THE KRISTIN EXPERIENCE
Wellbeing at Kristin The beginning of 2022 included starting with a new team of counsellors and the addition of a firstaider to our nursing team. These changes have enabled us to better meet the needs of our diverse student population and increasing demands related to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, we implemented a new referral system that makes it easy for students to self-refer and for parents to get in touch with us. The implementation of a new wellbeing software platform called Orah is the second tool that will be available to all students from Year 4 upwards. We are taking part in a pilot to help develop this tool to specifically meet the needs of our unique Kristin community. Initially it will provide a ‘pulse check’ for all students. This then allows their teacher, dean and wider support team to track when students start to show a decline in an area of overall From the start of this year a new Year 9 Wellbeing subject has been wellbeing. By identifying this early we can respond before it introduced and is being delivered by our specialist Health Teachers. may worsen to become a bigger issue for the student. It also This new subject is being trialled for 2022 in providing practical enables us to track wellbeing of the overall student population, strategies for Year 9 students around strengthening their personal and identify what the triggers are for declining wellbeing. This wellbeing and seeking to address topics they have identified by information is then used to fine-tune our wellbeing initiatives surveys and feedback. and approaches. In the long term this will integrate a parent portal to allow you to also understand what All these new initiatives have received very is happening for your child, and provide on tap positive feedback so far, and have resulted wellbeing information to our students to As in an increase of students and families assist them in building their own toolkit to we move accessing our Wellness Centre for manage their wellbeing on a day-to-day support. These new strategies are all basis. towards a preventative vital parts of moving forward to our model of wellness we proactive approach to wellbeing. As we All of these new initiatives are part move towards a preventative model of of the whole-school Wellbeing need to ensure that our base wellness we need to ensure that our Framework that is currently being is strong, supportive, and base is strong, supportive and offers a developed, based on best practice and high standard of care to our community. offering a high standard of existing research, and will be released for community consultation as the year care to our community. In addition, we have introduced two progresses. tools that will help us measure and take a K Y L I E RYA N proactive approach to student wellbeing this As part of this whole-school approach, year. GoodSpace is a survey-based tool that has we continue to focus on staff wellbeing too, two purposes: firstly, to identify students who may and ensuring that we are developing a framework be struggling in a number of different areas, and secondly, and processes that enables our staff to have the resources to help us understand the health and social issues that a year level and tools – not only to support students but also to access a may be struggling with. This allows us to address these concerns on high-quality support and learning for themselves. a population basis – not only for this group but proactively with the As we continue to navigate our way through 2022 we look forward year levels below as well. In 2021 this was successfully trialled with to providing our community with many opportunities to have input our Year 9 group; in 2022 we have extended this to all students in into our new Wellbeing Framework and the exciting associated Year 9 and above, scheduled at different times throughout the year new initiatives, while we manage the challenges that the world to assist us in managing the flow of students through our service. brings to us. To date, results from Year 9 and Year 11 have been integrated into our new Year 9 Wellbeing classes and this has helped us make some modifications to our existing Year 11 Learning for Life classes. This is part of our wider whole-school strategy around expanding Kylie Ryan our wellbeing support beyond the Wellness Centre and into the D I R E CTO R O F W E L L B E I N G classrooms and approaches and practices throughout Kristin. There have been other changes to our wellbeing systems, such as a new counselling notes system and the use of screening assessment tools to identify wider student issues as well as any at-risk students not being referred. We have also arranged for an external Clinical Psychologist to be available for students during school time from the ease of our on-site Wellness Centre.
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