice developed and a case study was completed on how the service and families understood inclusive practice and how this is demonstrated at their service daily. The case study was reviewed at quarterly interview intervals to ensure it's relevant, robust, and ongoing changes of practice were analysed. So I'll just get the last poll up there, final question for you. What are we all thinking? Looks like we're nailing it there, Alison.

- I completely agree. That's some really clear results there from the audience, from who's listening in. That's great. Yeah.

- Okay, great. So what are your thoughts on this, Alison, reflection or critical reflection?

- Well, first of all, I'm going to say excellent job for everybody. Thank you for participating in the polls, and this is our last scenario question. A lot of you actually answered that correctly. So scenario three is an example of critical reflection. This example highlights critical reflection through the approach of practice reflection, theory reflection and analysis. This critical reflection also has the component of being ongoing, with a review of the change of process practice undertaken, a review of policy and procedure, furthering educators' understanding, and supporting the inclusion of every child. Your critical reflections may not all be this long or they might not all look like this, but it's about what is relevant and reflects the practices in your service. You may notice this scenario refers to a case study which was relevant to this particular scenario. That's not always the case as each critical reflection will be unique to the topic.

- Great, thanks, Alison, and for those of you who may be still a little unsure, I think you'll find this next part of the session will be really helpful. We're now going to address some of those really popular questions I mentioned earlier that came through with your registrations, and I absolutely know that we're not going to be able to get to all of them due to the sheer volume that we received. However, as mentioned earlier, you can reach out to our team following today's session to talk about your own service and experience, and I will get their details popped up in the chat for you in a moment. So Alison, are you ready for me to run through some of our top three popular questions?

- Yes, I'm ready. Let's go. Thanks, Belinda.

- So multiple services have asked, where do we start and how long does it take to complete the critical reflection process?

- Yes, this is a great question actually and one we get often. So critical reflection will often start organically or it may require a conscious decision to identify opportunities. It may derive from highlighting something in your practice or your reflections. It may be something you choose to complete in response to a critical incident or to address feedback provided. Most commonly, critical reflection is undertaken by services to inform better practice or to uplift practice or to make a change to the environment. Additionally, services may choose to complete critical reflection to align their practices against the National Quality Framework. As we discussed earlier, critical reflection often starts in the noticing or observing of a practice or a situation. It may be about paying attention to what you're feeling and what you're doing. Often it's evaluative and this may lead to deeper questioning about the practice or situation. This is often how the critical reflection process starts in a service. Because critical reflection is unique to each service and each service context, how long it takes will be dependent on the processes the service undertakes. So some critical reflections may take less time than others as everyone's aligned to the outcomes of the critical reflection and in the analysis and a change or an enhancement in practice is adopted and understood quickly. Other critical reflections may take on a life of their own and require a case study or research paper to document the depth of the analysis and reflection. Again, it will be unique to your service and what your critical reflection involves. In terms of how long this takes to complete, it's important to remember that critical reflection is a continuous cycle. So in that sense, have a natural endpoint.

- Excellent, thanks, Alison, and one of the other frequently asked questions was, how do we get people involved and on board to support that critical reflection journey?

- Yes, so, one way is that we need to create a safe and positive work culture that allows for educators to be able to be honest and open and vulnerable when unpacking reflections on practice or feedback. Unless you have this underlying culture of safety, you'll find it's difficult to get to an authentic place where true critical reflection occurs. We need to be really clear and be able to communicate easily to each other what are the benefits of the process. Think about how you get the buy-in and what's in it for the educators. Ultimately, you'll see an uplift in your own practice and you'll be part of the fabric that underpins the practices that demonstrate quality at your service. Now, we're all different and you need to find what sparks the interest in your educators in the same way you reflect on what sparks the interest in your children. Acknowledge that your team will all have different learning and communication styles and how we gel these together to support an inclusive process. For some, this will be quite structured, but for other educators, it may be more informal. Services may find the process of critical reflection runs smoother when there's someone who takes responsibility within your service or organisation to ensure that the service community is working through this critical reflection cycle. As service leaders, it's important that we role model behaviours we want to see reflected. When I was at a service recently, they talked to me about how critical reflection has underpinned the journey of transformative change that they've been on for the last few years. This service shared with me that the initial seed of the transformation occurred through honest and open reflection on where each educator's strengths lie. Through this reflection, different educators started to discover a passion or a curiosity about different areas of the service delivery. These educators were then provided space and time to lead the critical reflection and were supported through the process of critical reflection because it was new to them. The process was broken down into small parts initially with supported individual reflections taking place, and these individual reflections then were used to influence that broader and more collaborative critical reflection that was instigated across the service, and ultimately, this led to a more empowered workforce that facilitated themselves this transformative change. I think I'd also like to say it's important that we are deliberate and purposeful and it's essential to provide time for our teams to connect with each other and with this process.

- Absolutely, I completely agree, and it's really difficult beause we are time for, but I like that you call out that it's really important to plan for that and to provide time for our teams to connect with each other in this process. So one last question that we'll have time for, and I think this will be one that people want to hear about, is how should we document critical reflection?

- Okay, so Belinda, you'll know this. This is actually one of our most asked questions, and truthfully, we can't give you a template or an example sheet on how to document your service's critical reflections. The honest answer is how you document will be unique to your service. In addition to how unique the critical reflection subject or topic potentially is, some services will start at the beginning stages of critical reflection in staff meetings or room meetings and therefore start the journey. The start of that journey may documented in meeting minutes, the agenda or summary notes. There may be evidence of the theoretical or philosophical documentation that's being used to further unpack the evaluative practice and reflection. However, this is more often than not going to be an online document or a professional development session or a conversation that's been held with a subject matter expert, and it may only be documented in the analysis notes of the critical reflection summary. Finally, the critical reflection's initial findings and changes or enhancements that have been identified may be noted in a summary document, and you heard about that earlier, but that works for Bernice and her service having a summary document. That summary document can be used as a reference point to come back to later and reassess if further changes or enhancements are needed. This reference document can then be used to support a continuous cycle of critical reflection. I'd also like to acknowledge that parts of the critical reflection process may be through conversation, and many educators ask, "How do we provide evidence that this has actually occurred?" Well, firstly, I acknowledge that may well be the case, and often is, however, this may be part of the initial reflection or evaluative practice stage of critical reflection and that critical reflection process. These conversations will lead to something and have further depth involved to them to allow for an informed change or enhancement. The conversations then become the spark that may well be noted simply in the summary of the critical reflection that's used as the reference point and may recorded as the initial seed that started that particular critical reflection journey. In regards to different methods of actually recording critical reflection, some of the ways you might consider documenting your critical reflection is in journals or mapped out and documented in services' online applications, maybe in services' unique template forms with specific probing questions to guide the reflection. Maybe it's in important improvement planning documents or even potentially through a whiteboard mind map that's been photographed to reflect back on later. There is no one way to document your journey. These are just some suggested variations. Be creative. Get others involved to ensure it's relevant to your service context. If you network with other services, have a chat and see what they use and what they find helpful. As Bernice said, enjoy the journey. What I would say is your critical reflection journey is your own. It's really important to document it in a way that's meaningful and useful to you. Ensure it's user friendly, accessible, and understood by those who are involved and those who'll be guided by it.

- Fantastic, Alison. That's great, and I think, you know, we can't give you a magic template that's going to solve it, but I love the examples that you have provided, and we heard from Bernice what works well for them for that service, and I think, as you said, be creative. Have a chat to others. Find out what works well for you and your educators at your service. So thank you for that. I think you've given those online some food for thought here, Alison.

- Thanks, Belinda.

- Okay, so let's move on. If we look at some of the words we've used today, active, analysis, research, thinking, examining, ongoing, cycle, you can see that there's not one way of describing or engaging with critical reflection. We can't give you a template, as we've just mentioned. It's not that simple. It is relevant to the individual context of your service, and we recognise, as Alison mentioned earlier, it's not an easy process, so take heart. You're not alone if you're finding critical reflection challenging, and as Alison mentioned earlier, if you are finding it easy, then perhaps you're not digging deep enough. This is not about ticking a box and I acknowledge we certainly have not answered the common question I get often is, how do I get exceeding? What this is about is supporting continuous improvement and identifying areas or opportunities for change and inform change in your service program and practice to ultimately improve the outcomes for children. We do though hope today has given you some insights in the differences between reflection, that may be more evaluative in nature, and critical reflection, and also given you some information about the continuous cycle of critical reflection and how each of these aspects of the process are important to consider and use to inform your practice. I'd like to thank you all for joining us today and for all of the questions that you provided and sent in. As I mentioned, if you'd like to make contact with our team, the details are in the chat. The information inquiries team is also available to talk to you about anything to do with your service operation, and following today's session, you will receive a link to a short survey and I'd really encourage everyone to complete this. The feedback that you share with us really does help us to provide purposeful and relevant Roadshow sessions in the future. In our last slide, as we're going, as people are leaving the session today, I'm just going to leave this up so you can see the sources of the references we've used in today's presentation and some suggested further reading. So thank you all again for joining us. I hope everyone has a wonderful day. Thank you.

- So we've still got people joining. Great. Might just give it 30 more seconds before we get started, but the numbers are still increasing. Right, well welcome everybody to the asthma management in education and care services roadshow for the September 2022 roadshows. We're delighted to have Roxanne and Melinda here to present for us. Before we get started, I'd like to begin by acknowledging country. We have a video acknowledgement, but I'd also like to take a moment just to acknowledge that I'm coming to you from the lands of the Darkinjung people today, and pay my respects to the traditional custodians of the land and elders past and present. And we will just play the video acknowledgement of country now.

- We place our hands on the ground to acknowledge aboriginal land. We place our hands in the sky, that covers aboriginal land. We place our hands on to our hearts to care for aboriginal land. We promise. We place our hands on the ground.

- And we'll just move on to the next slide, which we'll cover a bit of housekeeping in. So as you may have noticed, the microphone, video, and chat functions will be disabled throughout the presentation. However, you can ask us questions in the Q and A section, and there's the opportunity to hit the thumbs up button near any questions that you see that are particularly pertinent or that you would really like to see answered to up vote them. We will be using Menti during the session, which involves scanning a QR code and answering some questions. So please make sure you've got a device ready. And this session is not being recorded for future publication. With that in mind, I'd like to hand over to Melinda and Roxanne, from the Sydney Children's Hospital, and I'm getting the name wrong, Melinda and Roxanne. My apologies. Just handing over to Sydney, to Roxanne and Melinda.

- Thank you, Kate. Thanks for that, sorry. So this is Roxanne and I'm Melinda. So thanks for having us today. So we'll get going with this presentation. So Roxy will start.

- Yes, we could go to the next slide. Thank you guys for joining us. So this is asthma management in education and care services. You can move forward to the next slide. And like Kate and Melinda said, my name is Roxanne. This is Melinda. We are asthma clinical nurse consultants at Sydney Children's Hospital, and we are aiming for asthma improvement in children. Next slide. And today we are going to focus on strategies to improve the asthma management within the childcare services environment, looking at essential things like medical policy, communication plans, identifying and developing individual asthma risk minimisation plans, and ensuring effective communication between staff and parents regarding their children's asthma management.

- I'm sure Kate can see, but we're just having, sorry Kate.

- Sorry, my apologies, everyone. Josiah, could you just make sure you're sharing the slide deck, please?

- Hopefully everyone can see them. Hopefully I look small, 'cause that's what I'm aiming to do. Look very small and skinny on the screen. Okay, I think everyone can kind of see it. Yes, okay let's keep going.

- Okay, thumbs up. Okay, you have the next slide? Yes, so we're just going to do a quick ice breaker, a brief poll, if we can go to how long can we live without?

- So just scan this code guys, scan it here, and use the code, and we'll ask you the next question.

- Is that slide next slide?

- Next slide, please.

- Once you've scanned the code, can everyone see the, okay. Everyone's had a chance to scan the code?

- Fantastic.

- Excellent. Okay, so how long we without food? Well, roughly two months. I think we have one and two months, so okay.

- So, and water was, So what are we saying? Three weeks was air and one month was food.

- And if we go to the next slide, so how long can we live without water? And the answer is three days.

- Three days.

- Getting there.

- Getting there okay.

- There's a bit of an even split that one. And the last one was, how long can we live without air? Excellent, yes, four minutes. Four minutes is right. And I guess this kind of just highlights the severity of asthma and the potential severity of asthma. It's a life-threatening condition if's not managed and treated correctly. So very important.

- And you can't live without your airway, and asthma affects the airway. So it's an example of what it's like, Maybe we would breathe through a straw and pinch the end of the straw over and when we're having that cocktail, take it out of the cocktail and actually breath the straw. If you pinch the end over, that's what it feels like with someone that's having an asthma episode. They can't get the air out.

- Yes, so as you all know, I'm sure, asthma is a condition that affects the airways in the lungs. So if you visualise the airways like an upside down tree, you can see the trick here. If we, next, click on, yes. The trick here is the trunk of the tree, and then we have the branches, which are our airways, if we go along to the next slide. Yes, and this is what moves air in and out of the lungs. So next slide, please. Now a normal airway, so you can see on the left-hand side, we've got our normal airway and this consists of mucosal lining on the inside and smooth muscle tissue on the outside. And this is an example of a nice open airway, pink mucosal lining, nice, smooth, relaxed muscle. Children with asthma have what we call twitchy or sensitive airways. So when they're exposed to certain triggers, the airways react abnormally, and you can see on the right-hand side, you get muscle tightening on the outside of the airway. And then on the inside, you get swelling and inflammation and also increased mucus production there. Now all these three things contribute to narrowing of the airway as you can see, making it difficult for the air to pass through the airways and then leading to the asthma symptoms that we all know well, which is shortness of breath, wheeze, cough, and chest tightness.

- The important thing to say is not all these symptoms need to occur to indicate that someone is having an asthma episode. Please never wait for all of them. Some children can be very unique, and just experience shortness of breath and a wheeze. And also the wheeze is not a good indicator of an asthma episode, because if you've got muscle tightening really, really tight here, you can't make that whistling sound because that's how we get a wheeze, is when the airways are really tight. So a wheeze is not always a good indicator, just to let you know.

- Okay, so next slide. Now we don't know exactly what causes asthma, but asthma triggers are things that can set off or start up someone's asthma symptoms. So triggers can be different, and a child's individual triggers are really important to know, 'because this is a way that we can minimise the potential trigger and then hopefully avoid flare ups in service. So the most common trigger for children's are coughs and colds. And I guess, very difficult to avoid, but strategies to reduce the spread of virus, I guess, that you could think about are cleaning down surfaces, hand washing, regular hand washing, sanitiser available, kind of trying to get parents to consider keeping their kids at home, if they're really unwell. If they're potentially contagious, I know that's a hard thing to do as well.

- And we'd recommend also the flu vaccination too. We promote that as according to immunisation guidelines and when New South Wales health and the relevant health bodies bring that out, we'd recommend that in particular.

- Yes, and then for your more allergic asthmatics, so things to think about at house, dust mite, pollens, grasses, pet hair, that kind of thing. So when you're thinking about your service, and thinking about the outdoor areas, planting low allergen gardens, and there is a list on Asthma Australia, of low allergen plants, mowing the lawns out of hours, that kind of thing, obviously, dust minimisation. So minimising the carpet and the material curtains you have within your centre, obviously cleaning the bedding, the sheets regularly on a hot wash or putting them out in the sun.

- Yes, can I just say one thing about that? My daughter was at a childcare centre and also an out of school care service. And I noticed one of the biggest things they had were all these stuffed soft toys sitting around. And just to let you know that they are dust mite breeders and infection, in terms of a really big at risk in terms of infection control. So minimising toys, and another thing is, I think we all know, as in the early childhood sector is that children will carry around a soft bunny or a toy that they have. So it's really important that that's placed back in the child's bag. And I know there's an attachment with it, but it's really important that they don't kind of continually walk around with that, because that dust mites and infections kind of spreading to everyone. So it's really important. And washing of sheets, I would say, I'm one of those parents that would always wash my sheets weekly, but I'm sure you know parents that probably don't bring the sheets back washed or you might be lucky enough at your service not to need bedding or you might be lucky enough to have kind of a washing service there, which is great, which is the hot cycle, 50 degrees.

- That's right. Also for those high pollen, high pollution days, there is an evidence-based app out there called Air Rater, which detects the quality of the air. Also things like utilising things like air purifiers.

- Yes, there's evidence for air purifiers now that can make a difference on people with asthma. It's really important to know that dehumidifiers, there's no evidence for that now, and air ionizers are the other thing that you might go to electrical store and they'll try to push you to buy an air ionizer. We really would encourage you to buy an air purifier, but with a HEPA filter, a H-E-P-A filter, similar to what you get in your vacuum cleaners, that actually will pull the dust particles out of the environment and actually contain it into a sealed canister.

- Other triggers, I guess, that are out there are actually strong smells, so things like cleaning products, perfumes, paints can trigger an asthma episode. So kind of try and minimise, if you're needing any maintenance done, try to minimise that, you're at using paints, harsh chemicals, try and minimise that too, after hours again. They are potential triggers for asthma. Other things like smoking, obviously a big one, and smoking, or vaping smoke, it's both the same. They both trigger asthma episodes, just making sure that staff and parents are aware that the centre is a non-smoking zone. Second-hand smoke, again, can be a trigger, and can be harmful.

- And just remember, it's coming out from your pores and clothing, so whilst someone might have a break and go and have a smoke, just remember that when they come back in, they're really washing their hands. And they've almost like got like a smoker's jacket, we'd really recommend that if that was the method. The other thing is that we have a lot of issues with, is that parents driving in the cars and we know that they're not meant to be smoking. It's illegal to be smoking in the car, but they'll then drop their child at the early day care centre or the after hour school care centre. And an hour later the child will be experiencing an asthma episode. So it's really important to have that discussion with parents. If you can smell that tobacco on them, just to say, it's really important that you can change your jacket around your children. It can make a little bit of a difference.

- Another one that you may not think about, and I guess it applies also to, or maybe more so to, anaphylaxis and allergy, is checking craft supply content. So looking at potential for cross contamination, using low irritant supplies. There can also be traces of allergens in craft material. So have a think when you're using egg cotton boxes, and cereal boxes, are there children with allergies? Is this a trigger for one of your children? Have a think about that.

- Think about what you could minimise in your environment currently. Hopefully there's a few take away things there. And also think about, I mean, I know you can't move the location of your childcare service or your early childhood care service, but just remember if you are on a main road, that the particle matter that's coming from cars and the carbon dioxide and things from cars, can actually impact. So the air quality app is a really good app, because it identifies those days when the particulate matter is really high in the environment. And when we talk about that particular matter, it's the matter that's actually less than five microns that's getting right down into that small airways that we saw when we illustrated that, the look of the respiratory system.

- So we're going to go onto a scenario now.

- So you might see a QR code on the side, but...

- Yes, but you can pop in the questions and answers chat. If you have any answers that you might come up with. So Tommy Sniff is a five year old boy who's recently been enrolled in your childcare service. He is known to have frequent asthma episodes and hospitalisations in the past. He has a preventer and a reliever medication, which he takes via a spacer and his main triggers are house dust mite, pollen, colds, and flus, and occasionally exercise. So what safety strategies would you take at your centre? And if you could pop in Q and A.

- Have a think about a child in your service like this, and there are many of them that would be attending your service. So just have a little think on what you would do.

- And enrolled for the first time. Everyone is a bit shy on the name. Okay, you need to reply to that.

- Okay, we can kind of think about it.

- Anyone got any ideas they'd like to pop in the chat?

- Josiah, we can also move to the Menti screen. Yes, there we go.

- Ah, fantastic, thank you. Oh, brilliant. Okay, that's fantastic.

- Excellent.

- So let's go through some of these things, which is great. Okay, what safety strategies would you take at your centre? Asthma management plans, yes. So we're talking about asthma action plans. So that identifies that the child does have asthma, which is really, really important. Some of the other things are so when we're talking about asthma management plan, it's really important that you're documenting, obviously not just on the asthma management plan, but on the relevant documentation of the service that the child has identified as asthma. And that is communicated to all staff. So really important.

- And also making sure that you have, that you've got an asthma policy.

- In place.

- Asthma management policy. That the parents have been given a copy of this policy, that the staff have access to the policy, that you've got a communication plan, and everything is communicated to the parents and the staff.

- I love this one here. We have purchased air purifiers in each classroom. That's fantastic. That's brilliant that you've actually done that. And it's interesting you read because it's important on purchasing the air purifiers that you work out the area within your room because they are based on square meter in terms of how many air purifiers you would need. Regular cleaning, which is great. So we are talking about damp dusting, which is really important. Staying indoors when air quality is low, I love that. So looking at the air quality app is really important. Regular dusting out of hours, yes, so that we're not actually putting all that particle matter in the old feather dusters we had, probably not a good idea.

- Risk minimisation forms. Fantastic, so important. So important to have, and then you can look at strategies, putting strategies into place to make sure these potential triggers are minimised.

- I like this here, reducing pillows and rugs. Have a chair for him or her to sit on, instead of the floor. That is perfect, because the dust mites live in all the carpets, which is brilliant. So you really can identify that. And also the toys, I notice someone cleaning the toys. We go to these, what do they call those fidgets now, the plastic soft things. I hate them as a parent. They're annoying as anything, but I think that there is actually a plus in that, because you can actually wash them.

- Not good for the environment, but good to wipe down.

- Exactly, and pillows and things like that are really important.

- Yes, making sure spacer medication that you have, and it's up to the parents obviously to provide you with that, make sure it's in date, and it has Tommy's name and address on it, that's fantastic.

- And ensure family are provided with an asthma management plan. I think I've been reading this side here, and communication plan, discuss minimising, spread of hand washing, periodically steam, cleaning of mats. Wow guys, this is really impressive. Can I just say you're really up to date with everything.

- One other thing, which I'm sure has been written, but I haven't seen as I'm skimming through, is just to make sure everyone has received their asthma management training. And as you know, it's a requirement, needs to be done at least every three years, and you need at least one staff member on duty at all times, to have had their asthma management training.

- And just to reinforce today, today is not an asthma management ACECQA approved course. We are just giving you the information, and giving you some tips and handy things. And we can talk about training towards the end, but addressing triggers is brilliant, and making sure the parents supply everything. So I think you've really covered it all, in terms of that. So supervision, yes wow, you've done excellent.

- Yes.

- Wow.

- Tommy is in good hands.

- He's in very good hands.

- Okay, fantastic, I think we can probably-

- Go to the next slide, but I love it. I'd love a copy of all those comments, because they're really great and they show us that you really are thinking about it. Okay, so yes.

- Next slide, thank you. So obviously you most certainly covered off everything. But the main safety strategies I guess, would be making sure the medical condition is clearly documented in his file. Making sure you've got an asthma policy and it's current, and that it's been shared with the parents, having a think about who's in charge of updating these medical policies too, making sure they are reviewed regularly, making sure you have Tommy's individual asthma action plan, that it's visible, available to all staff and that all staff actually understand it and are able to follow it. Some of them can be a little bit confusing or complicated. Making sure you've done a risk minimisation plan, and have a communication plan that the parents are aware of. Making sure everyone's had their asthma training, and that you have a puffer and reliever for Tommy.

- When Roxy mentioned on here, it says individual asthma action plans. And in the previous Menti, you were saying asthma management plan, just remember that those two are used interchangeably. So don't get confused. They are the same thing. Asthma management plan and asthma action plan are the same.

- Okay, next slide please. Okay, so be prepared and aware, and preparation is the key to prevention. So just talking a little bit more on the documents or strategies you would need for a newly enrolled asthmatic. So firstly, your individual asthma action plan or your management plan, obviously developed by a GP or a medical practitioner, or a nurse practitioner, whether it be after a presentation to hospital, or through management with their GP. Obviously, it's their parents responsibility to provide you with this. And I know they can sometimes be a little bit difficult, but it's also their responsibility to keep it updated. So annual, at the least an annual update, of their asthma action plan, or if details change at all. Making sure that staff understand it and are able to initiate asthma first aid and follow their individual asthma action plan. Making sure it's displayed obviously in a prominent location. Now there are different versions out there. The colour coded one, oh yes, the colour coded one is the one that we give our patients after they've been admitted to hospital.

- There are other versions.

- But, there are other versions. And I'll just go to the next slide, because I wanted to have a chat to you about this version, which is an action plan by asthma flare-up. And Melinda do you-

- Yes, so this was launched in 2017 by the health minister, and basically was one of our biggest bugbears with the education sector. They said, oh my God, Melinda, the amount of plans that we get that we don't understand and that staff are required to follow, it's ridiculous. Like what does as needed mean? All these plans were coming through saying as needed. And we had GPs just completely confused. And when you look at when the child's actually, present within your service, you're not needing to know about preventer medications. You really just need to know about what to do in an asthma emergency. You also need to identify are those children, do they have anaphylaxis? And we thought, gee, anaphylaxis have done it really well. They've got this one page document that's displayed easily, that everyone can recognise. So this is why we came up with this form. And this is a form that we'd really encourage you to use. And there's a link to it down here. And certainly Kate and the team can share that link with you at the end of the workshop, but it's clear. It's got a child's photo here, the child's name, date of birth. The child has confirmed food allergy, insect, or medication allergies. And if you get a tick here, then that indicates that you need to know, has the child got an ASCIA action plan? And if they do, then you would refer to the ASCIA action plan. Also some children who might need reliever medication prior to exercise, do need to know that as a staff, that's really important, to be aware of that for excursions and when you're doing any activities. And Kate's kindly shared that in the chat, which is fantastic. And the most important thing is, that it's got signed by the parent and carer here. So the parent and carer knows that you are following the four step asthma first aid plan, because that's what your staff are trained in. That's a ACECQA requirement is asthma first aid. And obviously if there's anything different, if you've got a child with severe complex asthma, myself or someone at Westmead, or one of the other hospitals would be calling you saying, "Hey, this child is a little bit unique. "We want you to call an ambulance. "They've got a P1 plan. "We want you to initiate treatment straight away, "and call an ambulance." But that's only a very small minority of people, very, very small. So we'd really encourage you guys to make sure you've got accurate documentation, that is up to date. I'm just going to quickly read some of these Kate, if you don't mind. Is that sufficient to do a course in first aid in the asthma education care every three years, or do educators have to do a specific separate asthma course every three years? Okay, so the first aid course that you see on the ACECQA website, you actually can scroll down. And there's one I think called HLTP, and it covers first aid anaphylaxis and asthma, that covers asthma in there, and that covers anaphylaxis in there. However, there are separate courses for anaphylaxis and asthma. And I'm not going to say that I don't, I'll say it today, but we really advocate for you to do a separate asthma thing. It is not, you don't have to do it. It is covered in the first aid course, but we believe that you really need intensive education on asthma and anaphylaxis. And we feel that once you've been to a course, specific on asthma and anaphylaxis, you notice that there's so much to cover in the course content of an asthma of a first aid course, so it can get quite confusing. So we would recommend that.

- This is a good question.

- Can we display this format instead of other asthma action plans? Yes, you can display this plan in lieu of the asthma action plans. Whatever suits your facility, and so that staff are familiar with it. And as long as staff understand it, that's the most important thing. If the parents do not provide an asthma plan as the doctor has said, it's seasonal, not all the time, what can we do? Okay, so that's a really tricky one. And I think it's important to actually say, "Look, if the child has an asthma plan, they have asthma. "Therefore you need a plan." And even if it is only seasonal that they're only getting it, a flare-up can occur at any time without warning. And I think you need to communicate that to the parents. We have a email address at the end. If you have issues that you want to email us about regarding this, and there's a bit of conflict, we're happy to be the person that has a chat in between. Do asthma action plans need to be renewed every year? Yes, we would recommend. Or if the child's treatment changes at any point in time. So really important. Our policy states that asthma and anaphylaxis are renewed annually. That is brilliant. Can I just tell you that is the gold standard, and that is what we would encourage, but it's not mandatory from ACECQA, but we would say that those services that do it annually, they are in our gold star books. Can I tell you? It's a little bit like CPR, you need training it every day because you need to know exactly what to do. But again, ACECQA recommend only every three years. Just what is the difference between a preschool wheeze action plan and an asthma action plan? They're pretty much the same thing. So in children under two years of age, you can get a wheeze asthma action plan because they're known as what's called as viral induced wheeze. So it's a virus that's causing the wheeze. And often it's the same, it's treated with Ventolin. So we would treat it exactly the same as we would treat asthma, if they do have wheeze.

- It's very difficult to diagnose with asthma under the age of five, really, because the airways are changing, they're maturing. Viral induced wheeze in your young ones is very common and most, a lot of kids, or the majority of kids will grow out of it. And it's hard to diagnose asthma until about the age of five, just purely for that reason. The airways are maturing and developing.

- Yes. And someone just, Chris asked about the asthma, I think you're talking about the course of asthma first aid plan and training and what are the requirements of services. Yes, it is legislated under safe work, New South Wales. And we were actually involved in the consultation of that to ensure that you could have asthma first aid kits, and that you follow the asthma first aid plan, and that you are trained in it. Should we keep an extra Ventolin other than the prescribed one? Yes, you would, because you may get that first child that has their first episode at the education care sector and they may not be diagnosed with asthma. And we will talk about that later, but it's important to have a spare one. I have a parent who does not understand her child's asthma action plan using the preventer reliever. This is so common. Not using the preventer daily as it states in the plan. So if the child is not coughing, it's not given, but then flares up a lot. Do you know what? That makes me so sad to think that that actually happens, because the preventer is what reduces a likelihood of them coming to emergency. They don't understand that when you are well, you must take a preventer every day. So that needs education. And I would say at the end of the session today, log on to our website, www.asthmainchildren.org.au. We have live webinars once a month and we are happy for you to share that link to parents, and it doesn't cost. Refer them in, if you've got parents that are having issues understanding asthma, have got poor follow up, and I've seen a few questions here, put them through to our webinars and we'll actually get them on the track in terms of who they need to speak to in their area.

- Yes, and then we can support them in the community too, and make sure they've got a GP that's supportive and also understands.

- Yes. And the other thing is that someone asked about air quality, and I'm just going back a little bit here in terms of the air quality. The air quality rater app is what we recommend. Someone had asked that question previously. And in terms of air purifiers, there's no one that we would recommend. We would recommend one with a HEPA filter, H-E-P-A. We know that Dyson have got them, but they're very expensive. I did actually see, and I think it's Aldi, might have them this weekend or coming up, 'cause I did see them in the brochures. So just a heads up there. You might wanna head out to Aldi. And I looked at them, they look quite suitable. Okay, move to the next slide, move to the next slide. We could talk all day.

- Anything that we-

- Missed today in in the comments, we'll come back, and we'll liaise with Kate, and we'll answer all the questions individually, so that no one feels that they've been left out, okay? Just so that we don't slow down the presentation, because we do talk a lot.

- So another document, important document, when it comes to a newly enrolled asthmatic patient, is individual risk minimisation plan. This is the responsibility for and the development by the childcare service, in consultation with the parents. So it needs to be done. It's a collaborative effort and it's basically identifying the triggers and looking at strategies to minimise children's exposure to these. And you did a great job previously in mentioning, giving a lot of examples for this. These should be updated annually as well, along with the asthma action plan by yourself and the parent, or if any details of the child's asthma change. And not just looking at on onsite environments, but any potential offsite environments. So excursions, yes.

- Yes, it's any of those kind of events, you can actually log onto the Asthma Australia website, and actually download that and use it as a template. Please feel free to use that. It's really well done. But it's thinking about, are you going bush walking for the day? What are the plants that are out there? Is it a high pollen count day? Is it, is there lots of pollution in the air? Things such as that. Just really need to think about these things, you know. Is it a cold day? Should they, do they have a cough and cold that day? Do you have things like the asthma first aid kit? Do you have those children that are identified that have asthma within your service? So it's really about thinking about that individual child, and going through that. And we are happy to email us if you're concerned about something that you're not quite sure, about risk minimisation, we're happy to kind of talk to you about it.

- Yes, and making sure all the staff have this, it's easily accessible to everyone and somewhere kind of, wherever you keep your asthma action plans as well, just making sure you're highlighting those major triggers to each of your patients with asthma. Because like I said, everyone's triggers are different and they'll vary greatly. So, that's-

- Yes, sorry, and just minimisation plans are available on the asthma.org website

- Asthma Australia.

- And so you can download those. The air purifier are selling in Aldi. I'm just quickly going back to these questions. Would you be covered legally if you provide a medication to a child that's not prescribed with asthma? Yes you are, and Roxy is going to talk about that later, okay? Do you need to update the plan every 12 months, yes. I've had issues with obtaining asthma action plans that have GP or doctors sign off. They seem to be a gray area. Our asthma action plans require to have a doctor sign off. They are meant to, because it's an opportunity for the doctor to review them at that time, and actually see what's happening with the overall asthma management. We have a doctor refusing to do a plan for our parents. Is there anything we can do, so the plan is able to be provided?

- Maybe I they should get another doctor.

- And I think you should email us and we'll email that GP. And perhaps they just don't know that a document like this exists and they often think that an asthma action plan's not relevant for educational sector and some of these GPS, it's just a form of education to say, "Hey, there's this document that exists." So we're happy to share that with them. Okay, so let's go to the next slide.

- Yes, so then documents, which I'm sure you all have asthma management policies and communication plans. So asthma management policy will detail the responsibilities and the communication plan, detail the responsibilities of our staff, parents, provide guidelines on the management of asthma within that childcare service. So looking at procedures for prevention, and management of asthma, again like risk minimisation, your asthma first aid, it covers staff training requirements. And again, your risk minimisation plans and your individual asthma action plans, and management plans, all responsibilities of the parents and the staff. Equipment required, so things like your asthma first aid kits, asthma first aid posters. How many kits do you need, whose responsibility is to be checking the asthma kits, making sure the medications aren't expired, that kind of thing. So the communication plan obviously is like a direct line of contact, I guess, between the parent, carers and staff, making sure they're aware of all your policies and procedures and that you are managing the asthma according to the requirements, yes.

- Yes, and just-

- Sorry, sorry, and the link down below is again, a link for a template. So Asthma Australia has some great templates on there for any documents that you want to have a look at, you think might need updating or just to check, and make sure you're on the right track, which I'm sure you are. But there's great templates there, if you want to have a look.

- And I mean, it's just really important to let the parents know, they want to know what's going on. And there are many policies that you can correct, basically just drop your name into those templates. And we should put one about, we should put an example actually up on our website at one. I think that might really help you guys out. So we'll look at doing that, putting a policy up there of a mock so that you can kind of just reword it and things. It's pretty easy and straightforward. It should be just a one-page document.

- Yes, next slide please. Okay, so we have a question.

- A Menti.

- A Menti, if you guys could scan that. So what medication should be in your first aid asthma kit?

- And this is really interesting thinking about this answer, because I've just had a question here saying we have a doctor prescribing Flixotide as a reliever. And thankfully, a person in the chat has said our training assisted us with knowing otherwise. I'm really worried that that doctor has put Flixotide in the reliever section because Flixotide is a preventer. So wow, that's a bit of a worry.

- Wow, and interesting responses. Okay, I think we're done.

- Okay so, when you look at that Ventolin and reliever medications, those people are correct, okay? All of the above is probably not correct. Because we don't use preventers in an asthma first aid situation. Relievers are the blue and cooling colouring, one of the brand names is Ventolin, that's why Ventolin is also applicable, okay? Preventers, autumn in colouring. No, we do not do preventers.

- And yes, if we click along. So I guess this is a good example of the fact that there are other, oh sorry, we've passed it on. It's not just Ventolin, so there are other trade names. There's other devices. So we have our, the Ventolin is certainly in the most common aerosolised reliever medication, but we also have Asmol, Zempreon is another trade name, which is a new one. Airomir, so our auto inhalers, you may see. Some kids might come in with those, when the dose is delivered automatically, and they don't need to, if they're lacking the coordination to kind of breathe in and press at the same time. And Bricanyl, so Bricanyl is also a reliever, but it's a dry powder. So just to be aware, there are other relievers out there, not just Ventolin.

- And the Bricanyl, just to say to you, that it's really recommended for children seven years and above. And the reason for that, it takes a great deal of inspiratory airflow. When I say that, I mean an ability to suck in, and that can be really difficult if you are experiencing an asthma attack. But if you were in an asthma first aid situation, and you had to use it, you could use Bricanyl. But just to say that, usually you'd be using Ventolin and these ones here.

- Yes, so aerosolised medication.

- We'll go to the next slide.

- So what is in your service's asthma first aid kit? Obviously, your a reliever, your Ventolin, your Asmol, your Zempreon. What else, yes, so excellent, a spacer. And what else do we have, a mask. Anything else, yes, asthma first aid poster or instructions, or asthma action plan, and that's it. So a little bomb bag of all the essentials there. And making sure, yes, making sure that you have more than one of these. You've got them to take on your excursions. You've got spares and someone is checking these regularly, just to check the medication is within date, that the spaces are clean and yes, so.

- So that should be stored within a suitable location within your service. I've had a couple of services who've accidentally locked them away, because they're medication. Please do not lock them away. Ventolin or a blue reliever is a life-saving medication. If someone was to use a blue reliever who wasn't diagnosed with asthma, it's okay alright? The important thing is that you've got really quick access to it in the event that you need it. As we talked about how many minutes can you not have your airway for? So when you talk about EpiPens and we talk about relievers, they need to be in an easily accessible location, that's not locked away.

- Okay, next slide please. Okay, when would you use a puffer and spacer with a mask in asthma first aid? So when are you going to use the mask in your asthma first aid?

- What ages, this is a really interesting question. Okay, let's see what everyone is saying. Wow, this is interesting, okay. Always, Okay. Okay, evening up. Okay, alright. So interestingly enough, just to let you know, that you only need a mask for children under four years of age, okay? Once they can put their mouth on the end of the mouthpiece, like this, they're actually going to get more medication into their airways, okay? Because when you actually attach a mask to it, a lot of it will sit on the mouth and the face, okay? And the reason why we've got masks is because children can't adequately put their mouth on the end of the mouthpiece, okay? So what we would recommend is zero to four years, a mask, and then four years and above, without a mask. Obviously, if you have a child that is developmentally delayed or you have oral aversion or something, you could actually use a mask, and that is indicated for that. So less than four years with a mask attached to the spacer.

- We have couple questions here. So with the spacer in the first aid kit should it be replaced after it's been used for one child, yes.

- It does need to be replaced. And spacer should not be shared. And you need like many other, you need a few different spacers that can be replaced. Obviously, environmentally, you want to kind of give it to the parent. There are actually cardboard ones now, that you can actually get that are single patient use. But again, you've got to be able to basically put your mouth on the end of the mouthpiece here, which is sometimes not often an option for your little children under four years of age, like so. So there are flat ones that can be used. Can I just say to you though, in a situation where you have multiple children having asthma episodes and you have one spacer available, it's really important you get that medication into the child. Okay, please, infection control shouldn't be an issue in this point in time. The most important thing is getting that medication into the child. So you may, on the off chance have to use, it's no different to sharing a cup of water. If someone really, really needed a cup of water and had to share a cup of water. It's not ideal, okay? But it's better than not having the asthma medication at all. Just reading all these questions, if the individual asthma action plan states Ventolin can we give a generic reliever if the parents supply this? Yes, because Ventolin is the brand name. Asmol and Zempreon are the cheaper versions of it basically. So yes you can. It contains the active ingredient salbutamol.

- Should you wash your child's child individual spacer after use or can you do it weekly? You can actually do it weekly or fortnightly. Oh if they have a virus or recover a cold, obviously do it more regularly. Just purely infection control. But fortnightly cleaning up the spacers is what is recommended.

- And really, it should be the parent that's doing this and also spacers from the asthma first aid kit don't need to be washed, okay, because they're being used or one off, okay. But the first time you ever use a spacer, it's really important that you prime it the first time and how we prime that is we wash it in warm, soapy water, like your Fairy liquid or your Morning Fresh and you pop it out and you air dry it. You don't rinse off the soap, okay. Because the soap prevents the electrostatic charge from clinging. And what that does is it prevents the medication from cleaning to the inside of the chamber. Okay, so we need to prime it the first time Say you had to use it and you didn't have time to actually pop it in the warm, soapy water and air dry prior to use, you could put up to 10 puffs of the Ventolin inside the chamber to coat the inside of it. Sorry that I'm putting it in ear. Okay, to coat the inside of it, like so. Okay, so you could actually do it. In terms of a nebulizer, still okay to use, I know some families are using these at home because they feel like their child isn't sucking the Ventolin properly. Spacers have been found to be as equally as effective as nebulizers in the treatment and management of asthma. You will actually get more medication and there's greater lung deposition if you use a spacer. When you use a nebulizer, what happens is you've got large particle sizes that sit in the mouth and they also are being lost to the environment. Okay, so no, spacers really it should be, nebulizers should really not be as common as we see. It should be spacers first line. If a child comes into emergency, they're treated with a spacer and puff if they're having a mild or moderate attack. If they're having a severe or life threatening, we may put a nebulizer on them because they can't put their mouth on the mouthpiece. But really it is about education. And we really work, we've got some great videos on our website for that. Someone said, I couldn't source the cardboard spacer from Chemist. They said they're just used in hospitals. That's not correct. The LiteAire spacers are available. The brand is LiteAire. And also Bird Healthcare have bought out new spacers. I don't promote them, but I'm just saying email us. If you've got any questions about where to get them. And they can also be purchased from Asthma Australia.

- Is it compulsory to use a face mask and spacer? A face mask for under four? It's not compulsory, but it is best practice. I think if you don't use a spacer, you get about 15% of the medication into the lungs and the rest just gets stuck in the mouth, in the oral cavity. So it is really, really important to use a spacer.

- Someone said, could you restate the comment about spacer in the first aid kit, only one use. So spacers is infection control guidelines brought out by the NHMRC that spacers are not to be shared. Okay, so spacers are single patient use only so that you need obviously more spacers than one spacer. So this is what the spacers shouldn't be shared.

- Yes, obviously you can reuse it if it's the child's own spacer, just clean it every two weeks. But the one in the first aid kit, get rid of it and get a fresh one.

- And parents should be supplying their own. I think we'll go to the next slide, because I'm looking at time. I could keep talking, I love all these questions. I get excited when I see these questions. I can't, but I don't want to present. I want to answer the questions. Okay, let's go.

- Okay, next question. Would you administer Ventolin to a child not documented to have asthma on enrolment. Let's go. Excellent, good to know.

- Well, fantastic, okay. Most important thing is you've got to get that medication into the airway, and that you are covered legally in the ACECQA regulations in patient care.

- Yes, can we go to the next slide? If we go to the next slide, please. Yes, so regulation 94 states that you are able to administer medication without authority in an asthma emergency. Obviously, obviously so you don't need parental permission. Obviously document and inform the parents as soon as possible afterwards, but you are exempt from regulation 93, which states that you need verbal consent. So if it's an asthma emergency, you are able to administer Ventolin. It's a very safe drug.

- Yes, and the thing is, if any child has difficulty breathing, you still can use it. But we're not asking you to be doctors and nurses. That's why we're saying, give it but call emergency services because you don't know why they could be having difficulty breathing. It could be something else. It could be a foreign body. It could be anything. And also see how it's got notification to emergency services and parent, I don't want you calling the parent first and then emergency services, the other way around, okay? The reason why that is, I've worked on a few coronial inquests where the parents said, don't give the medication until I get there. So please call emergency services first, then the parent that you're administering as the first aid, 'because you're legally covered to do that.

- How many first aid kits with you suggest at a centre?

- Oh, okay.

- How big is your centre?

- So minimum two, I would say, one to be at the centre that's to be used onsite, to stay there, and one to be used for offsite excursions. So you can imagine this is a huge issue for high schools because they've got multiple groups going off at one time, hopefully in the educational sector, you are not all going off at different times, but I know OSH services, for example, they go off and do excursions and things and some services keep their kids at the centre. So really you need to cover both bases.

- And it's really great to have these paper spacers because it's kind of important to have at least once, you know, have a spacer for each asthmatic patient that you have. So you're not having to share spacers. Repeat how to prime.

- Prime, so warm, soapy water and air dried. And what we'll do is a lot of these questions that are coming through, we've got a handout that I'll forward to Kate. It's on our website, but it is relevant for the educational care sector childcare staff. And a lot of these questions are answered here in that. So I'll get that emailed through at the end, and Kate can facilitate sending that throughout.

- We might keep going.

- So next slide.

- Yes, okay, so we're back to Tommy Sniff. So he is not having a great month, and his mum's informed you that he's been diagnosed with a peanut allergy after a vomiting episode at home. So he now has an EpiPen and he's allergic, or his triggers are peanuts and possibly tree nuts. What additional safety strategies would your centre need to consider or implement in this situation? So if you could just.

- Use your little Menti QR code.

- Any strategies that you'd put into place, that would be fantastic. So if we... Yes, no peanuts, yes.

- Remember you are a peanut-free zone, not a nut-free zone because you can never guarantee that you're not going to be nut free.

- Yes, an allergy anaphylaxis action plan, fantastic. Another look at your risk minimisation plan again. Nut free, be aware, yes. No nuts action plan, yes.

- Peanut free, yes peanut free.

- And anaphylaxis action plan So you ASCIA action plan. Again, look at your risk minimisation plan and communication plan.

- Allergy card, yes.

- Yes, make sure you have an EpiPen. Make sure the parents are providing you with the medication again, clearly labelled with the date of birth, expiry date. That's fantastic. Yes, and look at your risk minimisation in regards to peanuts. Yes, fantastic.

- I think you've got it all. What we might do, Kate, is go to the next slide. If you don't mind, and then we can just address those. Because I think many of you have addressed it.

- Okay, so the next slide please.

- So, I think you covered all this. You confirm the medication, condition, documentation, communicate to staff. Ensure you've got an allergy and anaphylaxis policy. You've got an individual ASCIA plan. You've updated your risk minimisation communication plan. And you're ensuring staff have received anaphylaxis training. You've got easy access to Tommy's EpiPen and Anapen.

- Okay, so next slide please. After lunch, you notice that Tommy is sitting alone next to the sand pit. He has a dry cough and you can hear a slight wheeze. When you ask him how he feels, he complains of a sore chest. You're the only caregiver in view at the time. What steps would you take if any?

- Scan that code and then jump that up. What steps would you take, if any? Okay, it'd be interesting to see what everyone says here. Follow action plan. Is that the ASCIA one or is that the anaphylaxis one? What do you reckon?

- Yes, so what happening here?

- Give him his antihistamine if he has any. Remove the trigger, call out for assistance.

- Call out for assistance, fantastic, sit him up.

- Give asthma reliever. Would you give the asthma reliever? I don't is it anaphylaxis for asthma? What do you do? I don't know.

- It's a bit of a trick now. Now we we've got two things to think about, don't we? We've got asthma and we've got anaphylaxis. And the reason we gave you this trick scenario.

- Because it did actually happen, okay?

- Yes, and we want you to think about call triple zero, yes, certainly. Monitor him.

- Stay with him.

- Treat, ah here we go, treat as anaphylactic first, as per action plan. Then follow up with asthma reliever. Here is the answer.

- This person gets the gold star today. Kate, can you work out who that person is? Because that one in the centre has got it in one, okay? Anaphylaxis is really hard to spell, I do it admit that.

- Okay, can we go, fantastic. Can we go to the next slide please?

- So that's the most important thing you do, if you are in doubt. If you've got a child that has asthma and anaphylaxis, if you are in doubt, the first thing you do is always treat the anaphylaxis, because it has adrenaline in it and it will actually work and help with the anaphylaxis and the asthma at the same time.

- We've lost our slides. We'll just wait guys, very good responses.

- Josiah, are you still there?

- That's okay, we can keep going, 'because we could talk till the cows come home.

- Yes so, and the reason we put this, well, do you want to give them, tell them about the...

- So there was one case that I was involved with, and unfortunately it didn't end up in a great end result but and it's fair enough, it is so confusing understanding whether it was asthma or anaphylaxis. And so the staff were continually giving the Ventolin and the child was really irritable. It was after lunch, they'd eaten something. They were really angry. They weren't taking the Ventolin. They were ringing the parents saying the child's really behaviorally is just changed, and the child started vomiting, but they kept on giving the reliever. And it wasn't until the ambulance said, we think it's anaphylaxis, give the EpiPen. Yes, the child, they gave the EpiPen and within minutes the child reverted to being completely well again.

- So just, I know you have anaphylaxis training and you're having a presentation on anaphylaxis as well, but we just wanted to highlight the fact that asthma and anaphylaxis do share some symptoms confusingly. So that tightness in the chest, the wheeze, the shortness of breath, and the cough can be anaphylaxis, can be asthma. So what we always say is, if we can go to the next slide, please.

- Acute, it's always the acute, okay? Allergic action will always come on acutely.

- So always, if you are unsure, always treat anaphylaxis first, and use your Anapen or your EpiPen, and then treat the asthma. An EpiPen or adrenaline will work a little for asthma. It'll improve the symptoms of asthma, but Ventolin will not help in anaphylaxis. And it's a medical emergency, as you know, it can progress incredibly quickly. So always if there's any doubt, treat the anaphylaxis first.

- Go to the next slide.

- Okay, oh so we've been through this.

- We've covered this, we've covered what you do.

- So is it asthma or anaphylaxis? Obviously don't leave Tommy alone. If in doubt, treat the anaphylaxis first, follow the ASCIA plan, give the EpiPen, call an ambulance, and then treat the asthma. So follow your four step asthma first aid, notify the parents and document.

- And let the relevant authorities know.

- Yes, so our next slide, please. I think we're getting a bit.

- Yes so we're going to have to go through this really quickly 'because we're looking at time and we know that time is pressed and there's a few things we that want to go on with, but we're just going to quickly go through the four step asthma first aid plan with you. Today, you're not being trained in asthma first aid. We just want to show you what it is. We know that you do have to have separate accredited training where you get a certificate, but there's been a slight, not a slight change. The four step for asthma first aid plan is available from Asthma Australia, National Asthma Council, St. John's Ambulance. It's based on all the number four, okay. If you don't forget the number four, you'll never forget it. So really, really simple, so we're going to go through it.

- We're going to flick along a few slides. We might need to skip a few.

- We'll skip this one. Yes, just cause I'm looking at the time, yes. So implementing asthma first aid is really important, that you know what you are looking for, and you can see that the differences, and here's an example of someone who's having a severe asthma attack.

- Yes so there's mild, moderate, severe symptoms of asthma and they're treated differently. So if you're seeing mild to moderate symptoms, obviously you're implementing your asthma first stage.

- And not all symptoms need to be present, as a slide says down here. And like I talked, a wheeze may not be present.

- So you might, so the kids might be experiencing minor difficulty breathing. They might have a tight or a sore chest, say it's harder to breathe. They might be breathing with their tummy. They might be breathing a little bit faster. They can still sometimes talk in a full sentence if it's just a mild flare up or they might be just kind of minimising their words, kind of, if it's more moderate. They might still be looking alert, able to walk around and playing and still moving around, have normal skin colour. And they may have a cough, which is usually a dry kind of irritable cough, especially if they're doing things, they're exercising, and they may or may not have a wheeze. Sorry, next slide.

- So this is an example of a severe asthma episode. It's great difficulty breathing. It's sucking in at the throat here, okay? Here and sucking in of the rib cages. So you're seeing that intercostal retraction. They're not speaking, they're only speaking in like one letter or a syllable, if that, but they're pale and sweaty, they're losing oxygen. So you might get the blue around the lips. And as I said, there's often no wheeze heard at all, and it's often a silent chest.

- Yes, so obviously if you're seeing any of these symptoms, call an ambulance immediately and then implement asthma first aid. So we'll go to the next slide. This is the new asthma first aid.

- Asthma first aid plan.

- Poster, available on National Asthma Council. And we believe it's, the steps are still the same, but there is a little more option in the in the fourth step, isn't there? So, here we go.

- Yes, so there's four steps.

- So the first few steps are still the same. So make sure your child's sitting up comfortably, upright, so their airway's as open as possible, and keeping them calm and reassuring them. Obviously, if you are panicking, they're going to panic also. So we have our puffer and a spacer. If they have their own puffer in their pocket, if they're older, that's fantastic. Otherwise, call out for someone to go and get the asthma first aid kit. Don't leave them alone. So you need to, because this medication is aerosolised, you need to give it a good shake. Remember, and that's to mix the medication, to make sure you're getting the right dose. Remember to take the cap off, which can be forgotten in an emergency sometimes. Give it a shake, pop it on the end of your spacer. Now pop it in in the mouth and make sure there's a nice seal there. And then you're giving one puff, four breaths, and just normal breaths. They don't need to be doing huge deep breaths. So one puff, four breaths. And we'll repeat that four times. And four, one, two, three, four. Now we're waiting four minutes. Stay with the child obviously. Make sure they're comfortable and reassess, continually reassessing their symptoms. So for step four, after the four minutes, there's a few options here. So if we, next slide, oh hang on, sorry.

- Next slide, that's right, yes.

- So you go back, so if their breathing is normal, and it's completely improved, then no need to give any more, no need to give any more Ventolin. Obviously inform the doctors, suggest that they get a check-up. If they've had symptoms in your centre. The next option, or another option is if they're worse or they're not any better, then call them an ambulance immediately and keep giving the four puffs of the blue grey reliever, every four minutes until the ambulance arrives. There's one more option, which gives you a little bit more leeway on whether or not you need to immediately call an ambulance. And that's, if they're still kind of not quite breathing normally, they're still a little bit harder to breathe, you can give four more puffs of the blue grey reliever, and then reassess them after a couple of minutes. If they haven't improved call an ambulance. So basically, the new first aid poster gives you a little bit more, it gives you another option to give another four puffs before you call an ambulance, basically. Does that make sense?

- And look, the thing is, is that most kids pick up after the first four puffs, I will say that. But it's okay to keep giving it if you still need it. You might just get those side effects, which is hyperactive. They might get a bit shaky. These side effects do subside, okay? So don't be scared by the side effects.

- Yes, if we can go to the next slide, please.

- So I've just got these last two slides, and I know that we're four minutes over, but just bear with me, this is a map.

- Do you need to shake the Ventolin in between each puff? Sorry, this comes up a little bit. It is best practice to shake in between each puff, but in an emergency, no you don't need to. Just shake it in the start.

- Because you're not going to have time, but it can affect the amount of medications delivered. The most important thing is, is that you shake it and then you quickly put it in the end and start giving the medication.

- If it wasn't an emergency, then shaking it in between each puff is best practice, but in an emergency it's not necessary as long as you're just doing it at the start doing it well at start, sorry.

- So is your service asthma aware and prepared? And this is where I really want you to think about today some of the key messages in these last two slides. So staff training, complete a ACECQA training every minimum of three years. And you'll notice here that you can actually search through the national quality framework for our course, if you want to go, but you can actually do the other HLTP or asthma and anaphylaxis. We advocate separate courses, but it's not mandatory. Encourage all staff to attend. We have a provider of one big organisation across Australia and they make sure that all their staff attend, because you can't always guarantee that that one person that's received the training may not be there that day. So one person needs to be on duty at all time. Maintain individual training status so that you, that the director is aware of who actually needs training. And as I said, some people would want to do it annually, which is brilliant. The next one is access to asthma first aid equipment and child's own medication delivery device. I think we've covered this. Parents need to be encouraging, to provide their child's spacer, their Ventolin or their Asmol, clearly labelled, the child's name, date of birth. Make sure that asthma first aid kits are easily accessible and that they are reviewed. Ventolin, for example, and all the medication comes, goes out of date. If you do get one that's out of date, make sure it's replaced, but if you've got nothing else, you can still use it, but make sure it's replaced. Ensure you've got it for excursions and also display the national asthma first aid poster. This poster you can actually ring up and order them for free, and they'll send them out to you. The National Asthma Council will send them to you. So go to the next slide, please. Okay, accurate documentation, really important that you keep individual medical management plans for known asthmatics. And we've actually got a copy of the asthma flare up document we talked about, and Kate's actually put it in the chat. Also ensure information's updated annually, record all flare ups and treatment. If you go on our website, we've actually got a flare up, I'm sorry, a treatment record card where you can actually identify how often kids are kind of coming to get the medication. And the most important thing is, is that you must document any critical incidents by the NQIS website. So that basically, if a child has a severe asthma episode or you call emergency services, or there was a fatality or anything, you must log it on that website, and they will contact you. The next one is develop an asthma policy in accordance with the education care regulation of 2011, and communicate this to staff and parents. Nominate staff for maintaining asthma first aid and look at risk minimisation or potential strategies. And the next slide, okay. So the key message is that asthma is a serious life threatening condition, and we recommend all children's services need to know how to initiate asthma first aid. It's not just the director's responsibility. It's everyone's responsibility. Ensure that parents and carers know what's going on with their child's asthma, that it's been communicated to all, including casual staff. Think about risk identification and minimisation strategies. And they're the key to really preventing management of asthma flareups. And for parents, it's about getting the child to take their preventer medication, which is if they are prescribed it. Ensure your service has appropriate asthma management procedures in place that meet the national quality framework. And out of today's session, it's been so quick and rushed that think about something that you'd like to improve or implement within your service, that you've got the information out of today's session. I know that there are so many questions coming through. Roxy and myself will make sure that we go through all those questions. Kate, we'll answer them, Kate, because I know we're over.

- Yes, sorry, I was going say just such a massive thank you to Roxanne and Melinda, and apologies for the couple of technical issues that we've had along the way. We will be providing a copy of all of the questions that have come through today to Roxanne and Melinda as well. And we'll be able to follow up on the ones that we haven't got to. So thank you very much to everyone for your time. It's a really important subject. And thank you again to Roxanne and Melinda for your fantastic presentation. I know I learned a lot, and I hope everyone else did as well.

- Thank you, sorry for the rush at the end.

- And the details, if you go to the next slide, we've actually got an email address here. And just to also let you know, we actually do run Eventbrite ACECQA approved training for education sectors that it's approved. So we are happy for you to join our sessions there on our Eventbrite website and you receive certificates if you attend. We are actually putting some more dates up. We keep them quite tiny, our groups. So we send out placebos and things like that, but we do have the Eventbrite. I know you can look at ACECQA website, but just to let you know that, if you want to go to training where it's providers who are familiar with educational sectors, where you're looking after children, then we'd recommend, and also anaphylaxis do the same thing, yes.

- Great, so those links have just been popped into the chat, the email address and the Eventbrite link. So encourage you to jump onto those.

- Thank you.

- Excellent, thank you so much.

- Thank you and good afternoon everyone, bye.

- Hi everyone, we'll just give it a couple of minutes there. Numbers are going up, so we'll just get started in a couple of minutes, to allow people to get into the session. Numbers are still going up. I'll just give it another 30 seconds or so and then we'll get started. Okay, hi everybody. Thank you so much for joining us for today's Start Strong roadshow session. Thank you so much for your flexibility as well with the change in time, as we've had to navigate the various protocols relating to the passing of Queen Elizabeth. My name is Joss, and I'm the Assistant Manager of Communications within Early Childhood Education. And before we get started, I'd actually like to introduce you to some preschoolers from Kooloora Preschool at Toukley Public School on Darkinjung Country, who will Acknowledge Country.

- We place our hands on the ground to acknowledge Aboriginal land. We place our hands in the sky, that covers Aboriginal land. We place our hands on our heart to care for Aboriginal land, we promise.

- I would also like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which we all meet today. For me, I have the privilege of living and working on Worimi Country and acknowledge that you are all joining us today from the various Aboriginal lands across New South Wales. I would like to pay my respects to Elders past, present, and to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, who are our Elders of the future. I would also like to extend that respect to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people on the session today. So I have some housekeeping for today's session. You'll find that your microphone, video, and chat functions are disabled, but the Q and A function is available. So we'll answer as many questions as we can throughout the webinar. So please post in Q and A. So you have the up-vote function as well. So if there is anything in particular that you would like answered, make sure you use that function. And we'll have some time at the end for Q and A. We'll also be using Menti during the session, so you can use your phone or another web browser. So have that ready, we have one in just a moment, so be ready for that one. The session is going to be recorded and we'll share it through our comms channels with you shortly, and also closed captioning will be enabled throughout this session. I'm going to throw to Joe Parsons, who is the Director of Early Childhood Outcomes Commissioned Programs. But while he's getting sorted, let's kick off with a Menti, just to see who's joining us today. So if you jump on, either scan the code or go menti.com, and you'll see the code there. And we'd love to hear about who is in the room today.

- Thanks, Joss Whilst this is coming through, I might just introduce myself as well. So my name's Joe Parsons, I'm the Director of Early Childhood Outcomes Commissioning. So my area has I guess, broad responsibility for the redesign of the Start Strong program, and the delivery of the Start Strong program as well. I'd like to acknowledge before I begin, that I'm coming to you from Gadigal Country. I'd like to pay my respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging, and extend my respects to any Aboriginal colleagues on the call. Some good mix of people from across the state. I can see Murwillumbah, Coffs Harbour, Bathurst, Castle Hill, Katoomba, so a good mix of kind of Greater Western Sydney regional areas as well. And those numbers continue to tick up, so I think we've got about 360 people on the call, so that's great. It seems like a good geographic mix. In terms of service type, we see it in action. It looks quite just under two thirds, 59% preschool, about a third, long day care, some mobile services in there, and a few family day care as well. That's good to know, in terms of the composition of attendees, and still moving around a little bit. It's about right. Okay, and we've asked you what your role is within the service that you work in. There are lots of Directors. Cool, okay, again, quite a good mix in terms of, in terms of roles here. So as you can see, lots of Directors, Managers, Nominated Supervisors, Teaching Directors and Coordinators. So this feels good. Good geographic mix, good mix of services, good mix of roles. We've got some Operations Managers in there as well, and Centre Directors. Cool, all right, so I think we might jump into it now. That's a really good place to start, Joss, 'cause it gives us a really good understanding of who's here with us today. So I've introduced myself already. You're also going to be hearing from some of my colleagues, Sonja Herrmann, Liam Crook, and Rebecca O'Reilly, who work on our preschool funding teams. So look, in terms of today, I'm mindful that there may be some people joining, that might be hearing this information for the first time, about the changes to the Start Strong program. Also aware that there are many of you in the sector very eager for information on the funding that will be available through the Start Strong program for 2023. I can assure you we are doing our best to get the guidelines finalized as quickly as possible whilst ensuring that we're incorporating feedback from the recent sector consultation process that we ran. So just a bit of context on the Start Strong program. So we are seeing Start Strong as the key mechanism through which the preschool reform agreement and the Affordable Preschool initiative will be delivered from 2023, to provide funding for the provision of preschool education in New South Wales. So many of you will be aware that the Affordable Preschool initiative was announced as part of the early years commitment in late June this year. Since then we've been moving really quickly to work through the details. As I mentioned, there was the sector consultation process in August. We wanted to make sure we got feedback from both community preschool representatives and long day care representatives, to help inform the redesign of the program. So big thanks to everyone that participated in that process. Your feedback was really invaluable, really important to the redesign of the program. I'd encourage all of you to review, have a read of the summary report that was emailed earlier today. The "What We Heard" report that summarizes key themes that came out of that consultation process. So it's really important that we get this, the settings right for the new program, to ensure we can deliver on our commitments, and also that those sector perspectives are helping inform that process. So we're in the final stages of getting the guidelines finished. We've got a commitment to get them released next month, so in October. In terms of your funding notification letters, they'll be sent to services before the end of term four this year. We're also making available implementation support, and that will be in place from late 2022, to help services with kind of business and operational decisions regarding the new funding arrangements. So a bit of context on the Preschool Reform Agreement. So New South Wales was the first state, the first signatory to that agreement back in December last year. The agreement focuses on children in the year before school and aims to support universal access to early childhood education regardless of the service setting. So the agreement is significant for New South Wales and the early childhood education sector. It provides four years of funding certainty, while supporting increased participation and quality. And in addition to this, as I mentioned earlier, starting also in January 2023, the New South Wales Government is making a landmark investment of 1.3 billion over the next four years, to provide fee relief for families with children in preschool. So, in the community preschool space, this initiative will replace the Start Strong Free Preschool program and continue to provide fee relief for children aged three to five years old in those settings, both community and mobile preschools. For children aged four to five in long day care services, the fee relief will be in addition to the Australian Government's Child Care Subsidy. So these reforms represent a significant investment, which enables a greater focus and opportunity to ensure the principles of the PRA and affordable preschool are embedded into the Start Strong program and help to drive those program objectives. So just a bit of information on those objectives. So we are really keen to use Start Strong as a vehicle to improve the affordability of early childhood education, to uplift quality, to drive improved outcomes for children, and incentivize increased enrolment and attendance in quality early childhood education programs in the year before school. Today, we'll be providing you with a little bit more detail about the coming changes to the program. As I mentioned, we are working as quickly as we can to get our guidelines finalized, so please bear with us. Bear in mind that the details we're passing on today are subject to our final internal approval processes, that we're working quickly to get those finalized. So a bit of information on the preschool, a bit more information on the Preschool Reform Agreement, as I mentioned, it provides significant investment into the sector. PRA reforms come into effect in early 2023. A strong focus on uplifting quality, driving improved outcomes for children, and supporting increased enrolment and attendance in quality early childhood education programs. The agreement will run till 2025, expected to support more than 300,000 children. So Rebecca, Sonja, and Liam are going to talk in a bit more detail now about the Preschool Reform Agreement, what it means for community, mobile, and long day care services. And today, they'll be talking about each reform, so both the PRA and the Affordable Preschool separately, as the funding streams have two distinct purposes. So I am now going to throw to Rebecca O'Reilly, who's our lead for the long day program.

- Thanks Joe. My name's Rebecca O'Reilly, and I am the manager of strategic projects. And my team has been working on the redesign of the Start Strong long day care program. I'm coming to you from Wangal Land, and I would like to pay my respects to Elders past, present, and of course any Aboriginal colleagues we have joining us today. Very little is proposed to change under the eligibility criteria for Start Strong long day care. We are looking at shifting some of our language to align with the requirements of the Preschool Reform Agreement. Currently, the program guidelines state that the preschool program must be developed by teachers holding an approved early childhood teaching qualification. From 2023, we are looking at increasing our emphasis on the program being delivered by a qualified early childhood teacher, yet still in accordance with the requirements under the National Quality Framework, using the early years learning framework. Eligible children are those who are at least four on or before the 1st of July in that preschool year. Funding will continue to be weighted and scaled for children enrolled above and below 600 hours, and loadings will be allocated to services with children who are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, and services located in areas of relative socioeconomic disadvantage. In the short term, we will continue to use enrolment data provided by the Commonwealth Government for our representative week in May 2022, to determine initial funding payments. The department will work with the Commonwealth, to get an early 2023 enrolment data set, to ensure we are able to make funding adjustments that align with 2023 enrolment numbers. Funding is proposed to be allocated quarterly, and we are considering switching to a calendar year funding cycle. The department understands the difficulties the sector is experiencing. Impacts from COVID and other workforce issues have placed great strain on many services. The redesign of the program and the increase in funding coming to the long day care sector through the Preschool Reform Agreement, it is nearly doubling. It provides an opportunity to allow more flexibility in how we guide services in using this funding. From 2023, we are looking at changing the spending rules. Services will continue to be able to use funding on functional and educational resources, but also potentially on their workforce. This greater flexibility of funding could enable employers to improve pay and conditions, to help attract and retain staff. In addition to other changes to the Start Strong program, you may have heard that there will be a trial for 3-year-olds in long day care. The New South Wales Government has committed over 64 million to support the participation of 3-year-olds in quality preschool programs in long day care services. The trial will begin in early 2023 and will run for two years. The trial is proposed to be universal. So this means that all services eligible to participate in Start Strong long day care in 2023 will be involved. Loadings will likely apply to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, and also for children attending services considered to be in areas of relative disadvantage. To keep the trial consistent with broader spending rules... Pardon me, we're going to allow funding to be spent on things such as investing in service through staff development and training, to increase teacher and educator confidence in developing or delivering preschool programs to 3-year-olds or purchasing educational resources. Funding can also be spent on reaching out to your community, to offer and promote quality 3-year-old preschool programs and connecting with your community groups. And funding will also be used to reduce non-fee related barriers such as transport or understanding and accessing Commonwealth subsidies. All activities must be focused on 3-year-old preschool, and their distinct learning and development needs. And this will be the first time in New South Wales, that we will be providing funding to long day care for 3-year-olds in preschool programs. Services will be asked to take part in an evaluation of the trial, so that we can understand what services are investing the funding in, and what the outcomes are. We're aiming to release the trial guidelines in October as part of that broader Start Strong 2023 program information that will be coming your way. As part of the early years commitment, the New South Wales Government has committed to improving affordability of early childhood education for families with children in the year or two before school. In long day care, this commitment means, that families will receive up to $2,000 per child to support fee relief. The funding is not means tested and will have no impact on a family's childcare subsidy. The funding will be allocated to services, who will then pass that fee relief on as a reduction to a family's fees. To simplify the distribution of fee relief, we're proposing that services provide families with a flat rate, distributed across the number of weeks of service a service open each year. And any outstanding gap fees after the childcare subsidy and the fee relief payment have been applied, would be paid by the family. We've been getting many questions coming from the sector, asking if families can access fee relief from more than one service, as we understand that many children attend both long day care and community preschools. And we are developing a mechanism to address this, and we will provide more information about this and other program elements when the program guidelines are released in October. This slide provides an illustration on how a service might determine the amount of fee relief to allocate to a family to their child, and what the impact will be for families in terms of improving their affordability. Final details of how the fee relief will work will be provided in the guidelines. But in this example, a family sends their 5-year-old child to a long day care preschool program with a daily sessional fee of $137. They receive the childcare subsidy, which leaves the family to pay a daily gap fee of $26.45. The child attends the service two days a week, for a total weekly gap fee of $52.90, and the service operates for 50 weeks a year. So this means that the service will apply a $40 fee relief, leaving the family to pay a weekly gap fee of $12.90. While distributing the fee relief, services will be required to demonstrate the fee reduction to families through regular statements or invoicing, demonstrate fee pass through, as part of the annual acquittal process to the department, retain evidence to support any fee increases compared to previous years, provide child family data to the New South Wales Government. So that we can meet some obligations to the Australian Government. And we will work with services over the coming months, to determine how a minimum amount of information about families can be obtained. We are developing a fact sheet about fee relief, which we will make available to you soon, to share with your families. And I'm going to hand over now to Sonja, who will talk to you about community preschool.

- Thanks, Rebecca. Hi everyone, I'm Sonja Herrmann, the Manager, Funded Programs and I'm coming to you from the beautiful land of the Dharug people. My team has been working on the redesign of Start Strong for community preschools, and Liam and I will now go through some of the program elements. First up, we'll talk about service eligibility. So similar to Start Strong in long day care, very little has changed under the eligibility criteria for the Start Strong for community preschools program. As you can see on screen, to be eligible for funding, a service must be not-for-profit community-based preschool, be an approved service under the National Law and Regulations, deliver an early childhood education program, and comply with the early childhood education grants program funding agreement. Rebecca outlined before that we are looking at shifting some of our language to align with the requirements of the Preschool Reform Agreement. Currently, the Start Strong for community preschool program guidelines state that a preschool program must be designed by teachers holding an approved early childhood teaching qualification, in accordance with the early years learning framework. From 2023, we are looking at changing the program, to focus more on being delivered by a qualified early childhood teacher. Yet in accordance with the requirements under the National Quality Framework, including using the EYLF. The child eligibility will remain the same, which means children who are at least three years or older on or before the 31st of July in that preschool year, will be eligible under the Start Strong program for community preschools. We are not currently proposing to make changes to the waiting and scaling under the Start Strong for community preschools program. And so this means funding should still be scaled based on hours of enrolment, so up to 600 hours a year, and the CIFA bands. On this note, I'd like to clarify that we are using the enrolment information you have provided in the August preschool census for funding calculations, and not the attendance data that we've also been collecting. The current maximum rate of funding is $7,076 per child, and children eligible for equity loadings continue to receive this maximum funding rate. There are also no proposed changes to children eligible for the equity loadings, and you can see them on the slide listed there on the right. Next, we're looking at the Start Strong program payment spending rules. As before, we are proposing that the services can use their Start Strong program funding for the operating expenses, including salary and wages, educational resources, and other operating costs such as rent. Up until this year, the guidelines also included a fee pass through requirement. So for 2022, this fee pass through requirement applied to non-equity 3-year-old funding. As you know, the funding proportion for non-equity 3-year-old children has increased over four years, from 25% in 2019 to 50% in 2022, and it will remain at the 50% going forward. The fee paths required will now shift to the affordable preschool component of the program, which Liam from my team, will be speaking to you about shortly. Before I hand over, I'd like to confirm that funding will still be paid quarterly, with program funding to go out as usual in December this year. The Start Strong program currently operates on a financial year basis, and we are looking at transitioning to a calendar year cycle. So from 2024, Start Strong for community preschools will likely be delivered on a calendar year basis, which aligns with other programs, such as the Disability and Inclusion program, and the proposal for Start Strong in day care. As well as the Preschool Reform Agreement, and of course the preschool year itself. Now over to Liam from my team, who will be going through some of the details on fee relief funding for community preschools.

- Thank you, Sonja, and good evening, everyone. My name is Liam, and I'm speaking to you today from the lands of the Wodi Wodi people on Dharawal Country in the Illawarra. As you've heard earlier in the session, the New South Wales Government has committed to improving affordability of early childhood education for families with children in the year or two before school. In the community and mobile preschool sector, there has been some experience with this through the time limited COVID-19 free preschool program, and the 2022 Start Strong free preschool program. The new government announcements make an ongoing commitment to supporting affordability for families of children enrolled at community and mobile services. The proposed arrangements for affordable preschool will bear some similarities to the 2022 Start Strong Free Preschool program. Community and mobile preschool services will receive up to $4,000 per child, for 3, 4, and 5-year-olds to support fee relief. Funding will be allocated to services, who will then pass on the fee relief as a reduction to family’s fees for up to 600 hours of enrolment. It is proposed that funding is proportionate to hours enrolled at a service. This concept should be familiar, as it applied in free preschool this year. And since Start Strong has been in place, it's also been applied to your Start Strong program funding as well. For mobile preschools, please be aware that whether you're funded under the Start Strong for community preschools program, or the recently implemented mobile preschool funding program, you are eligible for affordable preschool funding, and you'll be receiving that fee relief funding to pass through to your families at your service. Joe mentioned this briefly before, and I really just wanted to reinforce that point. As mentioned earlier, more guidance will be provided about accessing fee relief at more than one service, when program guidelines are released in October. The guidelines will also detail the spending rules for the program, which I'll run through with you now. Before I discuss this slide, I do just want to note again, that this is illustrative only at this point, and is subject to the finalization of the program guidelines. But as you can see from the diagram on the screen, there is a proposed flow to the way that we are looking for affordable preschool fee relief funding to be used within your services. We start with fee relief. Because at the end of the day, the name speaks for itself. The intention of the funding is to reduce daily fees for up to 600 hours at this point. The fee relief step may use all of your allocated fee relief funding, or you still may have some surplus funding remain. If you haven't used all of the fee relief funding after you have reduced the daily fees for up to 600 hours, you can then move to step two, which is costs relief. Once you've reduced that first 600 hours of enrolment, the next focus for the affordable preschool funding is to reduce additional costs to families. These may be levies, these may be administrative fees, these may be fees charged for third day of enrolment and beyond. The intention of this step would be to further reduce costs to families as much as possible. If you still have surplus fee relief funding remaining once your fees and costs are as low as possible or have been eliminated, you might then use this funding for operational costs, just as you would for your Start Strong for community preschools funding right now. Please remember that you will continue to get Start Strong program funding for your operational expenses, as Sonja just ran through. The fee relief funding that you will receive is distinct from your program funding. And we expect that the final published spending rules will be followed by services, to ensure that ultimately the fee relief funding is used for what it is intended for, which is making access to quality early childhood education more affordable for families in your communities. We want to throw to you now, to hear your thoughts on implementation support. This is open to everyone in the room. This isn't just for community and mobile preschools. We want to hear from the long day cares and the other service types, that are attending today as well. If you could please go to the link on your screen or use the QR code. There's a new code for you to use, so please make sure that you use the new code that you can see on screen. And I expect that will be posted in the chat for you to access as well. And then we would love, love to hear your answers to the question, which is, if program implementation support was provided, what topics would you like to hear about in webinars? To ensure that you feel comfortable working in the affordable preschool world, we want to make sure that things like webinars can deliver content that you want to hear and that will benefit your services, not just what we think you might like. Please note that the website and the code will be active for another 30 minutes after this session ends. This session isn't quite done yet, so you don't have to answer right away. If you need a little bit more time to think about it, that's okay. Please make sure that you have the code handy, so that if you want to answer it after the session, you can jump right into it. As we can see, we've already got quite a few suggestions on the screen there. We've got things like support for educators and staff, retention, discussions on the guidelines and spending rules, communications for families. You know, there's lots of great options there. We're able to see all of these at the end, and we'll be looking through these, to make sure that we can deliver content that is suitable and will benefit you. And keep this Menti in the back of your mind, as we now move on to the final section, where Joe will be talking to you about two important features moving forward, which are the transition to school and the ECO digital hub.

- Thanks for that Liam, much appreciated. So yes, just a couple of things for me to talk through before we get to the Q and A session. So I'd just like to speak to you about both, yes, the transition to school statement and the digital hub. So both topics have a road show session happening, where you'll be able to hear about more information, more in-depth information, but just wanted to give a quick overview on both of them. So in terms of the department's role in transition to school, some key things to call out with regards to this. We want to ensure that every child has a positive transition to school. It's a policy goal of the department. And our responsibility is to engage with all participants in the transition to school. So children, parents, early childhood services in schools. We know that the research tells us that children who make a smooth transition to school maintain higher levels of social competence and academic achievement throughout their lives. And then the initial success in transitioning into a new school environment can lead students to develop long term positive attitudes towards learning, and positively influence their well-being later in life. I don't know, Joss, if we're able just to publish in the chat just the dates, that these roadshow sessions are happening. But that might be useful for people, if this is the first time they're hearing about them. But that's the bit on the transition to school. So in terms of digitizing the transition to school, and the transition to school digital statement as part of the Start Strong program, we're looking at making completion of a transition to school digital statement mandatory from 2023. To support this, a statement will be made available digitally. There's a webinar in mid-October, as I mentioned, and our priority is engaging with schools to ensure that this work is valued and is used. And I think Joss has just posted in the chat there, the information about that session. A bit of information now on the ECO digital hub. And again, there's a separate session on this. Many of you have provided valuable input earlier this year about how you're currently using the existing ECCMS system, and how you're engaging with the department at the moment, the pain points you have, and the opportunities that you see for a new system. Thanks for providing those valuable insights. It's really helping us to guide our development, so that we can better meet your needs, and create a system which can alleviate these pain points. So our approach will be well considered, it will be phased over time, it won't happen overnight. It will be shortlisted in possible technologies early next year, followed by procurement of a preferred system. You can be reassured that we'll be providing extensive training and support to you, for using the new system when the time comes. Essentially, the focus of the digital hub is to make engaging with the department much easier for you, and to streamline the work of our internal team, so that we can deliver program funding and support to you all more effectively. So it aims to cut down the admin burden for you and your staff, to streamline data collection into one location to make applying for funding, granting that funding a lot easier, and without the need for, for multiple systems and manual processes, which I'm sure many of you, as we are, will be all too familiar with. It'll also enable better connections between you and the department, because we'll have the facility to manage communications, and provide program level support you through one system. The image on this slide summarizes the key functions of the new hub. Initially these will include funding processes, child attendance data, the ability to update some of your details to keep things current, support communications between you and the department, and it'll also help our internal teams with relationship management for individual services. So our next planned engagement will be in the form of a survey in October to all community preschools and mobile services. And the purpose of this survey is to identify how community preschools and mobile services are currently recording and storing attendance data. For example, whether you are using a software system for this, or whether you input information onto Excel spreadsheets, or perhaps you keep a paper-based system going. And this will help us to understand the diverse requirements for the collection and the transfer of attendance data, and how we need to engage with you on the options for storing and transferring this information. So your service can also be involved in early phase activities in 2023. Meaning preschools and mobile services can nominate interests when you complete the survey. And for long day providers who are also interested in being part of those early phase activities, you can get in touch with us by emailing the digital hub email, which I don't know if it's on this slide, but again, I think we can post that in the chat and make that available for people. After the survey, we'll be speaking with all of you about data collection practices and developing our approach for data collection. We'll also be looking at potential technologies for the new hub system, which will satisfy our business requirements. So as always, our intention is to keep you well-informed, and to engage with you at key points throughout the process, so we can build a system which works for all stakeholders. Once again, please be assured that we'll provide extensive training and support to you for using the new system when the time comes down the track. And tune in as I said to that, the upcoming session on the digital hub. There'll be a lot more detailed information about where the work's up to and where it's going. So that is it for me. I think we've got a Q and A session now. And I think Joss are you going to... There's lots of questions I can see in the chat. Are you going to kind of coordinate things, in terms of which questions we should be responding to?

- Sure, yes, so I've been... There's lots of questions coming in through the Q and A function, so I might just start firing them out, if that's alright. So I'm not sure who it needs to go to, and there's a lot here, so I'm just trying to work through them as I'm talking. We had one from Juliet, who asked quite early on, and it must... "Does the Preschool Reform Agreement continue to run if the government changes?"

- Well, we decided... The New South Wales Government signed the four-year agreement in December. We're certainly working on the basis, that that four-year agreement will be honoured. Some of our teams are working on what the implementation of the agreement looks like, and there may be some changes to that over the four years. But certainly, we're working on the basis that the funding's locked in, the agreement's been signed for the next four years, regardless of whether there's a change in government.

- Thanks Joe. I've got another one here from an anonymous attendee. "Does this mean that funding based on attendance, instead of enrolment, will be more than likely not to go ahead as first proposed?" Does this... Hold on, let me just re-read this one. "Does this mean that funding based on attendance instead of enrolment, will more than likely not go ahead as first proposed?" So maybe Joe, do you want to clarify around the intended...

- Yes, so I can confirm that funding will continue to be based on enrolment certainly for 2023. We can confirm that that's the case, yes.

- Perfect, and then can we confirm that there will be two? So just confirming there will be two types of funding for preschool in 2023, Start Strong community preschools and affordable preschool?

- So probably the best way for us to conceptualize this, so at the moment obviously we have two separate programs. We have the community preschool program, and we have the free preschool program. What we've essentially done in terms of the program architecture is, is take the community preschool program, the free preschool program, and the long day care program, and we are thinking of it now as one overarching Start Strong program with two separate streams. So there'll be a community preschool stream, there'll be a long day care stream. Both of those have the fee relief component built in. So, that's probably the easiest way to conceptualize how the program will be structured going forward. Providers will receive two payments. There'll be a program payment and a fee relief payment, but it will be as part of one program. I don't know Sonja or Beck, if you wanted to kind of add anything to that.

- I think you explained it perfectly. It is true two payments, yes, two components of... So it means you get the Start Strong program payment that I was talking about, and you will get the fee relief payment that Liam talked about, you know, for community preschools, absolutely. And it's going to be very similar for long day cares.

- Thank you, the questions are coming in hot, and it's bouncing around on my screen, so it's quite distracting. Okay, will funding include Department of Education preschools? Anyone?

- Yes, so we are working closely with our colleagues internally, that manage funding to DOE preschools. There is funding through both the PRA and the Affordable Preschool initiative, that will be allocated to DOE preschools. We're just working with them. There's a slightly different approach, in terms of how that funding gets allocated, 'cause it's obviously linked to the school system and the school budgeting approach. So, the answer to that is, yes, funding will be available for DOE preschools, we're just working out the specifics with our colleagues internally.

- Thanks Joe, I've got a question. This one's probably for you, Beck. Will the fee relief need to be applied prior to CCS? So maybe, just if you want to explain around the relationship with your fee relief and the childcare subsidy.

- We're just finalizing what that's going to look like, but it will have no impact on the child care subsidy. And we are looking at it being applied after the childcare subsidy has been applied.

- Thank you. Thanks everyone for all your questions. I'm trying to keep up with them, they're firing through. There was... Is there a targeted amount for Aboriginal families and children specifically?

- So the way in which Start Strong funding works, is there's what we refer to as equity loadings for First Nations children. Probably worth waiting for the guidelines to be released, in terms of the specifics around what that looks like. But it's essentially the same funding model, that we've already got in place, whereby First Nations kids attract additional funding. I don't know if Sonja or Beck, if there's anything further to add on that. But the same principle to the, the current program will apply to the new program.

- Sonja, did you have anything to add to that?

- No, I mean I've had it on my slide, when I talked about the Start Strong program payment. So yes, we've got these equity loadings, and those cohorts are proposed to be the same. So Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are on that, so that they attract basically the highest, maximum rate under Start Strong.

- I've got a question, and now this question... I've got a couple of questions here, that were provided ahead of time as part of the registration process, just around, will we continue to do the census in August for the following funding year?

- That is the intention, I believe for next year. And I think in terms of the timing, I think August is agreed as the most suitable date for the census. Certainly, there will be a census, and I'm pretty certain it will be in August. That will be confirmed in the... I'm seeing some nods from colleagues here, so yes, I can confirm that the census will take place in August.

- Thanks Joe. Another question that was sent through, was around the budget template. So if there'll be a budget template that services can use, I think it's been provided for community preschools in the past.

- I can jump in, if you want. So I'm assuming this refers to the funding planning tool, or also referred as the funding calculator. And so yes, we are working with our internal teams on the release of a new version, so that it would include the entirety of starts from the program payments as well as the affordability funding. And so we're just working through that, and we'll try and make that available as soon as possible.

- Perfect, and then I've got plenty more. One about how we can use Start Strong for workforce attraction and retention. If anyone wants to talk, maybe Joe do you want to talk to that one?

- So one of the things we're proposing, and this is as I said earlier, subject to kind of internal approvals, but we want to give greater flexibility certainly on the long day care side. So the current program, Start Strong long day care funding, can't be used for salary and wages. We're mindful of the challenges that the sector face currently in relation to workforce, and we are keen for greater flexibility to be built into the program. So as I said, subject to that final approval, we are anticipating that the spending will give much greater flexibility to services, to use their funding for salary, wages, workforce retention, other incentives as well.

- Thanks Joe. I've got a question around safety net funded services. "Will the safety net funding section of Start Strong funding still exist in 2023 and beyond?"

- Sonja?

- Yes, I was just about to say, yes, it is proposed to retain that, absolutely, so that we have the service safety net continued, and that's just part of the Start Strong, like the base or the program funding not the affordable preschool, that would come on top the affordability.

- Thank you. I have a question around children and it's quite specific. Oh actually no, I've got... Okay, so around concerns from services around children and families double dipping with the fee-free preschool. So whether they're going to two fee-free preschools. Or a question around long day care and community preschool for into next year. Does someone want to talk on that?

- Yes, happy to. So some of the detail of this will be in the program guidelines. But certainly, as a kind of a program setting, or kind of policy position, we are wanting families to only be, only be able to access the fee relief once. So if they've got a child, who's in a community preschool and a long day care, they would have to nominate where they would access the fee relief. So we're just kind of working through exactly how that will work. But certainly as a starting sort of first principle, we want families to access that fee relief just the once. And more detail on that will be, will be in the guidelines when they get released.

- Thanks Joe, it looks like there's a few with that theme. So, we will take...

- There was one... There was one early on, Joss, I think we've skipped over, but I think it's important in the context of kind of cost of living, inflationary pressures, et cetera. But there was, there was a question about whether or not the fee relief was going to be kind of increased each year to keep up to, that up with the cost-of-living pressures. So just to confirm that in future years that fee relief, we will apply indexation to that, so it will increase year on year, and that's built into the business case for the affordable preschool.

- Thanks Joe. There looks to be a few themes around SIEFA bands as well. So, a question from anonymous, "Will SEIFA bands be reviewed?"

- So the short answer to that is, yes, they will be, but not for the 2023 programs. So, and Sonja might want to provide a bit more detail on this. But this is something we are very keen to look at this. Probably the main thing with the 2023 program has been the timing, so keen to get the 2023 program operational, and funding allocations distributed. But it is something we've got on our agenda to look at next year, yes.

- Thanks Joe. One of, a question's come through in a follow up around families double dipping, and it's around, is it on the responsibilities of the families, or the service, or the department around understand what families might be, where they might be enrolling their children and getting the fee relief.

- Yes, it's difficult to get into too much detail on this one ahead of it being formally approved. But as I said earlier, our position is that families should only be accessing fee relief once, and we'll introduce a mechanism for kind of ensuring that that, that that happens. There'll be, yes, quite a bit of detail in the guidelines, as to how that's going to work in kind of practical terms.

- Thanks Joe, we've had a couple of questions as well around when the guidelines will be released. I don't know if people jumped in late, but Joe, do you want to just do a recap on when the guidelines will be going out?

- Yes, sure. So we've committed to getting the guidelines out in October. Funding notification letters will be issued before the end of term four this year. And I think I mentioned as well earlier, there will be implementation support for services, and that relates back to the, the Menti that Liam led earlier. We want to design that implementation support around the needs of services to ensure, that the content you'll get from that is really helpful in terms of how you, as a service, implement the program.

- Thank you. Obviously, you know, with the finalized, the guidelines being finalized, I've just had a question from Kerry. "Will the program guidelines indicate hours of attendance per day?"

- I'm not entirely sure what's meant by that question. So the guidelines will specify kind of funding rates based on hours of enrolment, as they currently do. So that information's currently provided, and will also be included in the new guidelines, but I'm not sure if that's what the question's getting at. But certainly funding is, continues to be linked to kind of hours of enrolment, both on the community preschool and the long day care side.

- Thanks Joe, I've had a question from Sebastian. "Will there be continued funding for existing programs, that support access to early childhood education for underrepresented cohorts, such as families from recent migrant and refugee backgrounds?"

- I'm not entirely sure what funding is being kind of referenced there. We do have other programs that we, that we administer through the department. But without knowing specifically what program is being referred to, it's quite difficult to, to give a yes or a no to that one. Sonja, I don't know, just taking...

- I just want to that under Start Strong for community preschools there's no visa or citizen requirements. So you know, so there's no restrictions. So if there's refugee children you want to enrol, you can, the funding is there, is available for those children as well. There's no restriction on that.

- Thanks Sonja. And I've got a few transition to school questions here. I see we've got another of our Directors on Jess who, or Joe, if you'd like to speak on transition to school.

- What's the actual question? Sorry.

- Okay, I've got the relationship with transition to school statements with non-government schools, so I don't know if there's any one in particular. Jess, if you want to kind of do a bit of a summary on the digital statements? I've thrown you in it, Jess, sorry.

- [Jess] Yes.

- I wonder if that... I was going to say, I wonder if that question should be, should be taken on notice, and we can incorporate it into the, into the upcoming session on transition to school. It sounds like quite a specific one, and would be good for us to get our colleagues who are leading that session to kind of build that into their, their presentation I think.

- Perfect, it sounds good.

- Sorry, sorry if that sounds sort of not really answering the question. But there is a dedicated session on transition to school, and I think that might be the best place to have that.

- Perfect.

- Answered, yes.

- Thanks Joe, I've got a question. Any update on Start Strong Pathways?

- Beyond the update that was given earlier, we've got ministerial approval for what was a two-year extension, so we're... That two-year extension kicked off 1 July this year. So there's a one-year contract extension, and there's a one-year sort of transition year. We're in the process of commissioning kind of a piece of work on program redesign. So as soon as that's commissioned, we'll be communicating with pathways providers. But in terms of kind of funding certainty, I think that was communicated earlier this year around that two-year extension.

- Thanks.

- But if there's specific... If that question has come from a pathways provider, and they're wanting to kind of engage with the team, we can connect them up with the relevant, the grant funding team, that lead that program, if there's further information that's needed.

- Thank you, we've just got time for a couple more. I've got a question and it's a bit more of a statement, and I think Joe, it's probably an opportunity to talk to the implementation support that will be available. But the statement is, we're feeling really burdened, and you know, we're waiting for guidelines, and we've got transition to school, and we've going to deliver the programs, this person's feeling exhausted. Do you want to talk to the support that we'll be rolling out as part of the release of the guidelines?

- Yes, sure, and you know, we are kind of still shaping up what that exactly will focus on. We want that to be informed by the needs of providers. We also want it to be delivered in a way that's as easy as possible for the services to engage with, really recognizing, you know, just how busy services are, the workforce challenges that services are facing. We want to, yes, make those kinds of webinars available, to be kind of accessed at a time that's kind of suitable for the staff. But I think, let's wait. In terms of the kind of the content of the implementation support, I think Liam mentioned, that the Menti is open for another half an hour or so. But maybe as a kind of feedback loop for this session we can, we can flag what came through strongest. And we'll certainly be making sure that those, those themes that came through the Menti will be reflected in the, the kind of the priorities of the organization that we engage to deliver the implementation support.

- Thanks Joe. And we'll put in the chat the Menti with the code for the implementation support as well, if people weren't able to jump on at the time. But yes, it will be open following this session, so I do encourage people to jump on and provide feedback. I also do want to note, we do have lots of questions still flowing in, and we will take all of the questions on notice and commit to sharing as much information with you as we move forward. This information, these questions that you're asking are really invaluable for us, particularly looking at future comms, to make sure that the sector is provided with the information to support you, and with those conversations with families as well. I've probably got two more questions left, 'cause we have two minutes to go, and it's 5:28, the day before a public holiday tomorrow. So, do we... I'm just having a look, we've got a few. They just flying, sorry, it's really distracting. Again, the double dipping has come up. So we've got a couple that have been upvoted at the top around releasing the guidelines on double dipping. And Meg has indicated that it's going to be a challenge to implement for 2023, when enrolments are being done now without a parent nominating where their funding will be allocated. So I think that's a bit of a statement. And then how do you do, is there any advice around managing this timing issue?

- Like...

- One thing... One thing, sorry Joe. I was just going to say one thing that we will have, which will support services with the release of the guidelines is some resources for services to share with their families, which we're hoping will be really helpful for you, with having those conversations as well around the advice guidelines, and to help with families understanding the fee relief and what it means to them.

- Absolutely, there'll be, there'll be fact sheets and communications that we'll make available, that will help kind of communicate the approach to families. And like I said, the guidelines when released, will have really clear information about how we are going to manage the children enrolled at multiple services issued, particularly as it relates to fee relief. And yes, keen to engage with the sector on that as well once it's released. I would imagine that our implementation support may have that as a bit of a focus, if there's additional information that's going to be needed. But certainly yes, guidelines will be, will be issued next month and will contain really clear information about how that will be managed.

- Thanks Joe, thanks everybody. It's now 5:30. I really want to say a big thank you for your time today. Acknowledge that everyone is super busy, particularly those who are busy on the floor with our littlest learners. So thanks so much for joining us. I really appreciate your time, and have a fabulous day off tomorrow, however you intend to spend it, thanks so much.

- Thanks everyone, cheers.