Originally posted in 2015, this post was updated in August 2020.
Your Statement of Philosophy is something that can demonstrate how educators, families, children and community contribute to your service. It acknowledges your strengths and highlights the true ‘personality’ of your service. Your Statement of Philosophy is a reflection of what your service is, what it looks like and what it strives to become …It’s more than just words.
Four reasons to review your Statement of Philosophy:
- Meet the requirements of the National Quality Standard
- Ensure your service philosophy is reflective of your current practice
- Accommodate for any changes as you welcome new families, learn new things, take on new staff and form new goals
- Keep staff motivated.
Use your philosophy as a foundation for everything your service does to nurture and support children, families and educators.
Making it happen
Revising your Statement of Philosophy is something that can’t be done without ongoing conversations and continual reflection with all members of your learning community.
You could address this in a variety of ways:
- Allocate one person to take the lead on revising the philosophy.
- Form a working group and spread the workload by dividing the statement into sections for different people to focus on.
- Work as a Leadership Team to ensure your Statement of Philosophy represents your group’s understanding of how children’s mental health and wellbeing is central to your work.
- Revise your philosophy in stages by checking the statement each time you complete a Be You Professional learning module.
Using a mental health lens
It’s wise to review your Statement of Philosophy from a range of perspectives; one of these may be mental health. Reflective questions you can consider include:
- How is a commitment to children’s mental health and wellbeing reflected?
- Is everything you do to support the mental health of children, families and educators acknowledged?
- Has the whole service community been consulted in developing your Statement of Philosophy?
The final tip … use Be You
Review or reflect about your Statement of Philosophy in the context of Be You:
- Access the Be You Statement of Commitment – this tool helps an early learning community raise awareness of promoting mental health across your whole learning community
- Find the links between Be You and your current Statement of Philosophy
- Explore a variety of ways you can support educators in your service to understand and explain your Statement of Philosophy
- Involve all stakeholders including families, staff and your community in the process.
Whichever ways you decide to work on your revisions, getting things going depends on time, leadership, commitment and consultation. Nevertheless, it is worth making that commitment and taking the time to explore all the wonderful work you do and ensure your Statement of Philosophy reflects it.
More Information
- Exploring links between Be You and the National Quality Framework
- Australian Children’s Education & Care Quality Authority: National Quality Area 7 – Governance and Leadership
Be You provides educators with knowledge, resources and strategies for helping children and young people achieve their best possible mental health. This article was first published on KidsMatter (now known as Be You) Early Childhood’s blog in 2015.
