Improving Resilience and Wellbeing Program

Courtney Hart

The last two years have seen some tough times with the COVID pandemic. Our already fragile community went through social isolation and increased hardship. Our Wellbeing and Resilience program was able to provide support to our community with free Wellbeing and Resilience Sessions which provided tools and training of focusing on how to cope and identifying strategies to help deal with chronic stress, acute stress, problem solving, positive talk, self-care and mindfulness.

We were also able to provide our Community with Disaster Management Sessions to raise awareness on how to be cyclone ready, flood awareness and pandemic preparedness.

PlayGro Garbutt

Courtney Hart

July 2021 – June 2022 saw our last 12 months with our PlayGro Program. PlayGro provided weekly playgroups for parents/carers with children 3–5 years old. Our family support worker was able to provide support, advice and referrals though attendance by relevant local community service organisations at each session providing parents with warm referral opportunities and contacts.

Fun Interactive Creative Sessions were included with Singing Teacher from Little Voices, artists and/or children’s authors encouraging imagination and love of literacy.

We had the privilege of having a local Townsville children’s book author –Norah Kersh come and read her books to our PlayGro families.

We shared healthy morning tea, lunch or afternoon tea and provided recipes for parents to take home.

We also saw positive improvements with the children’s developmental milestones through fun interactive physical play sessions with local organisations BFiTT, Sporty Kids, especially designed for children to develop fine and gross motor skills.