Building a stronger stack for Kwinana’s children

Last month, the RSTO team spent two days in Kwinana, WA delivering the Continuous Improvement (CI) Leadership Program, collaborating on how to improve outcomes for children. We explored why some children and families miss out on important early years opportunities, and how a test and learn approach to continuous improvement can help us respond to this challenge.

At the heart of Restacking the Odds is the idea that all of us working in the early years system have a role to play in improving outcomes for young children and babies. No single service can do this alone – it takes the right combination of support from before birth through the early years of school. But right now, that stack of support isn't reaching every child. Our CI Leadership Program supports communities and practitioners to deliver services more equitably, so that all children can benefit from high-quality early childhood services. 

Over the two-day program, participants from Goodstart Early Learning Bertram, Curtin University, Broome’s Jalygurr Guwan Aboriginal Corporation, Minderoo Foundation and the City of Kwinana looked at how services can test improvement ideas and track whether they’re making a difference using local data. 

Participants brought so much expertise to share. Many were struck by the richness of collaborative learning, and surprised that the challenges faced by early childhood education and care (ECEC) services in regional Broome were also felt in metropolitan Kwinana, just south of Perth. Despite the challenges, participants shared a clear sense of purpose. We discussed the importance and lifelong impact of high-quality ECEC, and the critical role practitioners play in children’s lives.

As facilitators, the RSTO team learnt that curiosity and flexibility support participants to apply their experiences and knowledge to continuous improvement frameworks. We used a flexible delivery format that suited different learning styles, and of course, made sure that we had great local food to sustain us (supplied by a mum from the local Aboriginal Play Group with a growing catering business)!
 
Participants left feeling confident that small changes, tracked with service-level data, can make a big difference to children and families. We’ll continue working together to make a test and learn approach part of everyday practice and support equitable outcomes.

To find out more about our Continuous Improvement Leadership Program, please email [email protected].