[On-screen text: Joanne Nolan — Principal – Sunbury and Macedon Ranges Specialist School]
Joanne: Sunbury and Macedon Ranges Specialist School supports students who have an intellectual disability. At the moment we've got 290 students. All of our kids are unique, so we really pride ourselves on the individuality of all of our kids and the efforts that we go to, to provide some individual programs and try and teach to the point of learning for all of our kids. We've employed Melissa as our Mental Health and Wellbeing Leader.
[On-screen text: Melissa Stivala — Mental Health and Wellbeing Leader, Sunbury and Macedon Ranges Specialist School]
Melissa: For our students, mental health and wellbeing is really important, and we help to support our students to express it in a way that's suitable for them, and we're able to help support them. So ideally, through education we’re uplifting their mental health and wellbeing.
Joanne: In our school, we have had a really well embedded Respectful Relationships curriculum. By introducing the Mental Health and Wellbeing Leader role, we've been able to have Melissa take on many of those initiatives.
Melissa: So MHiPS and the MHWL role complement our existing wellbeing approaches by supporting Tier 1, Tier 2 practices within our school setting.
Joanne: The priorities within the team are really to be implementing consistent practices, so we have a consistent approach and some considered actions.
Melissa: I've ran quite a few PDs over the last four years, entailing from mental health literacy and building up our staff's capacity of mental health and wellbeing, what it can look like, how as classroom teachers they can support their students. And in fold, I've also ran that to our ES as well because our ES are superstars and they work with our students just as much as we do. And we've also been unpacking our high impact wellbeing strategies.
[On-screen text: Interviewer – Do you know what it means to have good mental health?]
Interviewer: Do you know what it means to have good mental health?
[On-screen text: Dylan — Grade 6 Student – Sunbury and Macedon Ranges Specialist School]
Dylan: It means staying in the green zone.
[On-screen text: Interviewer – Oooh, what does it mean if you’re in the green zone?]
Interviewer: Oooh, what does it mean if you’re in the green zone?
Dylan: You're happy and you're well behaved, ready to learn, calm and focused. It would make the school a better place.
[On-screen text: Lucas – Grade 6 Student – Sunbury and Macedon Ranges Specialist School]
Lucas: She helps me learn about wellbeing, because wellbeing's really important 'cause it helps with your body and everything.
[On-screen text: Interviewer – And how does that make you feel?]
Interviewer: And how does that make you feel?
Dylan: Happy, 'cause I get, I like talking about who can help me.
Melissa: The MHiPS training community and training sessions and co-ops are very supportive. I'm able to connect with other MHWLs in the role that are beyond my network so I can gain more information, more exposure, more ideas and support. So I can take that knowledge that I've gained, and then bring that back to our wellbeing team or to our leadership team and say, "I've done this training. This is what was discussed. I think we could take it into this direction that could suit our school." We've adapted the Mental Health Continuum that was through the MHiPS training, and we added our board maker visuals. Our teachers see it, our students are exposed to that as well. So if we do use that language, they are aware what is going on. And we use that visual as part of our termly data collection, where we collect mental health and wellbeing data. And then I can work with teachers on a one-to-one capacity, upskilling them with resources, programs, supports, and doing referrals if needed to help build up their capacity as well as support the student's capacity. And in turn, it may be the family's capacity as well, depending on what's going on and the supports that may be coming out of that data.
Joanne: As part of a team, we can identify some priorities and then Melissa can go about implementing some of the suggestions. So that's been a really powerful shift.
[On-screen text: Anne Rogan — Graduate Teacher – Sunbury and Macedon Ranges Specialist School]
Anne: I believe it's an amazing program and it's just showing great results with our students. They're now happy to come to school, and I feel students' mental wellbeing is being recognised, it's being nurtured. So then it becomes consistent across the school.
Joanne: We're really blessed to be working in this school community, but we're also blessed to have the right people in the right job. We've always gone to great efforts to be able to seek out what the students are needing, but to actually now be able to fund a program that can really prioritise it and we really value it. We're not taking her out to do other things. We've always privileged that time for this program, and that feels right because it's the right stuff to do.
[End of Transcript]
Updated