Your Statement of Philosophy is something that can display every way 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.

4 Reasons to review

• 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
• Keeps 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 ECEC 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 KidsMatter Professional Learning topic.

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 KidsMatter

Review or reflect about your Statement of Philosophy in the context of KidsMatter and the KidsMatter Components.

Either way, you can:

• Find the links between KidsMatter and your current Statement of Philosophy
• Use the KidsMatter Guiding Principles to help reflect on your practice and 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

• Making policies more than just words
• The KidsMatter eBook series exploring links between KidsMatter and the National Quality Framework
• Talking about practice: Revising a service philosophy
• National Quality Standard Professional Learning Program e-Newsletter: Our philosophy
• National Quality Standard Professional Learning Program e-Newsletter: Revising the service philosophy
• Connecting your Statement of Philosophy with KidsMatter Early Childhood, the National Quality Standard and the Early Years Learning Framework
• Connections by theHunter Institute of Mental Health 

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