November 2019

NEWSLETTER ARTICLES

Welcome

Welcome to the November edition of Parent Talk. This is the place to find out all the latest about CCSP activities and developments with our advocacy program. We encourage you to share our newsletters with your school community and we welcome feedback and suggestions for future articles of interest. If you would like to share any thoughts with us, please email peter.grace@ccsp.catholic.edu.au.

If parents from your school would like to find out what their state-level representative body has been up to, please direct them to the CCSP website where they can subscribe to our newsletters.

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Please feel free to share this edition of Parent Talk in school newsletters or via email through the following link:

https://ccsp.schoolzineplus.com/newsletter/62130

Home Away from Home

In the current edition of the Isolated Children’s Parents’ Association of NSW (ICPA – NSW) magazine, The Top Wire, Catholic school mum, Linda Thomas, describes her family’s experience of setting up a second home in order to ensure her children receive a quality school education.

Our family decided almost 4 years ago that we needed to set up a second home to allow our 3 girls to attend school in West Wyalong, 100kms from our first home. I won’t go into the reasons for this other than to say, after trying every other avenue, it became the only workable solution.

At the time, Jacinta was in Year 3, Chelsea was in Year 2 and Ashley was about to start Kindergarten. We left Dad, Greg, to help run the farm and feed the animals back at Gubbata.

The girls and I drive into West Wyalong every Sunday afternoon, do the shopping, washing (don’t quite get enough time Friday night to wash and hang school clothes) and organise ourselves for the week ahead. This now includes putting Jacinta on the weekly boarding bus down to Wagga where she attends Year 7 at Mater Dei Catholic College and boards at Mount Erin (Kildare) Boarding House.

Monday through to Friday the girls get to live a town life – 5 minutes bike ride from school, endless opportunities for sport, art, music, friends and family. Chelsea now helps out at the local art gallery with the younger art classes, and the girls love to get together with the kids on the street for playing any number of games, rollerblading, handball or even selling some of our supplies of farm eggs, fruit or pats from baby animals which tend to frequent our yard.

Friday afternoon gets a bit crazy – kids get home, bags need packing, clothes need changing, shopping for the farm house, tennis lessons, collect the cat, (and any other creatures who have come to visit) pick up Jacinta off her weekly boarding bus and do a mad dash for the farm, where we unload everything, unpack groceries and creatures, cook food of some description and attempt to catch up on the week’s happenings and the plans for the weekend. Greg often has the girls out mustering on the motorbikes bright and early, Grandma always has a list of jobs to help with, and even just taking in the changes in paddocks or stock over the past week or two. The farm life every weekend is what my girls live for. They repeatedly ask why we can’t live on the farm with Dad, especially now we have a few friends doing school of the air and home schooling. Its nearly enough to break my heart every time they ask, but they will appreciate it. Eventually.

My weekend job as a Marriage Celebrant often works against having two homes as most rehearsals take place 100-200 kilometres away and normally should be done about 3pm. We are often left to dash to a neighbouring town before the sun gets down with the complete menagerie of pets, kids, shopping and bags mixed in with wedding documents, PA systems and computers. It’s semi-organised chaos at its best.

Our experience of running a second home has been good - don’t get me wrong we’d love to be all together on the farm and doing things normally, but St. Marys War Memorial School in West Wyalong has ensured the kids’ education is everything we could ask for and the opportunities that the girls have had available have been so much better and all without having to plan an extra hour either side of every event for traveling. The very first year we went from doing 3,000km in a week to maybe 300km. I don’t miss that!! On the negative side – we have two sets of groceries and every other variety of living expenses. The one I notice most would be internet & phones as it is impossible to have the same system on both houses and is very expensive at the best of times. Electricity, gas and water are there as well. We receive AIC Second Home Allowance & School Drive which goes a long way to helping pay these expenses, which is probably just as well, as holding down a normal job with this housing arrangement is virtually impossible. Just when you think it might work – school holidays kick in and bosses are not keen on MIA employees and kids aren’t keen to hang around in town when there’s a farm to roam…

Linda Thomas

(This article originally appeared in the November 2019 edition of The Top Wire, the official publication of the Isolated Children’s Parents’ Association, NSW. It has been reprinted here with permission.)

New eSafety Website

The Office of the eSafety Commissioner has spent the last 18 months working alongside various experts to create, refresh and streamline the eSafety website’s content. Every page on their site has been updated with tailored advice, resources and support to ensure it helps Australians have empowering and positive experiences online. Almost a third of the website features exciting new material, including a section for young people, guided by young people. Not only is this a great resource for students and parents, but the topics can help with online safety conversations in Australian classrooms.

The parents’ and carers’ content offers advice to help children have safer experiences online, with resources on developing children’s digital intelligence, to give them the social, emotional and practical skills needed to successfully navigate the digital world and act responsibly online. The eSafety guide helps parents know more about the latest apps, games and social media their children are using with helpful information on online safety and links to report abusive content. With practical skills and advice on tackling the big issues, hard-to-have conversations, and downloadable resources on building safe and healthy online behaviours, the eSafety website encourages parents to guide children in the use of connected devices.

Over 300 of the site's resources, including the popular education resources, have been refreshed and re-branded and are easier to find using the new filter feature. The site has also had some of its older resources scrapped — with new research and technology, they have become outdated and are no longer relevant. The new online safety hub presents an incredible opportunity to reach a broader range of Australians and make them aware of eSafety’s resources and services.

NSW Police Legacy Digital Child Safety Handbook

A new edition of the Child Safety Handbook is now available online. It aims to help raise awareness of child safety issues that all families face, and what can be done to prevent these risks. The Handbook enables people of all ages to develop strategies to help them deal with difficult situations, and covers such issues as: bullying at school, personal safety, safety in the home, first aid, safety online, fire prevention, road safety outdoors, healthy living and drug & alcohol awareness.

The Child Safety Handbook App has also been produced by NSW Police Legacy and includes everything we need as a community to protect our most valuable and vulnerable resource – our children. From preventive measures at home to safety outdoors, from cybersafety to dealing with peer pressures, this app is a resource for every family and school community. The app can be downloaded via the Apple store, Google Play or Amazon Kindle.

Talking with Your Child about Death

When someone significant in the life of a child dies, there are many ways in which the child may respond. This will often depend on how close the person was to the child. It will also depend on how well supported the child is. Parents have a role to play in this situation. Here are some tips you might consider when helping your child to face the loss of a loved one.

Talk about death in plain and simple language your child will understand. Speak in a caring way and allow moments of silence to give your child a chance to process anything you say. Just how you deliver the sad news will depend on the child’s age and whether the loved one’s death was expected.

Comfort your child. Often, the child’s first response will be one of grief. This is best responded to with a hug. The initial shock may mean that your comforting touch is what your child needs most. Simply being present with your child at this time can be more powerful and supportive than words. Assuming the loved one was close to you too, this time can also be therapeutic for you as a parent or carer. Use this time as an opportunity to allow the relationship you have with your child to grow deeper.

Listen to your child, answering any questions they have as best you can. Encourage your child to say how they are feeling about the situation, both when you tell them the sad news and again later when they have had a chance to reflect on it awhile. Allow your child to see how you are feeling about the loss and talk about your own feelings – this will help your child to express his or her feelings too.

Pray together. As a family, draw strength from prayer and reassure your child that your loved one lives on, praying that he or she is in God’s warm embrace. Explain that we too will one day all be re-united in the presence of our loving God.

Advise your child of any disruptions to their routine that will result from the loved one’s death, particularly if it means that you, as the child’s parent/carer, will not be as available as usual to meet the child’s needs. You may need to rely more on other members of the family or friends.

Explain to your child, again, in simple language, any funeral rituals that will be taking place before they happen. This will help the child to be prepared and prevents him or her from becoming any more upset or confused. Before the ritual, introduce your child to its elements using the appropriate terminology, such as coffin, burial, incense, pallbearer and so on. As you do so, use this as an opportunity to teach your child the beliefs your family has about life, death and the afterlife. If possible, give your child a part to play in the ritual, such as reading a prayer or being involved in a procession. While this can help the child deal with an emotionally challenging situation, it may be better avoided it if it is not something with which your child feels comfortable. Ask them if and how they would like to be involved. It may work better if they have a role that is not part of the service itself, such as choosing the music to be played at the post-service gathering or arranging photographs into slides to be displayed. Explain also what will happen at any post-service gathering – there might still be sadness, but there might also be laughter as people remember the events of your loved one’s life. Guide your child as to what is appropriate. Explain that, while there is likely to be food and drink and it may seem to your child to be a bit like a party, this is to both celebrate the life of your loved one and to make people who have experienced their loss feel better as they share fond memories together.

Let your child know that there will be family members and perhaps even people they don’t know upset and emotional both when they hear the news and at the funeral or memorial service. Explain that it is perfectly natural for people to feel sad at times like this and for this sadness to be seen in public. Advise your child that people will want to say they are sorry for the family’s loss and that the appropriate response is to thank them. There may even be unexpected acts of generosity, such as neighbours or other family members bringing over a hot meal. Again, this is normal and provides a wonderful opportunity to build community.

Monitor your child’s ongoing response to the situation. It is normal for the child to feel sad, but not to be burdened at length by it – offer a distraction that the child enjoys, such as painting or tossing a ball or going for a walk to a park. If, in response to the loved one’s death, your child finds it hard to concentrate or has difficulty sleeping, do your best to reassure them. Tell them they are loved and that there is nothing to be afraid of. In very rare circumstances, clinical counselling services may be accessed for children who are unable to get beyond their feelings of grief and loss. If so, your Catholic school or local CatholicCare or Centacare may be able to help.

Finally, encourage your child to remember their loved one and to share their happy memories of this significant person in their life. As a family, flick through photo albums and connect your stories to help keep alive the memory of your loved one. Continue to pray for them and for your whole family. Let your child know that there will always be some sadness when remembering their loved one, but that with the healing that time brings, this sadness will be outshone by the joy that the gift of the loved one’s life brought to the family and, in particular, to your child.

For more ideas on what to say when talking with your child about death, go to this website:

Seasons for Growth Parent Program

Seasons for Growth has an upcoming parent program on supporting your child following the death of someone they love. Seasons for Growth is a loss and grief education program which aims to promote the social and emotional wellbeing of young people and adults as they adapt to changes in their lives as a result of a death or other loss. The aim of the Parent Program is to assist parents to understand the experience of death from a child or young person’s perspective and to learn about the most effective ways to support them.

When major change or loss occurs in families, parents’ concerns are often framed around important questions such as:

• How do I talk with my child about what’s happened?
• What kind of reaction might I expect from my child?
• Does it matter if my child sees me upset?
• How will I know what my child wants or needs?

Parents will have the opportunity to learn about:

• Children’s reactions – ages, stages and other important considerations regarding ways your children may react and cope.
• The Seasons for Growth approach to understanding and managing change, loss and grief.
• How you can help your child – identifying what you can do or change and acknowledging what you can’t.
• Communicating with your child – building a warm relationship, talking, listening and finding out from your child what he or she needs.
• Caring for yourself – what you might need in order to provide positive parenting during these difficult times.

The event will be held 9:30am-12pm Monday 2 December at Dooleys Catholic Club, Lidcombe. To RSVP or for further information, please contact Leonie Duck on 0412 497 843 or email leonied@catholiccemeteries.com.au

Updates from Education

NSW Curriculum Review

The NSW Curriculum Review Interim Report has been released and public consultation is open until 13 December 2019.

This is the first comprehensive review of the whole curriculum since 1989, and aims to ensure our education system is preparing students for the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. If pressed for time when considering the Review’s Interim Report, a good place to start would be the Executive Summary.

Now is your chance to provide your feedback on Professor Geoff Masters’ proposal for the direction of NSW education in the future. The easiest way to have your say is to make an online submission. You can respond to any or all of the Interim Report reform directions. Go to the link below to find out more. To assist you in providing feedback on the review, see the Interim Report Consultation Workbook at this link:

ACARA Parent Update

For developments in education on the national stage, find the latest edition of ACARA’s Parent Update at this link:

Updates from the Life of the Church

New Shepherd for Broken Bay

CCSP congratulates the Most Rev Bishop Anthony Randazzo on his appointment as Bishop of the Diocese of Broken Bay. For more news on this announcement, go to this website:

Plenary Council 2020

Preparations for the Plenary Council 2020 continue. We have now completed the Listening and Dialogue phase (the report on which can be found at the link below). Now that we are in the Listening and Discernment phase, we continue to seek the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. We invite the groups who participated in Listening and Dialogue to now reconvene in communal Discernment on any one of the six themes. Each Discernment session is expected to result in a response that can be summarised in 1,000 characters and that can be submitted through a form on the Discernment page at the link below. Our Discernment and Writing Groups will then meet and discern on these responses, with prayer and from their own theological knowledge, towards publishing thematic papers and fleshing out the agenda for the first session of the Plenary Council in October 2020.

Abortion Reform Act

Since the last edition of Parent Talk, the NSW Parliament has passed the Abortion Reform Act 2019. Read a report on this at the link below. CCSP thanks all parents of children in Catholic schools who took a stand against this legislation and echoes voices that said your efforts were not in vain. Although the outcome is far from ideal, your contribution helped to see some key amendments passed.

Religious Freedom Debate

The debate on the Australian Government’s Religious Freedom Bill continues. You can access the exposure draft at this link:

The submission made by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference is at this link:

The National Catholic Education Commission’s submission is at this link:

We will keep you informed as developments occur.

Schoolzine

Schoolzine is proud to be a digital partner and supporter of Council of Catholic School Parents.

Schoolzine has been an industry leader in digital school communications for 14 years. They are dedicated to customer service, product development and understanding the school landscape that keeps them at the top of the industry. Schoolzine’s Parent Engagement Platform consists of 3 packages, an eNewsletter, Mobile App and Website offering. Purchased separately or together, they guarantee each package will make engaging with parents easy and even enjoyable for a school of any size. Schoolzine addresses the need for media-rich, interactive content that engages parents.