News Articles

Ngala Staff Development Day 

Learn, Listen and Be Challenged was the theme for the Ngala Staff Development Day. Our Team Leaders along with Kate and Karen attended this month. Our first topic of the day was Celebrating Differences, during this time we explored the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture. This started off with a Welcome to Country by Maree Taylor, which highlighted that, although there are many differences between our cultures, one of the things we share in common is our great value of family and our deep respect for children. Gail Burrows, from Kulunga Research Network, took us on a journey through the history of the Aboriginal culture in WA, and in particular the Perth region. She gave us a better understanding of the Aboriginal culture and helped to dispel some of the myths and misconceptions that society has formed over time. Sandy Maher, Co‑ordinator of Ngala’s Indigenous program, and Ted Penny, an Aboriginal Elder, shared with us their personal stories during “Yarning Time” of how the history of their culture has affected them, and stories of other people’s experiences within the history of their culture. This gave us an insight into how the history of Australia has affected the Aboriginal culture and how the Aboriginal people have helped to shape the nation we all call home.

A visit from Common Ground Entertainment, a traditional Aboriginal dance group, also helped to immerse us more in the Aboriginal culture. Through allowing us to participate alongside them we were involved with the traditional sharing process of the Aboriginal people through song, dance and story-telling. We can now use this wealth of information to enable us to work in partnership with other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders with respect and understanding. It also highlighted the importance of introducing the Aboriginal culture, and indeed many different cultures, to our children so that they too can build a foundation of respect and understanding for all people they may interact with throughout their lives.

The afternoon was spent furthering our interpersonal skills with a workshop around responding to challenging behaviours. This involved some very exciting and challenging role plays. Some of the staff were a little too convincing in their challenging roles! We also focused on child protection which involved the process of updating Ngala’s Child Protection policy, which highlights the process for identifying and assisting children and families at risk. Finally, we were updated on the progress of all the different program areas running at Ngala. It was great to see the different services that were being offered and the dedication of the organisation as a whole to helping families and children develop in a positive and holistic way.

 Article submitted by Amiee, 3-6 room Team Leader, July 2009

Team Leader Development

Each Friday morning, all team leaders are meeting with Margaret, Kate and Karen. The purpose of these meetings is to further develop the Child Initiated Approach and the way we work with children. We decided as a team to focus on transitions for the children.

We began the process by looking at the way we greeted families and children to the centre. Our aim was to make families and children feel welcome to the centre, as well as engaging with children and developing a smooth transition for them in the morning. You may have noticed a change in the way our educators have been greeting you. Thank you to the families you have given such positive feedback about this morning transition. We greatly appreciate your comments and have also noticed the positive benefits which have resulted from this change.

Our next progression was to concentrate on the morning tea transition. We looked at being prepared by setting the environment ready for children, working with small groups during this time and assisting the children and scaffolding their needs according to their individual development. We have also encouraged families to be involved in this process by helping to wash children’s hands, seating them and possibly helping them with any resources they need, such as water bottles.

After the morning tea transition, the next process was to look at nappy change and toileting transitions. We focused on preparing everything needed and then preparing the children by talking to them about the process.

Article submitted by Karen Mitchell, Senior Team Leader, July 2009

WA Early Childhood Education and Care Conference:

Perth hosted the inaugural biannual WA Child Care and Early Childhood Education Conference from 3rd to 5th April. The theme of the conference was Quality and Collaboration Matter! Over the course of the weekend there were a large number of concurrent workshops, and key note speakers including the Parliamentary Secretary for Early Childhood Education and Care, Maxine McKew MP. We were fortunate enough to have Minister McKew visit Ngala the Friday before the conference. She publicly recognised Ngala in her opening address as a high quality integrated service.

The conference hosted an amazing 490 delegates from local, national and international early childhood areas. There were eight educators from Bluebird who attended the conference on the Saturday and Sunday. We would like to thank the Durstan family for their fundraising efforts which enabled us to purchase these tickets.

The conference was extremely interesting and we all found the presentations valuable and relevant to our profession. Some of the key ideas we took back to share with the team at Bluebird were:

• How the current trends in Early Childhood Education are moving towards high quality standards in all services that cater for children in the early years, collaboration between professionals and integrated services.
• The need for professionalism in the language that is used.
• Early Care and Education is at the forefront of the COAG agenda which supports current research into brain development.
• The importance of the early years in relation to children’s development and therefore the importance of early intervention.

One of key discussion points was the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) which is a National quality framework that is currently being developed as part of the COAG agenda. This framework is due to be implemented throughout Australia in July this year.

Ngala Early Learning and Development Service is one of 29 sights across Australia currently involved in trialling the framework in partnership with Charles Sturt University in Sydney. We have also been working closely with Charles Sturt to provide feedback to the document which is currently in a draft format. More information on the EYLF will be available in the next newsletter.

Article submitted by Karen Mitchell, Senior Team Leader, April 2009

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