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Last Week's Meeting

Guest Speaker - Naomi Falconer – Pre-school to Prison Pipeline

• Naomi has been in the early childhood field for 15 years, prior to that she worked in disability and with vulnerable families
• At Uni there was a research presentation that talked about the child’s brain 1.2kg weight at aged 6, adult brain is 1.5kg – this fascinated Naomi
• The first 5 years are the most critical for growth and learning – the brain’s plasticity is at its height during this time, much more malleable
• Children who face adversity are more liable to have long lasting implications
• Kindergarten is a net – you start with a whole mix in the net – a net before primary school, in this you can children with needs and channel to specialist referrals, succ as Occ Health or Speech Pathology.The children at this age are developing.Some children haven’t been out of the home setting or exposed to drug and alcohol abuse within the home.
• Kinder introduces not only literacy and numeracy, but early development these can include:
  • Reading emotions – those at home with non-engaged parents, not much time with caregiver therefore can’t read emotions on faces
  • Social development – social protocol, eg sharing = negotiating for a toy with another child
  • You can provide children with tools to allow them to say please stop

The Pipe – pipeline preschool to prison

• Detroit had too many children and not enough Kindergartens.So they chose children by a lottery – this provided a good research group
• The body of research produced on the back of this was a 30 year study.
• The children who attended early childhood settings were less likely to commit a felony, drop out of high schoo, less likely to need govt assistance and more likely to own a house.
• What great value for money – if you look at putting money into early childhood settings, where you can make the biggest difference you can impact outcomes in later life
• Learning always occurs through relationships in a secure attachment environment.Think about as you have an interaction with someone, throwing them a piece of wool.Some children have minimal cross-overs with wool.If you give secure & stable attachment – slowly the strands of wool get thicker – you are building neurons in their brain
• In children with trauma – this is particularly difficult, Naomi works with teachers to support children who have experienced severe trauma.These children are likely to respond with aggression initially if you show them attention.Therefore there is a need to work as part of a team to offer love and caring with for the child.Team to share the load (or love) on rotation as it is hard to keep this up.

Bees and rocks 

• US kids are thought to have high confidence, but they are surprisingly not as happy as you would think they would be, everyone had to win and be boosted up eg everyone gets a medal.
• But, they are depressed, more young people struggle in college and first jobs as they expect things to come easily.There is a need to be ethical & hardworking for example, rather than putting their own needs first and that they feel they need to be special.
• There is a fine line between feeling good and being narcissistic
• Children need to take part in healthy give and take
• People terrified of kids failing, but if you don’t get something wrong you can’t learn to fix it
• You can move the rocks and chase the bees away, but it is far better to teach them to do it by themselves, they need to mess up to overcome challenges.

Chair Persons Report

Membership – PHF Pres Elect Marcus Adams

• There is interest with new members, 2 prospective members have caught COVID both are still keen to join the club
• Gus from Belgrave put us onto a member as well
• Dinner nights for members in 6-8 weeks once over the COVID wave

Community  – PP PHF Emma Clark

• Focus is on the Emerald Rotary T2T Market – down on numbers need more people there as some taken out by COVID – first of the year need to get it up and running.Day is involved as well.
• Few more applications for storm recovery, no updates as yet, book we are sponsoring, sponsoring SES $16k possibly with more and a few other projects in the pipeline.
• Storm Recovery Festival, presence on the day would be good – presentation for $16k made on the day, the book will be launched as well

Kelly McAllister – Cocktails @ Elevation - Tuesday March 22nd

• Cocktail making masterclass – is a Rotary night, cost is more than we play, includes 2 cocktails and grazing platters etc
• Also mocktail making
• Need minimum of 16 let Kelly know if you can attend and bring a partner

Fundraising – PP PHF Kris Ash

• Thank you to Roy making wonderful tea-light holders for sale at the market stall.
• Please come along and purchase!!

 

Letter received

 

 

Conference 2022