You are invited to attend an information session to learn about the current services and resources available to parents, students and career practitioners for post year 12 and how best access and use these. Please see the flyer for more information....
A colleague of mine told me about the program through a family member. It only took a brief conversation over coffee with Laura to write up a job description for the placement for us. We invited the first candidate over for a brief catch up to determine whether their interests aligned with ours.Madison caught on very quickly, we spend about 2-3 days training her on simple tasks to slowly build her skillset, and we found that she was more than capable to assist us on client projects. With our direction and support, Maddison was able to integrate with our team seamlessly and accepted feedback gracefully to continuously learn and improve.I am very surprised at how quickly the student caught on to our processes and workflow, especially in the field of digital media. Giving them an opportunity to learn and to be a part of the team was humbling as their approach to work and learn showed us the true colours of younger...
For a while we, at the LLEN, have been hearing the same message – that professional learning for Education Support staff in schools doesn’t happen as often as it could. So, with the support of Gab Evans, School Focussed Youth Services Coordinator at Family Life, we decided to do something about it! Trauma informed practice training is important for anyone working with young people who have experienced trauma and we thought this was a great place to start. After contacting schools and letting them know that we were facilitating this training we were overwhelmed with the response, so much so, that we decided to run a second training session! Gab put together a fantastic training program and provided a really extensive workbook for everyone who attended. They all found it to be very valuable especially with the resources and ideas Gab had included. My colleague Sam and I attended both sessions and apart from finding...
The Navigator program is a State-wide initiative endorsed by the Department of Education that is currently delivered by community services across 8 regions within Victoria. The program aims to support young people aged 12 – 17 years to re-engage with education and training.The Mission Australia Navigator provides support to young people across the Bayside Peninsula catchment which includes the LGA’s for Mornington, Frankston, Bayside, Port Phillip, Glen Eira, Kingston and Stonington. Young people disengage from school for a variety of reasons including but not exclusive to mental health, substance misuse, family conflict, generational disadvantage, housing instability and complex trauma. Often young people experience a number of these risk factors simultaneously and often, it’s not obvious why disengagement has occurred.Our approach is holistic whereby we aim to assist the young person to address the barriers they face on a day to day basis. Building rapport with the young people and their significant...
If you haven't seen it yet, bookmark this page!https://childandyouthdirectory.com.au/There are many services for children, young people and families in our local area, but sometimes they are hard to find. The Child and Youth Directory brings local service-level information together in one place. It aims to help children, young people and families, schools, agencies and services to:improve awareness of the child, youth, and family services systems, and increase opportunity for people to find the services they needThe Child and Youth Directory provides a comprehensive list of services and details about who the service is for, and how, when and where the service can be accessed....
Over the past 6 weeks, I’ve been doing structured workplace learning one day a week with BGKLLEN.BGKLLEN stands for Bayside Glen Eira Kingston Local Learning & Employment Network. BGKLLEN only has four staff members and they are great to work with. They are dedicated to creating equal opportunity for all people in education and employment and they like helping each other out. They don’t rush you to think of ideas, they give you time and when you have one, they are very open to it. I have taken part in lots of activities and learned that you can have fun no matter what you are doing (even making labels!). I have used Excel a lot and now feel better about formulas and autosum but the best thing they asked me to do was to brainstorm ideas about how I can help other young people.At the end of the mind map, I had looked...
The BGKLLEN can confirm that we are partnering with Foundation for Young Australians (FYA) to build a VCAL teacher toolkit based on their future world of work report, the New Work Order.The future of work is going to look very different. Automation, globalisation and more flexible working arrangements are rapidly reshaping our economy and work. Career advice and work preparation programs are failing to prepare young people for the future world of work. Many of the traditional pathways discussed focus on jobs that won’t exist by the time these students finish their studies.The BGKLLEN FYA VCAL Teacher Toolkit will focus on developing enterprise skills including problem solving, financial literacy, digital literacy, teamwork, and communication. It will include mapping to literacy, numeracy and work-related skills units and include ready to go presentations and teacher notes.It is fair to say that we are very excited about working with FYA to turn this...
As someone who has been working in the community service sector for over 7 years and spent the last three specialising in disability, I thought I had a good grasp of frameworks, guidelines and general Government jargon. Alas, I found myself becoming very confused regarding the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).It got me thinking: “Just how much confusion and anxiety is this causing families and carers, in particular those who do not work in the disability space”?I am often being asked questions in relation to the NDIS that I have been unable to answer but recently I went along to the Endeavour Foundations NDIS information session. I really want to try and increase my understanding and knowledge of the NDIS so I can share this knowledge with others, in the hope that things may become just a little bit clearer for at least one person.I have gathered my notes from...
BGKLLEN received feedback from local teachers who were sending students out on SWL that anxiety was very prominent in young people and was having a negative effect on these type of important situations in their lives.BGKLLEN partnered with headspace Elsternwick and developed the “Anti-Anxiety Card”. It has mindfulness techniques that reduce the effects of anxiety for young people to use when facing new challenging tasks. The demand for these cards has far exceeded our expectations with over 5.5k Anti-Anxiety Cards being distributed to schools, youth services and case managers, and has even spread across the state with 3 LLENs replicating the project in their local area. Some schools are now giving them out with the students’ exam details written on the back!“Is there any way the Navigator case managers could access more anti-anxiety cards? In our team meeting yesterday, there was a lot of positive feedback about how beneficial these...
I'm home. This has a slightly different meaning to me this morning after spending the night sleeping on cardboard in a city car park. It means a lot more to me.Vinnies CEO John told a story to us last night that really stuck with me. The Vinnies soup van set up as usual one cold winters night in Melbourne CBD and all the regulars stopped by. Later though, a new face approached and asked gently for soup and a sleeping bag. One of the volunteers commented that her outfit looked top end of Collins St. but like everyone else who sought comfort that night from the van, she had nowhere to go. They only saw her the once and I think the reason this stuck with me was that all Aussies know Vinnies and know the only barrier to support in what must be awful times, is your willingness to...
