Abstract

Discovery Not Recovery: Building Resilience Before the Cracks Set in

Author(s)

Claire Jennings -Social Inclusion and Emotional Development Strategies

SIEDS programs are researched - based in partnership with Deakin University and are designed to work with and stimulate families from diverse backgrounds, providing foundations for social inclusion, healthy autonomy and life long learning.

Programs include Reading Discovery, a home-based parent and child program modelling attachment through reading to and playing with children from birth.  Parents learn how to select books to read to their children at each developmental milestone, and how books, used correctly, stimulate higher-order thinking skills for reading readiness by school age. Beyond The Rainbow, a ten week story-play program follows, using stories to stimulate sequential play, memory and imagination.  This program goes Beyond The Rainbow and Into The Dreamtime, modelling Australian indigenous stories in story-play settings using books to stimulate interest and understanding of Australia's first story culture. Rainbow Rhyming is a program for babies and toddlers and their parents modelling songs, chants, rhymes and simple linear stories to stimulate language, healthy attachment and bonding in the first three years.

Underpinning all programs are the foundation skills for learning including focussed listening, sustained concentration and curiosity. Stories used model rich language and are inclusive of popular, modern classics and Australian Dreamtime themes. Story-play enhances sequential thinking, problem solving and higher order thinking such as speculation and cause and effect.

Parents work towards program goals (aligning with AEID) selected in conjunction with practitioners who are early childhood and SIEDS trained professionals, and are assisted by trained volunteers. The program has a process for referrals.