Celebrating OUR STAFF

Fairfield City Council staff were treated to a day out at Aquatopia to celebrate staff achievements in 2020-2021.

Staff across all services enjoyed a BBQ lunch along with unlimited rides at our famous water park. Everyone had fun on the day, spending time with colleagues, relaxing and enjoying a well deserved break.

Thank you to all staff involved with organising the event, your efforts are greatly appreciated!

Recognition Awards Program NOMINATE AN EMPLOYEE OR TEAM

Categories:

• Customer Service

• Innovation

• Leadership

• Operational Improvement

• Sustainability

• Work Health and Safety

For more information on RAP awards visit FirstCall.

Nominate staff or a team with performance excellence in any of these categories:

The national Inspire 2023 conference was held over two days in March at the International Convention Centre with more than 1,200 Early Childhood delegates in attendance.

The conference provided a forum for early childhood workers to be challenged, affirmed and inspired.

During the conference, four of our Best Start Education and Care centre directors presented ‘Boiling in the Bubble… She’ll be right mate!’.

The presentation illustrated the reflections, challenges and personal stories of our Best Start Education and Care early childhood professionals who worked through the challenging times of the 2021 COVID-19 lockdown.

Maria, Jackie and Jason, with the behind the scenes support from Silvana spoke about the process of cooking more than 35,000 meals for the local community. They highlighted how COVID shifted the way educators, centre directors, upper management, and other business units within our organisation banded together in the face of challenging times, to support not only our local community but each other.

Jason’s Story

At Fairfield City Best Start Education & Care, the Community Project Team runs playgroups for children and families. We also attend our services on a weekly basis to provide strategies and resources to educators when working with children that require additional support. We wanted to share a story showcasing the support we provided to one of our families.

There was a child who required significant additional support with his family wanting to place him into one of our services, but there were no positions vacant until the following year. The Community Project Team then recommended he attend our playgroup in the meantime.

His family was very anxious about him starting care due to his high needs. We looked at how to best support this child and his family.

We had an educator from his service attend the playgroup so he could begin building a bond and have a familiar face. We also had his support educator attend.

The ‘Cooking for the Community’ project formed a number of initiatives that were implemented across the Early Learning services, one being the design and publishing of a cookbook. Working with a local charities, collating contributions for the community through developing food and toy hubs within the Early Learning services.

The third initiative was visits to local nursing homes where children interacted with the residents. Cook and sip evenings were created where our families could come together to create a meal and build upon their own community relationships.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the departments such as Communications and Marketing that assisted and supported the conference team over the last few months to make sure that the presentation and publications were completed.

At the playgroup, we saw him thrive and become more confident. When he started in the new year, he needed support to settle in his new environment, and having that familiar face of the educator really helped. He felt safe with her and, with her support was able to bond with other educators and children. As the service had put in place support strategies, it made the transition really smooth. It was beautiful to see the benefit of having the playgroups connected to our services. We have received such positive feedback from the child’s family on what a difference it has made to their child’s journey.

Silvana Popovic, Community Project Educator Children & Family Services

The Hub@Bonnyrigg Dhanawi

Residents in our City will now have another place to meet, socialise, learn, or gather with the official unveiling of The Hub@Bonnyrigg Dhanawi.

As our urban areas grow and yards become smaller, a safe space available to everyone becomes more and more important. In February, the community centre was officially opened with its large hall that can accommodate up to 150 people.

The centre will be an ideal place for families, community groups, play groups or businesses to use for large family gatherings, meetings or hosting education courses.

The centre has an accessible commercial kitchen, meeting spaces catering to 6 to 80 people, audio visual capacity, a fully accessible bathroom, office space, a wet play area for children and a beautiful garden.

The centre was built as part of the redevelopment of the Newleaf Estate under a negotiated planning agreement where the developer builds the centre before handing it to Council to manage for the community.

The planning for the centre started in 2017 with meetings being held between council staff, Landcom and Land and Housing Corporation to design the centre that is here today. We made sure the community was involved to deliver a centre for our residents with consultations at Bonnyrigg Plaza and through meetings with community groups.

Community bookings for The Hub@Bonnyrigg Dhanawi will be available in the coming months.

With the addition of The Hub@Bonnyrigg Dhanawi, we now have 20 community halls and centres across the City to book and use.

Our centres and halls are perfect places for neighbours, friends or family to meet and enjoy time together.

To view the full range of centres available to book visit www.fairfieldcity.nsw.gov.au/centresandhalls.

Fairfield Heights Park and Bareena Park

Work is well underway upgrading Bareena Park, Canley Vale and Fairfield Heights Park playgrounds thanks to a $4.9 million grant from the NSW Government’s Public Spaces Legacy Program.

Bareena Park will comprise of a one-of-a-kind large koi fish slide and climbing rope feature to go with a ‘water theme’ playground. Equipment will include five bay swings, carousels, spinners, rockers, seesaws, musical equipment, slides, and lots more!

Fairfield Heights Park’s ‘nature theme’ playground will include a large treehouse piece with a slide, in addition to accessible play equipment, toddler and kids swings and play zone.

The two new playgrounds are due to be completed in July this year and join a lengthening list of Fairfield City super parks, such as the Adventure Park and Obstacle Course at Fairfield

We are also planting more trees, installing new seating, wider paths and new paving for commuters and shoppers to enjoy while also restoring the significant