Drug education is about giving children and young people accurate information and opportunities to practise skills such as decision-making so they can make informed decisions and stay safer.

Click here for fortnightly tips on helping your children develop DRUG EDUCATION.

AGES UP TO 8 YEARS

AGES UP TO 12 YEARS

Term 3 Health Focus:

Road Safety

Throughout the stages of child development, parents and carers play a critical role in ensuring their children – whether as infants, children or as young adults – are safer on the road.

Child Car Restraints

Your child is safest in a correctly fitted child car restraint. Child car restraints are designed to provide the best available protection to your child. Wearing a restraint is law and require that children –

From birth to the age of six months be restrained in a rearward facing child restraint (e.g. infant capsule);
From six months until the age of four years be restrained in either a forward facing child restraint or booster seat restrained by a correctly adjusted and fastened seatbelt or child safety harness.
From four years until the age of seven years be restrained in either a forward facing child restraint or booster seat restrained by a correctly adjusted and fastened seatbelt or child safety harness.

Children over the age of seven years can be restrained in an adult seatbelt, as the law currently allows.

All children aged up to 16 years travelling in a car must be restrained in an approved child car restraint.

Approved child car restraints are marked with the code AS/NZS 1754 which indicates that the car restraint meets strict requirements regarding the materials, design, construction, performance, testing and labelling.
When choosing a restraint you need to ensure a restraint suits your child, car and individual needs.
It pays to get an approved person to fit your child’s restraint.
An incorrectly fitted child car restraint can result in an increased risk of injury.

Click here for fortnightly tips on helping your children develop ROAD SAFETY.

AGES UP TO 8 YEARS

AGES UP TO 12 YEARS

Term 2 Health Focus:

Building the Resiliency Toolkit

Being resilient is important because it can help to protect us against the stresses and situations that we all experience in life.

Resilience is one of the keys to positive mental health. Helping your child become resilient will assist them to become effective adults. The resilient child is one who continues to work, play well, love well and expect well. (Bernard, 1991)

Children can be taught key social and emotional skills from a very young age. The development of these skills depends on the positive support and relationships that children have with the people who surround them in their family and community.

Some characteristics of resilient children
• being flexible, caring and able to communicate well
• being able to work out what the problem is, think of different ways to solve the problem and being able to plan ahead
• high self esteem
• self disciplined and independent
• having goals in life
• motivated, persistent and hopeful
• a sense of humour

Check here for fortnightly tips on helping your children develop their RESILIENCY TOOLKIT.

Term 1 Health Focus:

Protective Behaviours: Help keep children safe in the community

At home and school we work hard to teach children about aspects of physical safety like bike and road safety, but it is also important that they develop protective behaviours as ways to safeguard them from other harm. This term all classes will explicitly teach lessons in Protective Behaviours as part of our Health Curriculum.

We know that children who are unsupervised for long periods of time out in the community sometimes make the wrong choices and can be at risk from stranger danger. However even with the closest supervision there are still risks for children. Check here for fortnightly tips on how to help your children to develop protective behaviours.

Other helpful downloads

Parents and Cyber Safety in the Middle Years