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Staff maintain a welcoming, supportive, trauma informed focus for all members of the community.

Welcoming Focus:

Relationships at Yarrabah school are welcoming in nature. Yarrabah school adopted the components of KidsMatter in 2014 and then referred to Be You in 2018. In 2019 Respectful Relationships was introduced at Yarrabah School and the school was selected to become a lead school. 

In particular, Yarrabah aims to continually provide a Positive School Community, and remain vigilant in how we ‘Work with Parents and Carers’. Yarrabah school also adheres to  DETs Respectful Behaviours policy that outlines the shared roles of parents, carers and school staff in creating a positive environment for learning.

Yarrabah staff undertake at least two whole-school professional learning sessions each year on how we maintain the above components.

Supportive Focus:

Our school follows a whole-school positive engagement support approach that is based on pro-social values, social competencies, intrinsic motivation and positive peer relationships.

The key focus will be on prevention and early intervention strategies that:

• provide case management through Mental Health and Wellbeing services

• define and teach school-wide and classroom expectations (School Rules)

• define consistent school-wide and classroom expected behaviours and means of discouraging inappropriate problem behaviours.

• Use Compass to record and report on students experiencing academic, attendance, attitudinal/behaviour, general observational, health and wellbeing concerns

• Integrated Services that collect data for decision-making, communicate service provision goals broadly, define and share implementation strategies, evaluate success, and provide shared access to referrals.

• empower students by creating multiple opportunities for them to take responsibility and be involved in decision-making (student voice, student leaders, social skills)

• provide a physical environment conducive to positive behaviours and effective engagement in learning (classroom environment checklist)

• utilise evidence-based interventions, monitored regularly for those students who face difficulty with learning and/or behaviour

Implementing preventative and early intervention strategies to support positive engagement and wellbeing is a key part of the Student Wellbeing and Engagement Policy at our school. Prevention and early intervention strategies the school will deploy include:

• monitoring of, and responding to, protracted student absences

• trauma management plan

• safety management plans

• Child Safe protocols

• protocol for mandatory reporting

• Student Support Group’s for children in need

• all students have a Behaviour Support Plan 

• all students have a Student Profile 

Longitudinal data will be collected regarding frequency and types of welfare concerns, so as to measure the success or otherwise of school-based strategies and approaches.  

Some sources of data are:

• school-level report data

• attendance data

• parent survey data

• data from case management work with students

• attitudes to school survey

• 'students at risk' (SEABRS) diagnostic tool 

• incident report data

• ABC recording data

• Student check in data

• chronical data

Trauma Informed:

According to Stephen Porges, “Trauma disrupts our physiological state. It distorts our social awareness and displaces social engagement with defensive reactions.”  At Yarrabah we understand trauma in a different way that an emergency room physician might talk about trauma. We see it as an acute event that overwhelms the person’s ability to cope. We also recognise that people use the word trauma in different ways.

Yarrabah School believes that trauma-informed practice is vitally important. As a school that focuses awareness on ABILITY, we know that being neurodiverse increases the chances of experiencing trauma. We accept that trauma-informed practices are beneficial in all contexts throughout the school.

Over the past 10 years we have identified Connection, Relationships, Positive Environments, Calm, and Safety as fundamental elements to being a trauma-informed school. Yarrabah School has learnt this from particular theories, action research and evidence from:

1. Australian Childhood Foundation - Making SPACE for Learning (2024). Staff at Yarrabah can access these resources here.

2. Berry Street Education Model - 

3. Nurture Principles - 

4. Be You - 

5. Calmer Classrooms: A Guide to Working with Traumatised Children, developed by the Office of the Child Safety Commissioner, is a reference to develop an effective relationship-based classroom and school-wide strategies at Yarrabah School.

Yarrabah School has a number of principles that we encourage staff to consider when working in a trauma-informed way. 

a) Regulate before we educate 

b) Maintain unconditional positive regard 

c) Behaviour is communication  - an expression of the way that children and young people have experienced their past relationships or current environment

c) Words and gestures matter

d) Children's learning is understood developmentally