Responsive Educators in Action (3-part series)

Session 1

Trauma Informed Approach to De Escalation

Trauma Responses are often misunderstood, driven by many intersecting factors, and the distress is overwhelming for children, challenging for educators and heartbreaking for families. Well informed educators can implement core de-escalation actions to positively help settle individuals within group settings. 

Restorative approaches facilitate repair after ruptures, combine strategies and tools to dampen down the stress response and generate healing and repair. 

Insight into a Trauma Informed Approach to De Escalation strengthens community capacity to create safer spaces for children, teams and families. 

Webinar outcomes;

• Recognise common trauma responses and how they may contribute to escalated child behaviors
• Share and learn ways to cope with particular behaviours in age-appropriate ways to establish safety, advance connection and foster empathy in relationships 
• Utilise practical techniques to mitigate potential child escalation and stay grounded while deescalating crisis for children
•  Describe effective practices at individual and organisational levels to ensure educator safety and well-being during crisis situations 
• Resources and referral options for children, and families

Session 2

Safeguarding Curriculums – Why this is necessary 

Key data and direct work with children and families affirms family violence is a significant and serious issue for Australian society. Victims of Child Sex abuse usually know the perpetrator and recent abuse in the education and care sector has provoked a rapid response to assessing risk in our children’s services. We therefore have a responsibility to support children to know how to best protect themselves in all settings. If we are going to support children to thrive and achieve the best outcomes, the early childhood sector must include harm prevention in curriculums. 

Child rights must be understood by children in early childhood curriculums so children can better recognise when someone tries to harm them, when their rights are being breached and when to activate a safety plan. This is a key descriptor for effective child safety work and undertaken in appropriate ways for children of all ages.

Carefully curated play-based curriculums can enhance children’s safeguarding ability from establishing a strong self-identity, self-protection skills and knowing the avenues for seeking help safely.  Consideration for the rights others in our contextual environments is a powerful landscape to learn about fairness, consent, body autonomy and respectful relationships. 

Dominant patterns and rigid ideas and attitudes play out in play which is the most relatable platform to address the drivers of violence. Gently challenging stereotypes, aggression, attempts at control and when someone's agency is reduced allows children to sit with It is hard to sit with feelings of disappointment, learn to accept when someone says no and to learn ways to safely dampen the stress response in our bodies. 

The role of the educator is vital in leading violence prevention, working responsively, with intentionality and attunement with our youngest citizens so they have opportunities to learn lifelong skills about ways to communicate with care.

Session 3

Cyber Connect – Safeguarding from Children’s Brave Stories 

Technology advances are rapid, demanding our ongoing attention to mitigate risk to children. Tech safety has to be included in responsible teaching and learning but how do we ensure it becomes part of our everyday curriculums in a meaningful way? This session highlights key information gathered from global efforts to protect children to inform educators, families and children themselves about ways to be safer online. If we work with intentionality, we can immerse valuable safeguarding strategies into play based curriculums so children become familiar with what to do if they see a popup, how to create a safe digital identity, how to play wisely and what actions can be taken to access help when faced with distressing content.