Empowering young people in disaster preparedness, response, recovery and resilience

Julian Jefferys

Hello, and thanks for joining us today. My name is Julian and I'm one of the Be You Consultants working at headspace in the Bushfire Response Program. Just in terms of a quick overview of who I am, an introduction - my background is I'm an educator, a teacher, and I've worked in schools across New South Wales, Victoria, the ACT and I've also worked internationally at some of the international schools around the place and also worked at the International Baccalaureate in program implementation. So I came to headspace about two years ago and I've been working in the Bushfire Response Program. We call it BRP, if we refer to it that way. Today I've got two colleagues of mine, I've got Sally on the far right here, a Be You Deliver and Engagement Advisor, also in the Bushfire Response
Program and at Early Childhood Australia, and also with me is Elise, who is a colleague of mine from headspace, a Be You Consultant with the headspace team. And today we're going to explore their backgrounds in a bit, as we go through our sort of interview style of presentation and they'll get a chance to introduce themselves.
And if you, you know, in case you've sort of dropped into this session and you want to make sure it's the right one, the session is really for educators in schools and early learning services and out of hours care settings and it explores through our conversation and our experience, the way that we worked with learning communities after the disaster of the summer bushfires a couple of years ago. And we want to sort of explore youth empowerment in that lens, and we also want to see what kind of resources are available and explore those resources that you might be able to use as an educator.
So before we begin, we should have a quick Acknowledgement of Country, Elise.

Elise Taylor

Thank you. So 'Yuma', that means hello in Ngunnawal Language. So I'd like to begin by acknowledging that today we are all meeting on the lands of the Ngunnawal People. I like to pay my respects to Elders past and present. I'd also like to thank them for their continuing care of culture, kin and Country, the beautiful mountains and rivers that we have here today.

Julian Jefferys

Thanks Elise, another thing that we always do, because Be You is a national initiative, and we talk to lots of educators all over the place. We always try to make our presentations and events very safe spaces. So we'll aim to make this presentation a safe space today.
And we'll ask you to do that in a couple of ways. First of all, if you are contributing to the chat or posing questions and feel free to do that, we'll have some time for Q and A towards the end. And the moderators on the session will be, kind of, collating all those questions and maybe pushing them through towards the end of the presentation. But if you do that, please just remember to be confidential and anonymous in the way that you might talk about your own school or learning community, sort of context. The other thing to consider obviously also is your own wellbeing. We will be touching on topics of natural disasters and also mental health. So please remember this, obviously, a voluntary session, feel free to take a break, step out any time. And also remember the supports you have either informally or if you know you needed them. On the slide now you'll see a number of different services that provide support for you to reach out to if they were required.
So, again, in terms of an introduction and just so you know, sort of our legitimacy and why we're here today and where we're speaking from, we all work as part of the Be You initiative. And if you've never heard of the Be You initiative, it's a national mental health initiative for educators it's led by Beyond Blue. And it's done in partnership with Early Childhood Australia and headspace. And the three organisations work together to try to make sure that this fantastic free government-funded initiative is available to all educators and learning services throughout Australia. The aim of it really is to empower educators to support young people. So it's about lifting the awareness, increasing the awareness and skills of the adults to sort of then in turn, help and support emotional wellbeing and mental health of young people. So it offers a lot of different things. It's like a smorgasbord of things that you can use it for. There's professional learning, there's fact sheets. There's ways of dipping in and getting out and lots of great information. But if you were interested in making your learning community a, if you want to sort of have a big change and use Be You as an initiative to really kind of bring about a sort of an institutional wide change there's lots of resources in there that can help you do that on a bigger scale. And I invite you to have a look at them, and we'll talk a little bit about connecting with that stuff later in the session. So we'll be referring back to Be You and sort of highlighting Be You resources throughout the presentation. So that's kind of where we're coming from.
So in terms of an overview of today's session, there's essentially two halves. Although I should say the first half is probably a little bit longer than the second half, a little bit shorter. We want to really today explore the ways that we've seen and worked with, and we know that learning communities can really empower children and young people in the disaster process. So in the process of preparation or responding to a natural disaster or during those other phases of recovery and resilience building.
And we've got some great examples today around how that's happened with young people being brought into that process. The second part of what we want to talk about today is the resources that are available, that in some ways we've sort of helped develop and we've kind of got a sense of where they fit and how schools can use them. And they're available for you to use free on the Be You as part of the Be You suite of resources. So that's the two bits that we're going to be focusing on.
And in terms of takeaways, just to put it out there nice and early. So, you know, the three things, the three sort of key points we want to make are that empowering young people is important. I'm sure many of us already know that, but empowering people at young people in a sort of disaster space is important and has some great benefits. And the second point we want to really make is, make it really clear the types and the ways and the examples that learning communities can do this and the third point is to make sure that we discuss the considerations and the safety and the things that you need to do to make sure young people are okay to be involved in the different stages of a disaster process. So that's really the three takeaways that we'll revisit towards the end.
So, enough for me, I'm going to throw to my colleague, Sally, and just ask Sally if you could introduce yourself and also just give a little bit of background around sort of what you saw as you worked with learning communities that were affected by the bushfires.

Sally Hodges

Thanks for the intro, Julian. Thanks to everyone joining us. So I have a teaching background I've been fortunate enough to work with early learning services, out-of-hours school care settings and schools, primary schools in Australia and in the UK. And I worked with learning communities in the Snowy Valleys and Southern New South Wales as part of the Bushfire Response Program. I also have lived experience, I experienced the 2003 bushfires here on the lands of the Ngunnawal People.

Julian Jefferys

Great. And tell us a little bit now about what you saw and felt because we all sort of started around the same time and we sort of all worked with these learning communities that had been impacted. What was it like to sort of go into these communities and try to sort of understand and support them?

Sally Hodges

It was interesting because before I went and visited the learning communities, you know, I tried to do a bit of research, understand the context, attend stakeholder meetings to try and understand what was going on in the communities. Also, there was so much media coverage, you know, Australians, people all across the world couldn't escape the devastation. So I was really aware there was more loss than I could conceptualise, but then when I visited the communities, I was really struck by the contrast between the physical and the economic destruction and then the optimism of the community members as well. They were so enthusiastic to move towards recovery and to empower the young children and their community as well.

Julian Jefferys

And that kind of contrast is interesting and that speaks to what we've sort of learned over the last couple of years, is that it's a very complex space, disaster recovery. It sort of comes with a complex mix of emotions and so on. And also if there's a timeline of, you know, post-disaster recovery, it's a very wiggly line. Isn't it? It's not a direct line of just sort of getting better and improving. It's a lot of setbacks and then moments of highs and so-and-so. Great little introduction. Thank you.

Sally Hodges

And when I say that there was that optimism, I don't want to minimise or dismiss what the communities were experiencing. One learning community really sticks in my, in my mind that I went and visited. It was, you know, it was after school. It was quite a young staff and they were just obviously very comfortable with each other. It was a really, really jolly atmosphere. You know, they were all comfortable kind of making fun of each other. There was some throwing of lollies. It was really happy atmosphere. But then when the topic of the bushfires was broached, I've never felt such a profound shift in a room. And it really brought home that that impact was still there, 18 months on and it's like, it still is there now.

Julian Jefferys

Great setting the same. Thank you, Sally. What about you, Elise, if you could introduce yourself and just tell us a little bit about your background and then perhaps some of the things you might've seen just in that initial stages.

Elise Taylor

Yeah, absolutely. So all of the Be You Consultants on our team have a range of different backgrounds. You both have a teaching background, my background is in psychology and I've previously worked for rural mental health and youth mental health organisations and I really feel like my experience living and working in rural Australia has really given me a greater understanding of the impacts that, you know, natural disasters and adversity has on communities and individuals and their mental health. And so I feel like this has been really beneficial in working with, you know, schools for me, because that was the group that I worked with, schools. And I primarily with schools in the Hunter New England region of New South Wales. And that was an area that had been through prolonged drought immediately before the bushfires as well. 

Julian Jefferys

So cumulative natural disasters building on each other, yeah?

Elise Taylor

Absolutely. Yeah.

Julian Jefferys

All right. And then what about, you've got a funny story where you've got some kind of personal experience of youth engagement. You remember that from your childhood? Is that right? 

Elise Taylor

Yes, yes. So definitely, I felt like the primary school, in particular, that I went to really did empowering children and young people really well. We felt really supported, you know, as a 11, 12-year-old to really take action towards causes that were really important to us. And I've really enjoyed, you know, being able to make an impact, even though I was so young. And so I think that's, that's one of the reasons why I'm really passionate about this area.

Julian Jefferys

So you've carried that with you, that sense of youth empowerment, getting involved and so on. So, that's great that that's your background. Let's now just turn a little bit to, why do you think empowering young people - it may not be the first thing that educators, I mean, I think educators know a lot about student voice now and agency, and they want to bring young people into processes across education settings in general. But perhaps something around the disaster space, may make educators feel a little bit unsure about the appropriateness of bringing a young person into that process, but tell us why you think it's important to essentially empower young people.

Elise Taylor

Yeah, it is incredibly important and, you know, not only from my own experience, that's important, but also, yeah, there's quite a few reports that have found the need for this. So for example, the Children and Young People's Experience of Disaster 2020 report, spoke to hundreds of children and young people about their experiences of natural disasters, including drought, flood, bushfire across New South Wales. And it really found that children and young people weren't given the opportunities to participate in disaster preparedness or response or recovery, despite the fact that they were repeatedly expressing a desire to do so. And like, I know that we've, we've seen that in our work and, I suppose, the report really highlighted that involving children and young people can provide a sense of agency reduces anxiety and also nurtures a sense of community connectedness and belonging. 

Julian Jefferys

So a lot of really positive things that we know from that report or from other kinds of sources. So that's great. 

Elise Taylor

And I was just going to say, sorry, that's not just New South Wales specific either, you know, there's been a report from the South Australian Red Cross, that, again, did a co-design project with children and young people around that topic. And they found that children and young people really want to know information about disasters. They want to know how to prepare. They want opportunities to practise and they want to have, they want to be able to help based on their skills, not their age.

Julian Jefferys

So we know a lot of this is sort of good stuff, but then where in the timeline would you put that? And when I say timeline, when we talk about disaster recovery, we often talk about initial response and then, sort of, developing into resilience and recovery and then preparation. If the disaster is one of those sort of seasonal ones that you might have a preparation phase as well for, like, seasonal bushfires or so on. So where in that, kind of, process or timeline, would you be involving young people?

Elise Taylor

Yeah, I think there's opportunities to involve children and young people at all points along that, I think the degree to which you involve them will just vary, and, you know, we'll speak a little bit more about some of those considerations around safety and things like that later on. But as an example in the preparedness stage, you know, we could be talking to children and young people around the AIM Model that the Australian Psychological Society has developed, which really supports children and young people to anticipate what they might be feeling and thinking if a disaster was to occur, how do identify the physical sensations in their bodies and their thoughts, and then how to manage these thoughts through, say, breathing exercises or positive self-talk.

Julian Jefferys

So that could be introduced through any stage and that could help during a response stage and then in the moment of crisis or whatever.
Yeah, it can be built into all stages. Okay. Fantastic. That's really interesting and great. Let's throw now to Sally, because what was sort of doing is we're going to be sort of thinking about school context and then early learning service context. What impacts, perhaps, would a teacher see on sort of the education of a young person. What kind of way could a disaster impact, you know, the young person and how they learn?

Sally Hodges

Yeah, I think that's a really good question. And actually this applies to children of all ages. Yeah. But I think it's a really good question because, you know, at the end of the day, educators and teachers want to educate and teach and children want to learn, like that's why they're in their learning community. But, of course, traumatic events including bushfires or other natural disasters can affect how we learn, especially attention and memory. They can affect the shape, structure and sometimes even the size of parts of the brain associated with attention and memory. So in terms of attention after a traumatic event, children can sometimes have attention bias towards threatening cues and angry faces and they'll over-prioritise the searching for danger. So they're not prioritising learning stimulus, they're prioritising safety, which is understandable, but it's not helpful for learning. They also have difficulty, sometimes, orienting then disengaging their attention and reorienting their attention. And, you know what a learning community is like, there's a lot of distractions they might need to disengage. I might need to listen to someone, their educator, their friend and then pay attention again. So that's obviously a big hurdle. Also in terms of memory, after a traumatic event sometimes children, they have difficulty with autobiographical memory. So remembering things about their own life and they can also experience memory distortion and retrieval challenges. And that's not just to do with the event that can be, to do with a lot of things. And educators will say this after a traumatic event, they talk about the Swiss cheese effect, where things they've taught it seems to fall through.

Julian Jefferys

And what kind of things can educators do very quickly just to, sort of, minimize those things?

Sally Hodges

That's a really, really good question. It's really, I think, validating because best practice is the best thing to do anyway. So, you know, minimise distractions, encourage focusing on one task at a time, try and keep those tasks, or lesson, nice and short. Allow brain and body breaks whenever possible. Ah, check readiness to learn again, something that teachers and educators do anyway, teach concepts in context, in a way that utilises positive emotions because we know emotions are really linked to memory and also allow children to experience challenge and success. You know, you need to target their work to their zone of proximal development - about 70% success is challenging enough but, like, you still get to experience that success.  Just best practices are what we need right now.

Julian Jefferys

Which educators know what to do. We're just really talking about, sort of, enhancing those things. So in a way, what we've established is that, you know, we've heard from Elise that there is a lot of, sort of, research and ideas to suggest that young people want to be involved in natural disasters. We know that the impact of a natural disaster or traumatic event can I have a big impact on young people in their learning. So we know this is a real thing. We really want to, kind of, dive into getting young people involved to, sort of, help as much as we can in that situation. So Sally, in terms of like, watching these learning communities and dipping into them and supporting over the last couple of years. What did you see, as examples of them using student engagement as a way of helping the situation.

Sally Hodges

I mean, I saw a lot of great examples, but one really great example that I saw was the community book that was put together by the children and young people across the Snowy Valleys. So about eight months after the bushfires, I met with some members of the Snowy Valleys Council children's services and these educators reported that a lot of the children that they were working with had a real focus on the negative things and real focus on the bushfires and this was an observation shared by so many learning communities that I worked with. And so, you know, that's their questions, their play, their drawings, their dreams, their nightmares had a real bushfire lens on them. And they also found that, you know, their play and their drawings, they were focused on the disaster, on the flames, on the destruction and they couldn't move towards the regrowth or the regeneration.

Julian Jefferys

So, really stuck in that traumatic event? Really not able to move towards a better place.

Sally Hodges

So this said to the educators that, I mean, a) the children needed a space to share the stories and b) it needed to be in a positive way and they needed a project to focus on and the educators felt that they needed something positive to focus on as well.
So we put out the call for submissions for a book and over 300 were received from children from a few months old to 18 years old.
And, you know, these could be photos, collages, stories, song lyrics, a range of amazing artwork. And it was such a positive response that they decided that they needed to launch it at a community book launch. An event to celebrate the strengths in the community, community connectedness. And it was just a really positive event. The teachers and educators said that, you know, it was flexible enough for children to express themselves however they needed to, but they were able to provide enough structure for the kids to feel supported as well.

Julian Jefferys

Right. So that's one really great example of bringing young people in at all ages and all ranges in their skillset, whichever way they wanted to contribute and then, kind of, collate it and bring it together. That's absolutely fantastic. Thank you. Let's swing now to Elise. So you've been working with schools, different contexts, but what are some additional examples in that slightly different context you've seen young people bought into and supported through the disaster process?

Elise Taylor

Yeah. We've seen quite a range of ways that children and young people have been brought into this process. And I know that, yes,
schools were involved in the Snowy Valleys Community Book. And there's been a few other examples of some books that we've seen schools develop, well that the students at the schools, I should say, have developed. We've also seen examples of secondary schools training their students in psychological first aid so that they have the skills to support themselves but also to support others in the event of a natural disaster. 

Julian Jefferys

So their peers, you mean, their friends? So training, you know, to sort of have a support mechanism around them?

Elise Taylor

Yeah. We've also seen primary schools utilising the Red Cross Pillowcase Program, which is to provide students with information and practical skills for preparedness as well. 

Julian Jefferys

Tell us a little bit about that, about the Pillowcase Program.

Elise Taylor

So as the name suggests the students do get to think about the items that they might need to take in a disaster. So they get to put all their little items into a pillowcase. And I think that really helps, you know, them to, to understand more about preparedness and get involved in preparedness for their families.

Julian Jefferys

In an age appropriate way because a young person thinks of the pillowcase, thinks that's about the amount that I can grab, and then they want to choose their items that they think are the most important ones to take with them. 

Sally Hodges

Hearing you talk about that, Elise, it reminds me of the 2003 fires here in Canberra. And so my dad was at my grandparent's house, sorting out spot fires there and my mum said, 'you know, it's probably time that we pack the car in case we need to evacuate'. So she was taking out, you know, important documents that were a must for her passports, birth certificates, photo albums and my sister and I felt that we'd help out too. But when she got to the boot of the car we were filling it with a dirty dog blanket, a gross cup that I'd picked up from Movie World the year earlier because they were essential for me. And I think that really brings out what we know that there are different priorities and different risks or different perceived risks for adults and children. So I think that preparedness would have been wonderful for us.

Julian Jefferys

So that sort of program is great for young people to, sort of, conceptualise it in their own mind. But it's also good, like you said, Sally, because it brings adults to the awareness that young people have different priorities in a disaster, don't they? There's different things to worry about, and it's quite different to what the adults will be thinking about. And that kind of awareness will help as well. But there are other ways, right? That you saw, I think, or school communities bringing young people into the process.

Elise Taylor

So some other examples have been involving students in the planning or the viewing of a school's Emergency Management Plans, formation of a student bushfire safety committee and also implementing disaster resilience education programs that really allow that learner agency and problem-solving. So, thinking about, you know, empowering students to develop bushfire manifestos and claymation videos and interactive websites.

Julian Jefferys

And then, what, take them out into the community as an education tool?

Elise Taylor

Yeah. So for example, some of the students actually did deliver workshops to parents and community members on the topics that they were learning about, investigating and exploring, and there are some really great examples of that online as well.

Sally Hodges

Elise, that's something that came out of the communities I worked with as well. They said the children aren't the leaders of tomorrow. Like they're the leaders of right now, they were leading the communities towards recovery.

Julian Jefferys

So great examples there, fantastic. And I wonder if, you know, if the audience members are thinking great, this is fantastic. And we can dive in. And if we ever were, you know, sadly involved in some sort of disaster we could really get the young people involved, but there are some considerations, right? So we want to make sure that we did it appropriately and safely and, sort of, in a way that sort of helps young people rather than sort of hinders them. Is that right? 

Elise Taylor

Absolutely. So really before we're kind of commencing any of these, you know, empowerment activities we really want to consider if the learning community is ready for children and young people to be involved and engaged and empowered before we do that because we don't want the activities to becoming, you know, to become tokenistic. And so I'd really encourage learning communities to consider: do the children and young people have the skills needed to participate and advocate? And if not, how can we help them develop those skills? You know, ideally you want to be building those skills before we ask them to use them. We also want to be considering, you know, is the learning community ready to listen to children and young people and allow them to, you know, lead change?

Julian Jefferys

Why would they not be ready? What are you referring to there?

Elise Taylor

Well, thinking about the culture of the school. Have they a got children and young people already involved in the community?
Are they already implementing?

Julian Jefferys

So, would it be weird in the moment to sort of all of a sudden bring in a big strong youth voice thing? Or is it already part of their culture?

Elise Taylor

Yeah, and I mean, it, there's no reason why you can't start at that could be a good, you know, motivator to start. But just thinking about how you can actually assess the school's readiness for this. And I know that you actually does have an Implementation and Reflection Tool and there's a section on empowerment, where, you know, you can have those prompting questions to discuss with staff around what that looks like in the school or the early learning services as well. 

Julian Jefferys

So that Implementation and Reflection Toolkit could be something that an educator could use right now and just pull it out, off the Be You website and then basically use it to facilitate a staff conversation about how, how good are we at empowerment or are we ready or can we do more?

Elise Taylor

Yeah, absolutely.

Julian Jefferys

So they're sort of general considerations. Are there any other general considerations or should we talk about safety considerations, which are really key?

Elise Taylor

Yeah, there's quite a few safety considerations, I think for people. You know, when we're thinking about this and, you know, for example, we want to consider the timing of these activities. So, you know what, I know Sally's already spoken about this, but, you know, what play are you noticing in children? What conversations are you hearing in the playground? Are children and young people expressing a desire to be involved? And also, you know, do staff have the, you know, capacity to be involved? Because we know that, you know, when there are disasters, the whole community is impacted and if the children and young people are impacted it's likely that the educators are as well. So thinking about that, I think is really important.

Julian Jefferys

That's a key part of our work at Be You, isn't it? To make sure that from a sort of a general principle of supporting young people's emotional and social wellbeing, making sure that as, the educator, you are completely well looked after yourself because the better you are and, sort of, regulated you are the better you'll be able to help and support young people in that.

Elise Taylor

Definitely slowly. I think also thinking about when we are doing these activities, if they're, you know, if staff are ready and able to support these activities, thinking about having a staff member who can actually support the children and young people in this. And, you know, if, as an example, you're getting children and young people involved in say an adult-led meeting, having someone there to explain to them what their engagement is, to actually to look like what are their responsibilities? What's their role? What's the agenda?

Julian Jefferys

Coaching them through it, making sure they're aware.

Elise Taylor

Yeah. And also being there to advocate so that they're actually, children and people are given the opportunity to meaningfully contribute to that meeting, as an example. I think we also want to be making sure that we're involving two or more children and young people. One, so that mutual support can be provided but that also so that they don't feel like they have to represent, you know, their entire, you know, community or cohort.

Julian Jefferys

The burden's not falling on their shoulders.

Elise Taylor

Exactly. And also really considering the representation in terms of every learning community has, you know, sub-communities within them and disasters will impact them all differently. For example, I know that, you know, First Nations people have a very strong connection to the Land, in particular, and it holds a lot of value to them and that's very different perspective that we need to be thinking about in this as well.
Okay.

Julian Jefferys

And any, anything else before I move on to the sort of, sort of summarise this section? 

Elise Taylor

We've got two more, actually. I think we also have a need to be making sure that we're checking in on children and young people prior, during, and after to make sure that they're in the right headspace to be engaging in this. And you know, this could be done in a number of ways, either through informal or more formal supports and, for example, schools often have these kind of support structures already in place. So the student wellbeing team, to give those opportunities for even just the, you know, the children and young people to debrief with afterwards.
And I think finally we need to ensure that there's feedback mechanisms in place so that when the children and young people do contribute, particularly if it's in more of a consult type of way that you know, they, know how their feedback has been used. We don't want them to become disengaged or disappointed.

Julian Jefferys

Or feel that it's tokenistic or it's not really effecting anything.

Elise Taylor

And I'm not saying that, you know, we have to implement every idea that they suggest. You know, at least responding to the ideas and issues and providing them with even some feedback.

Sally Hodges

But also so, especially for younger children, just being aware of the media that they're consuming as well is really important because there can be some incredibly distressing issues and there can be misconceptions about the number of times they see it children can believe that that's the number of times the event is occurring. Absolutely. And, also, it can be less confronting to discuss the event sometimes when you're sitting parallel rather than making eye contact and when you're engaging in an activity as well.

Julian Jefferys

Okay. So I think we've established, hopefully, that in our experiences we've worked in this space for a couple of years that, yes, involving young people is important. And that we've seen lots of great examples of how it's done in lots of different contexts. And it also, with the right considerations, as long as you have a good head about how to support young people and make sure they're safe and what can be done in lots of different ways. So that's fantastic.
I'm not sure if we now switch to resources, is that right?

Sally Hodges

I just want to quickly talk about another.

Julian Jefferys

Yes, you've got one more example from a different context, yes, of course.

Sally Hodges

Just one, well, it is resource as well, that I've seen to be really popular in the early years space is a use of storybooks. And, in particular, therapeutic storybooks. They're just really useful because it gives the children an opportunity to process the emotions for themselves. So by providing children with a good therapeutic storybook, they can unpack what has happened as many times as they want. They can keep revisiting it or just revisit certain sections. We know that trauma can affect memory. They can walk away from it if they decide that they're not ready to access it as well. And the important thing about therapeutic storybooks as well is they have that resolution. So we were saying children gets stuck in the disaster, this moves them towards the resolution.

Julian Jefferys

Because they have an arc to them, right?

Sally Hodges

Yes, that's right.

Elise Taylor

I think that's really important because when I was in a school once they did have some therapeutic story books out for the children and young people to engage with and the children did, and they also had a mental health clinician there. And they were going to move on that activity to the next activity but the mental health clinician noticed the book that the child was reading. And that the point that he was at in the book was not appropriate to just stop. He needed to work through and continue on to the, to the recovery and the hope.
And so, and then they moved, you know, once he'd done that they moved him back on to the activity. I think it's just really important to be aware of what the content of the books are and that they need to finish.

Sally Hodges

Yeah, absolutely. Trustworthy, age-appropriate resources allow children to feel empowered and prepared. And so the Birdie's Tree resources are a suite of books about natural disasters and their illustrations are such that if you have low English or low literacy, you can still follow the story, follow the emotions. And it kind of moves you away from that sense of isolation as well and it gives the educator prompts. 'If Birdie is feeling this way, how do you think? Can you relate with Birdie?'

Julian Jefferys

All right. So another great example of a fantastic tool to bring young people into the process in that very young setting. So, now we're going to go to what is the second part of our presentation, which is more around the resources because, you know, we were busily trying to sort of understand the resources that were already out there. And we were trying to sort of, in some ways, kind of bring them into the Be You fold and then use them and advertise them to educators. So Sally, what was one of the key resources that you wanted to speak about?

Sally Hodges

Yeah, I just want to spend a second highlighting the most recent webinar that the bushfire response team put out, and it's called 'Building skills for resilience in disaster recovery'. It can be found on the Be You Sessions and Events page, under previous In Focus webinars. And I think there should be a link in the chat as well, coming for that one. So that would be useful to any learning community that's experienced a natural disaster or any kind of community trauma including the pandemic. 

Julian Jefferys

Fantastic. And for you, Elise, what was the resource that you wanted to speak to?

Elise Taylor

Yeah. I think a resource that I'd really like to highlight is the Be You 'Responding to natural disasters' webpage. So, over the two years that we've worked together, we have developed and collated a range of resources to support early learning services and schools in disaster preparedness, response and recovery. And the webpage has resources around educator wellbeing, which, as you said, is really important in this work but also links to a range of recorded webinars. So I know that some schools have used that in their staff meetings. And if it's not the whole session, then you know, a 15-minute little bit that they can discuss and unpack together.

Julian Jefferys

Resource packs, I think?

Elise Taylor

Yeah. There's resource packs, Fact Sheets and there's also Professional Learning modules available as well.

Julian Jefferys

And it's sort of signposts, as well, doesn't it? To some of the external resources as well.

Elise Taylor

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so there's a lot of external resources that we've utilised. So for example, the Emerging Minds Community Trauma Toolkit, so that's available. There's links on that page. And I want to point out that while we did a lot of work in the context of bushfire, the resources on this page are applicable to natural disasters more generally. So if there is anyone joining us today, that is, you know, maybe flood impacted, it's still applicable.

Julian Jefferys

And the final point that I wanted to illustrate is that one of the really magic things about the Be You initiative is the role of the consultant, which is what we do. So just to give ourselves a little pat on the back. We do a, sort of, role and there's a whole team of us around Australia supporting all schools, all schools that have signed up to Be You. And we're really there to be both, I would say, firstly, a guide because we know that educators are busy and the schools and early learning services, are very, you know, frenetic places. And you can't always just remember the website that just got posted up on this chat. So the idea is, if at any point you wanted to sort of come back and revisit this at a later date make contact with your schools or early learning centre's consultant, and just have that conversation and say, 'where was this stuff again? I remember it from seeing this particular session' and they can guide you to the appropriate resources.
The second thing that I think the consultant can do really well is they can contextualise the resources because the resources are, you know, to a certain extent, a sort of a, one-size-fits kind of model because they are applicable to all schools around Australia, but as we all know all learning communities are very different. And depending on you know, where you are, you know, a small community school in a rural setting versus a big metro type of environment, could be very different. And as a result, it's great to have a consultant's help to kind of take the resources and then make it sort of help you work it into your particular learning community settings. So that's a great thing. The other skill. The third one I should, there was probably three. So the one is because the consultant works at a bit of a meta-level, they see the trends and the ways that schools on mass will use a tool or will engage with some of the materials. So they're there to be able to say, 'look, we generally think this works well in this kind of way, or this material is appropriate for this moment in time'. So it's quite a special place to be working as a consultant, working with lots of different schools. It just gives you that sort of sense of, you know, how we can really help in a lot of cases. So just a really great sort of sing-out to contact your consultant.
So I think that's it really for the formal part of what we were wanting to talk about today but we would love to invite you to post some questions and see if we've got a good answer for you. And I think the moderators will be helping with trying to pick out the questions that might be the best ones for the biggest audience here. So, I don't know if the moderators are there and if they could sort of potentially suggest a good question.

Elise Taylor

But in the meantime while that's happening, feel free to send through any questions that you might have. I know that there's probably been some coming through the whole time. But yeah, feel free to send any through now.

Sally Hodges

Definitely. One question that did come up quite a lot when I was working with learning communities was: how long does disaster recovery last? I was wondering if either of you have a response to that?

Julian Jefferys

Well, I've got a great response. One of the studies that I read was looking at sort of 10 years on, from one of the bushfires in Australia that said basically, those learning communities or all those communities, I should say, and individuals that were most impacted still had a very strong sense that things weren't back to normal. So, yeah, I mean, in a short and simplistic way, I think disaster recovery is a very long process.

Sally Hodges

And it will be different for every individual in every community as well, I'm sure. But you're right.

Elise Taylor

And I think it will also depend on what the community has experienced. For example, some of the communities I worked with had experienced multiple disasters. So that will definitely impact on their recovery, I think. So, yeah, I know that it's not actually often, you know, spoken about that disaster recovery can actually, you know, it's not just, you know, weeks and months it's years.

Sally Hodges

Especially when COVID comes in over the top.

Julian Jefferys

Definitely when you've got compounding disasters. Now, who's got the best eyesight here who can read that question and feels confident answering it.

Elise Taylor

Yeah, I'm happy to answer that, I think.

Julian Jefferys 

Do you want to just read it out? I'm not sure if they can see it, maybe just read it out.

Elise Taylor

Yeah, the question that we we've got, you might've been able to see that in the chat, is around resources for managing a death of a staff member or a student, a non suicide-related death. Some of you may or may not know that in Be You we provide some postvention support when there has been a death by suicide in a community. But, you know, we do understand that there is also a lot of grief and loss that occurs after a disaster. And sometimes tragically, there are unfortunately lives lost in these situations.

Julian Jefferys

Yep. And we have, the Be You module is divided into five broad areas and one of them is around Responding Together, which is essentially the sort of critical incident planning and responding part of Be You. And that's a great resource because what, what could happen, I imagine in a learning environment is the people who are often most tasked with kind of being aware of that information might be your wellbeing coordinators or your assistant principals, whoever the, whoever has the key roles in a particular community.
But then you could also take that particular domain, and there's learning modules associated with that around: How do you prepare for just a critical incident in general? And how do you respond afterwards? And you could take that professional learning and you could perhaps request your staff to do it en masse. And that's a good way of spreading that information broadly across your community so it's not just held by a few key individuals. So that's one piece of advice that comes to my mind. I don't know, Sally.

Sally Hodges

I just going to say, sorry, a lot of the advice remains the same, you know? Be open to discussions if you have the capacity to do so, don't leave children to experience it by themselves, because, you know, making their own understanding can lead to misconceptions, misunderstandings and it can lead to them thinking they're the only one experiencing grief or loss as well.

Elise Taylor

I think, yeah, Be You does have some resources, some fact sheets on our website around grief and trauma as well. But also, I would definitely recommend reaching out to your school's Be You Consultant because at least, you know, for those of us in the headspace team that work with schools, we unfortunately, you know, speak to schools around this a lot. So definitely reach out to your Be You Consultant as well, who can provide you with some more personalised resources for your specific context.

Sally Hodges

Great advice.

Julian Jefferys

We have another question that I saw come up earlier and it was around disaster preparedness in a sort of a special education setting. I don't know if you wanted to answer that, like how it might be different or other ways that that particular type of learning community could address that. 

Elise Taylor

Yeah, absolutely, I mean, feel free to add in too, Sally, but we know that educators particularly, you know, in specialist education settings are very knowledgeable in tailoring learning to an individual and their needs and capabilities. And so educators can continue to do this in that disaster preparedness and resilience and recovery space. And, you know, what some of the things we would think about is, you know, translating that information into different modes that they can understand. So thinking about, you know, visuals, sign language, closed captions, again, you'll know the needs of, of your children and young people. I've seen schools use social stories, particularly around preparedness and evacuations as well and I also think it's good to note that preparedness looks different for every individual, but particularly for those with, you know, specific needs. And I think thinking about that in the preparedness, you know, what additional items might these children and young people need, for example, you know, do they need noise-cancelling headphones or tools if they have, you know, sensory concerns and there's a lot of resources around person-centred emergency preparedness, that would be also really useful to look into for those educators working in that setting. 

Sally Hodges

Yeah, and obviously sticking to routine as much as possible is really supportive. That isn't always possible, so preparing children for likely changes to routine is really important as well, especially using visuals and preparing for the sensory experiences they might have as well.

Julian Jefferys

Okay. Fantastic. I have a feeling I can see there's some really basic sort of also practical questions coming up. Is there a Be You Consultant for every school? Yes, there is. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong in the early learning centre space, but in a lot of the way we work with Be You in school is that any school that's signed up to Be You gets a consultant, and then there's still generally a consultant who might be working with schools that aren't signed up just to encourage them to get involved. Is that similar? 

Sally Hodges

Yeah, if you sign up to Be You, you will have access to a consultant.

Julian Jefferys

Fantastic. I think that is pretty much all the questions.

Elise Taylor

Unfortunately, yes, I'm looking at the time. We've got to wrap up, unfortunately.

Julian Jefferys

We will finish up now with the, some sort of concluding remarks.

Elise Taylor

But I just wanted to say, if anyone does have any, you know, questions that haven't been answered today, feel free to reach out to your Be You Consultant and we will absolutely get some answers for you.

Julian Jefferys

Great. So in terms of wrapping up, we're going to do that in a couple of different ways. First of all, in a moment, I'm going to ask for people to throw up onto the chat, if they've got it in front of them, what were some of the takeaways that you took from this presentation and our conversation here today? And just to go back to what we kind of had is our aim for you to take away these three really key things. At one it's important to empower children and young people in a disaster process and we really encourage you to do so. We also hope that you've got some great examples of how it's been done in different contexts. And then finally, just to remember those considerations and safety things that you can protect and wrap around young people. So they're the three key things that we wanted you to really take away. And if anyone had any others we'd be happy to just sort of feed off the chat.

Sally Hodges

Might just be a good opportunity to highlight some upcoming sessions and events that we have. So I've seen, it's just been put in the chat as well, that we do have an upcoming Connected Community, a Be You Connected Community called 'Using strengths to support recovery'. So please click on the link in the chat for early learning services and register to be a part of that community. It's a really great space and it is like a community of practice so I would really encourage you to register for that.

Julian Jefferys

I'm seeing some fantastic things coming up now saying, you know, using social stories and storytelling as a mechanism or involving young people in the preparation stage. So I'm seeing some good stuff that people took away. That's fantastic. 

Elise Taylor

And I think just, sorry, just going back to the event as well we also have another Connected Community specifically for early learning services and school age care services. And we're also running, Julian and I, are also running an event for schools on what's new in Be You, the disaster resources that we've got. So we'll go into a bit of a deep dive into those resources and how you can use them in your learning community. 

Julian Jefferys

Fantastic. So that will take you further into what we sort of mentioned today. So that's great. And what's next in terms of anybody who wants to sign up or be involved in Be You make sure you check in with your consultant. They're the valuable kind of gatekeepers to the information, or they can really help guide you through the information. Make sure you get in touch with a consultant and also keep an eye out for any of these sort of online sessions that we mentioned. If you follow us on any of the social media avenues, you be able to see that there are lots of things always coming up. Please do engage with Be You, it's a fantastic resource. And essentially we just want to say a massive thank you for sharing your afternoon with us today.

Sally Hodges and Elise Taylor

Thanks for joining us.

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