All the way through the past three years, we have operated legally, carefully and followed public health guidelines. Wherever possible we have taken a pragmatic approach to keep school open, make it as engaging as possible and entice children back to school and regular learning. We have tried to maximise the amount of safe, healthy activity, and balance this well within the guidlines. We have been backed all the way by a wise and supportive Board and we feel pleased and proud about the way we have managed this peacefully and positively. As always, we thank God for this.
The Wellbeing Collective Impact partnership between, ADHB, TRC, MOE and Manaiakalani, which was to focus on :
Healthy kai
Healthy weight
Healthy activity
Re-started again at the beginning of 2021, had a couple of meetings and then met this thing called COVID again! -Rightly the focus changed and we became very focused on:
learner and whānau engagement
Equitable access for all learners and whānau
Kai security
Mental health and anxiety
We are pleased and proud to say that we believe we served our community very well and through a variety of measures, too many and varied to detail here, we achieved well against these items
What we can report is that our community and its NGO's were extremely successful in getting food and other essentials out to families. I would like to particularly thank TCDT, GIFC and Ruapotaka Marae, who for a 2nd year spearheaded this activity in our community.
What we noticed was that some families significantly improved in health and fitness during this time, whilst others put on weight and suffered from anxiety. CVOID-19 highlighted the disparity experienced by families in our community.
The physical and mental health profile of our community, matched the learning and engagement profile, so we invested time and money into visiting whānau in their homes and investigating programmes for Mental Health.
We are delighted that the Sir John Kirwan Foundation was able to fast track us into the Mitey Programme which has helped both staff and students and their families to engage with, learn about, and build capability to meet their own needs along with others. We are profoundly grateful for this.
We are still dealing with children and their families who have high or very high anxiety on a regular basis as well as supporting whānau struggling with the cost of living. We do not believe our Ministry of Education is is yet contributing sufficiently to the real social cost of "long COVID".
As noted in an earlier part of this report, we are still working hard to try and conquer "optional attendance, get all our children back to school on a regular basis and be able to focus again on accelerating learning uninhibited by irregular attendance and anxiety.
As always, we are are greatly indebted to our Public Health Team headed by Angela and Yun and to our wonderful paediatrician, Alison Leversha, who has brought us timely assistance so often!
Our Whare Hauroa has continued to prove invaluable from L3 onwards and our onsite Dental Clinic has also been able to operate right through the various Lockdowns. We are so fortunate to have these facilities on our site.
Although I have noted above various trials and tribulations relating to the 3 years we have been through, it needs repeating that our staff have been wonderful and that the stable behavioural culture we enjoy is a tribute to their hard work, calm and loving demeanour and their dedication and reliability. This has not been true in every school in some of the schools I've been privileged to visit so I feel extremely grateful to our team for what we've accomplisged together.
During 2022 the Health & Social Service Teams continued with:
daily health checks conducted by our Health Nurses (when COVID allowed)
entry into school health checks
Visiting homes
Picking up children for school
Delivering food and other essentials
Procuring and administering medication
Running cooking classes
Running social skills groups
We continue working with the Tamaki Regeneration Corporation, Health, Police, Oranga Tamariki and Education to examine the possibility of Social Service Delivery Hubs based in the Manaiakalani Schools. This aspiration is included in the scope of work for the Tamaki Education Change Plan and the Manaiakalani Education Concept Brief. We continue to enrol 5 year olds with very serious debilitating conditions and struggle to get the support we need for these young school starters.
The government focus of equity and excellence is extremely helpful, however we have not seen a great deal of practical implementation being outworked yet. We need to see these ideas translate into well resourced actions that make a real and rapid difference.
Our partnerships with PHN's, ADHB, Tamaki Regeneration, NZ Police, CYF, TCDT, Glen Innes Family Centre, Tamaki Community Church, Counsellors and Therapists continue to be extremely valuable in this regard.
Pt England School and the Manaiakalani Kahui Ako have agreed to shift the focus on Healthy Eating, Weight and Activity and an aligned focus on Managing Self to a more rounded and generic view of Wellbeing because of what the times have brought to us. This will continue into 2023.
A major concern during the ongoing experience of the conditions created by COVID, has been that Staff Wellbeing would be high, in order that we could successfully promote Learner and Whānau Wellbeing. I would once again, like to offer special thanks to the Board, Management and Team Leaders, who have done a really wonderful job of supporting our staff and their families, so that they in turn could support learners and their families. One proof of Staff Wellbeing is the extremely low staff turnover we are experiencing at a time of chronic staffing shortage. Another proof is the relative stability of our school and learners throughout these challenging times.
We continue to have a weekly pastoral focus in our Senior Management Agenda, and as a result have regular input into identified needs.
Our Board has been extremely supportive in enabling us to change the hours of schooling, provide free coffees for staff, use Teacher Only Days creatively and generally cared for us really well.
We very happy to consider other suggestions for building Staff Wellbeing as well as looking to re-offer mentoring or chaplaincy. We have also connected staff with the crown funded EAP services which some have found extremely helpful.
We are absolutely committed to this endeavour and to being creative as we do so. We do food and coffee really well, though we need to keep looking for other ways to contribute to staff wellbeing
I'd like to offer a HUGE thank-you and congratulations to all our staff and in particular acknowledge the huge effort every time we had to "pivot" and the energy draining nature of what we have been through. I do wish you all a very restorative summer holiday.
2022 has been a year remarkably free of burglary or vandal damage.
We got through the 21-22 summer drought and only lost 2 of our young pohutukawa, which we will replace come autumn.
Jackson has done an outstanding job "refurbing" all the vege gardens and they have really flourished. Our tauira have certainly enjoyed thēir experience with pātaka kai.
Our values theme for 2023 is Kindness and we expect it to retain a focus on being kind to the environment.
This is work likely to include:
work with our Iwi
work with our Awa
work with Waka
work with refuse reduction
work with the Pātaka Project
We have kept records of all Health & Safety events and have reported these monthly to the Board of Trustees. Where an event has highlighted a need for rectification of property or procedure, we have attended to these quickly.
Our most frequently occurring events with children, continue to be falls from the Adventure Playground and "crash-ups" when children run into each other. Our buildings and grounds are in good condition.
We are pleased to have been able to hold a school picnic, a Y5/6 camp, a Y8 camp, a Riverside camp, and most of our sporting events. It was a real pleasure to be able to hold our Y6 camp to Kawau Island, Cross Country, Athletics and and other normal fixtures once we were finally relieved of the Traffic Light system
All day long events have been approved by the Principal. All overnight events have been approved by the Board.
Staff members have attended the necessary training and we have had no significant Health & Safety Issues in the year reported on.
We had no stand downs, suspensions or exclusions of students.