ABOUT FAMILIES MATTER
What is Families Matter?Overall Purpose of Families Matter
Development of Families Matter
How Does Your School Become Involved?
After the First Workshop
Where are we now and where to from here? What is Families Matter?
Families Matter is an initiative which seeks to engage parents, carers and families with schools to promote the health and well-being of young people.
This is the essential family element of the national MindMatters suite of initiatives. It has initially been designed to meet the needs of parents and families of students at secondary schools.
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MindMatters, the national initiative for secondary schools recognizes the importance of parents/carers to the health and well-being of students. MindMatters has been distributed to all schools in Australia with secondary age students. Families Matter has been developed as a necessary complement to MindMatters and seeks to engage parents, carers and families in the health and well-being of their young people. Families Matter is a key element of the total suite of MindMatters initiatives. The scope of these initiatives is progressively being further developed, and currently includes these integral and complementary elements:- |
Health and well-being includes emotional and spiritual resilience which enables each of us to enjoy life, to cope with challenges and to deal effectively with disappointment, pain and sadness. This is necessarily based on an underlying belief in our own dignity and self worth and the dignity and worth of others.
During adolescence there may be a decline in a young person’s sense of connectedness to family and school. It is important to encourage young people to keep talking and connecting with parents, carers and family to avoid anxiety and depression.
Links have been established between young people’s emotional health and well-being and their schooling outcomes, their social development, future health and capacity to contribute to the workforce and community.
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"The most deadly virus in modern mass society is denial of the worth of each individual, despite the apparent dedication of the media to promoting self-indulgence. The worst disease is the loss of a sense of personal meaning and community belongingness. The virus is infecting not only adults but ever younger cohorts of children and youth. It should be a matter of grave concern to professional teachers and curriculum developers that curricula in many schools are transmitting this virus instead of combating it." Exploring Religion in Schools: A National Priority: Brian V Hill 2004 |
Families Matter recognizes that strong, positive support and understanding from families is vital to the development of adolescents’ confidence and self-esteem and their attitude to learning. It aims to strengthen and develop the partnership between home and school.
Families Matter reflects that parents, carers and families are essential partners in all aspects of learning. Research clearly shows that children’s health, well-being and learning outcomes are improved when parents, families and schools work closely together.
The Families Matter initiative provides resources and training to enable parents to set up and lead a workshop for other parents, to explore the ways in which families can work together with their school to support students.
Click here to read the 2002 background research material.
Overall Purpose of Families MatterThe intended purpose of Families Matter includes these key elements:
- Strenthening links between family, school and community
- Focusing on parents, carers and families – empowering parents as workshop presenters and mentors of other parents
- Improving parent and family awareness of the support needs of young people
- Developing their understanding of resilience-building initiatives happening in their school, including MindMatters
- Encouraging families to work together, accessing help as needed in their community, to support their children’s social and emotional well-being, development and learning
There are many issues and challenges that impact on the development and the support needs of young people. They need supportive families and communities to help them build resilience and cope effectively with challenges.
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"Perhaps the greatest wrong we have done our children is not the fractured families or the scarcity of jobs, but the creation of a culture that gives them nothing beyond themselves to believe in. It is a culture whose main effects are to encourage demoralization, cynicism and self-centredness. It is imperative to create a culture (through parenting, education and the media) that gives people, particularly the young, faith in themselves, hope for the future, and meaning and purpose in their lives." Response to survey quoted in "Visions for a Future Australian Society: Towards an Educational Curriculum for 2000 and Beyond" Campbell et al, 1992 |
Development of Families Matter
Families Matter has been developed by the two peak parent bodies working in partnership. The Australian Council of State School Organisations (ACSSO) represents parents of children in Australia’s public schools and their school communities. The Australian Parents Council (APC) represents the parents of children in non-government schools.
Many of the issues addressed in Families Matter were brought together and raised in the research behind the MindMatters publication “Community Matters: Working with Diversity for Wellbeing” first published in 2001. (see Resources and Links)
Those aspects were further explored through focus group research conducted with parents, carers and school communities in locations around the country to determine the concerns, issues and priorities of families. The findings shaped the development of the learning materials and processes of Families Matter, which were further tested through a process of community consultation.
Families Matter was piloted in a number of secondary schools in all States and Territories early in 2004, and a detailed evaluation was completed in April 2004.
A wide cross-section of secondary schools across the country were then invited to participate in the first stage of the national roll-out of Families Matter in 2004. At this point (June 2005) some 450 schools have expressed their strong interest in participating.
How Does Your School Become Involved?In the 2004 roll-out, school communities and their principals were invited to lodge a formal Expression of Interest with the Families Matter project team in Canberra. You can access an Expression of Interest Form here.
Our training team will then contact your school to arrange a suitable date and location to train a group of nominated parents as presenters, and a school staff member who will take on a liaison and support role.
We recommend each school nominate a team of at least four interested parents to participate in a full day’s training program which is designed to
- develop a practical understanding of the purpose and operation of Families Matter in their school context; and
- equip them to plan, lead and present the workshop to other parents in their own school community.
Because of the nature of the role which members of this parent team will take on, school communities will usually identify parents who have demonstrated leadership capacity and/or who have presentation skills and experience in leading group discussions.
The nominated school staff member will also be trained, and work with the parent team, to assist them to plan, organise and run the two-hour workshop for other parents and family members from the school community.
After the First WorkshopParticipants at the workshop are encouraged to work as a group to plan for the continuation and further development of the community discussion process, in ways that progressively involve more parents and families, to promote and sustain a productive family-school and community partnership.
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“We found that kids who felt a strong sense of closeness to school, as well as to family, also did better in a number of the areas we looked at. By closeness to school, we meant:
Now, we did find that kids who did better academically tended to be happier kids, but above and beyond the influence of academic performance, that sense of bonding and attachment to school was very important…. …And I’ll tell you what intrigued me about that. This was the significant finding for school – that bonding and attachment. It wasn’t the size of the school, the student/teacher ratio, or whether it was public or private or religious – those structural characteristics did not make a difference.” Professor Michael Resnick, ABC Radio National Health Report, 22 September 1997 |
Families Matter is essentially a flexible discussion process that is adaptable to the needs, circumstances and interests of each particular school community. It provides a process for bringing people together, to share information about
- the support needs of young people,
- the work their school is doing in this area, and
- the ways in which families can work more effectively together, in partnership with their school and the services and resources in their local community, to support the health, well-being and personal development of their young people.
Most schools initially plan to hold further workshop sessions in similar format, using the Families Matter handbook and resource materials, so parent participants can invite others in the school community whom they feel would similarly get a lot out of the discussion process. For example, at least one school is already planning to provide the Families Matter workshop as induction for all new Year 7 parents in 2005 and subsequent years.
There is also considerable flexibility for each school community in planning the ways they wish to carry the developmental process forward from the initial and subsequent workshop discussion.
- Many schools are planning to follow up from the workshops by arranging a program of information nights to bring in keynote speakers to provide more information on the topics they have identified as being of major interest and importance to their community.
- Many schools have decided to do an “audit” of the various help and information services available in their community, to publish a Community Services Directory, and to identify contact people who can also come along and talk and work with parents and the school.
- Other schools have jointly identified particular project opportunities on matters relevant to student health and well-being, which they can work together with the Principal and school staff to develop and establish.
We invite each and every participating school to tell their own story about how they went about achieving the things they planned to do, the issues they identifed along the way, and the ways in which they worked together as a community to move forward. You can send us an email at: manager@familiesmatter.org.au and send a photo if you can. As we hear more about the experiences, ideas and responses of participating schools, we will publish these on the website under the heading What’s Happening?
Where are we now and where to from here?Some 180 school teams were trained in 2004 and a further 70 so far in 2005. Training days will continue to be provided for interested schools through to October. Details of the current schedule of training days are provided here.
Training facilitators who run those training days will continue to keep in touch with schools, and be available to provide advice to school parent teams as they plan the workshops in their own communities.
Evaluation sheets from training days and workshops will assist in a continuous evaluation and continuing improvement of Families Matter.
This will progressively include further support and quality assurance services for schools participating in the program, as well as to enable further schools to take up Families Matter in their own school community.
Further developments in 2005 include some exciting and innovative work with indigenous communities developed by Maria Marriner and Sharon Larkins, who work with MindMatters in the Northern Territory. These pilot projects are already showing some very positive results, with strong local community support and interaction, and open up new challenges and opportunities for the further development of Families Matter.
Support services to school communities include the evolution of this website as an increasingly interactive information resource, and the associated Families Matter Newsletter and Newsflash update service. Further information on information and help services available to participating schools will be sent out as these initiatives take shape.
Any enquiries can be addressed to the project team:
Phone (Toll Free): 1800 183 066
Email: manager@familiesmatter.org.au
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