Creating your Service Philosophy

We acknowledge the traditional owners throughout South Australia and we pay respect to the custodians of the land on which we live and learn. We respect their spiritual relationship with Country and acknowledge that their cultural and heritage beliefs are still as important to those living today.

We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging and we acknowledge the cultural authority of Aboriginal people visiting from other areas of South Australia and Australia.

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Welcome to part one of a four part introduction to the updated South Australian Family day care service philosophy. In this session, I will talk through what is included in each of the different presentations, as well as give you some information about what the intention of these sessions are and how they will support you to familiarize yourself with the updated philosophy and work through the process of reviewing, reflecting on and revisiting your own personal philosophy as needed.

Part two will be a bit of a background about the existing Family day care philosophy. What informed the need for the review, the process that was undertaken for the review and the outcome of the review.

Part three will be a little bit about finding out about philosophy. This session will be delivered by Sally Barnes. Sally is an early childhood educator and has been for over 30 years, and currently works as a casual academic at La Trobe University. Her session will talk about what is philosophy? What informs and influences it? Why is it important? This will start you thinking about your own philosophy.

Part four is introducing the updated philosophy and breaking down the guide and the workbook you will have available to you to support you to get to know the updated Family day care service-wide philosophy, understanding the messages in the philosophy and what is meant by these, start to think about how your beliefs and practices relate and connect to the philosophy and consider what this looks like in your Family day care service. And then use the information you record to help you to review, reflect on and revise your own philosophy as you need to.

It's really important to understand this is not about replacing your own philosophy with the Family Day Care philosophy, but it is important that you understand the messages in the philosophy and how they connect to your own philosophy, because we are all part of the Family day care service in South Australia. So it's important that our beliefs, our visions, and what's important to us all align.

In most cases, you'll be introduced to these presentations by your scheme or supporting coordinators. This will be an opportunity for you to be introduced to all the information and the supporting resources connected to the Family day care philosophy, and together with your coordinators, think about how you want to engage with this process of getting to know the Family day care service-wide philosophy, and reviewing your own philosophy.

Following this, the presentations will also be available on the educator portal, and you can revisit them at any time you need to. You do not have to watch them in order, but may want to go back and have another listen to Sally's presentation or re-listen to the process used to review the philosophy. Or maybe want to go back and have another listen to the breakdown of the workbook and think about where you want to start. You can listen to these alone or together with your coordinator or other educators you network with. They are designed as a tool to support you in whatever way works best for you. Thank you for your time and let's get started.

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Welcome to part two of the introduction to the Family day care philosophy and the process of reviewing and revising your own individual philosophy. This session will give you a bit of background about the review process that was undertaken of the Family day care service-wide philosophy statement. In 2019, we engaged some external consultants to come and do an audit of some of our processes and practices, and part of that identified for us that the philosophy statement, although it was still relevant and had some very clear messaging in it, needed to be revised and needed the language looked at and needed to be updated and made more relevant and more current.

This led to us engaging an external consultant to come along and conduct a review of the existing service philosophy and look at ways of reengaging educators and reinvigorating the stakeholders within Family day care to connect to the service philosophy. The goal was to revise the overarching service philosophy, to assist educators to review and align their own personal philosophies to the overarching service philosophy.

Where we started was we formed a working group. We wanted to make sure that there were perspectives from all stakeholders. We wanted educator perspectives as well as staff perspectives, as well as family and children, if possible. So Sherylee Dawe was the consultant that we engaged to lead this work. And together with her, we formed a working group with some educator representatives. And in the beginning, those representatives were Merrilyn Hannaford and Kerrie Waters. And we also had some staff representatives, which was Liz Whitbread and some corporate office representatives, which were Rebecca Haynes and myself, Marilyn Visnjic.

And part of that first process was to brainstorm and think about ways that we wanted to engage and what we wanted to get out of this review. What were we looking for? What was the outcome? When we unpacked that, we decided that we needed to find out more information and we needed to find out how connected people were to the existing philosophy.

Part of that process in stage one, was that we sent out a survey and so we surveyed educators and we surveyed staff, and we asked them questions about their connection to the existing philosophy. How well did they know it? Did they know where to find it? How did it inform what they did and what practices they had in place?

And then we also thought about other ways of using that information. Once we collated that information, what it told us was that people knew that there was a philosophy, but they weren't necessarily connected to it. Educators in particular were very connected to their own personal philosophies and although these aligned to the overarching philosophy, they didn't quite see the immediate connection for themselves. That immediately told us that we needed to think about what are the key messages. What are the important things that we need to make sure that the service-wide philosophy captures that makes us all connected, because we all work for Family Day Care and therefore our visions, our beliefs, what's important to us, should all align.

What this led to was a little bit more exploration. What we did was we did some consultation. Sherylee again, led those consultations where we did an information session with educators. We did an information session with coordinators to gather their information. We did face-to-face consultation, where we had really deep, meaningful conversations about what's important to you. What does Family day care mean to you? And what are the things that you want captured in a philosophy that actually informs everybody about what we believe in and what's important to us?

Once all of that information and all those consultations were completed, we also wanted to gather some information from families and where possible children. We decided to try a survey again with families. And we sent out surveys for families asking them about what was important to them and what they felt were the key things that attracted them to Family day care that made it unique and important to them. And that was also collated. And then children were asked by educators, in most instances, what they liked about Family day care. All of this information was gathered together and helped us to inform what we wanted to capture and what those key messages needed to be in the revised philosophy.

Once that was completed, we had a session with staff where we introduced them to the revised philosophy and asked them for their feedback. Did this capture what they thought was important? We actually talked to them about what the educated had identified as being important for them. We talked about the messages that had come through from staff, the messages that had come through from families, and the messages that had come through from educators so that we had every perspective captured.

What Sherylee did as part of that first process was also complete a report and put together an implementation roadmap of the sorts of things that we should be doing in relation to engaging and making sure that all educators were then introduced to the revised philosophy, but also had an opportunity to connect to that and use that as a way of revisiting and reflecting on, and where needed, revising their current philosophy. For some educators that had not actually looked at their philosophy for some time, this could be about thinking about whether their current philosophy still resonated with what was important to them, was reflective in practice. Did people coming into their homes, were they going to see what they believed in, in practice? And so we thought, how could we actually get educators to connect to the philosophy that's captured all the key messages that people said was very important to them and then think about how that connected to their own thinking and their practices and help them to go through a process of revising, reflecting on their own philosophy.

Stage two of the process was that we reconvened and added some additional members to the working group. We wanted different perspectives to talk about how we could actually get educators engaged in this process of reflecting on their existing philosophies. We added some educators to the working group. We had Stephanie Hoy and Rebecca Davey join us, and we added another coordinator. So Rachel Young joined us and we unpacked the report. We unpacked the findings and we started to talk about what do we need to do to help educators to engage and become connected with this new philosophy or the updated philosophy. And then think about what it looks like in their practice and think about what that means for of their individual philosophies.

The key messages that came out of the original review was that people wanted it really known that for Family day care, the things that were important to them was that there was one educator, there was small groups, they were home-based environments, there was the ability to have all siblings in care with one educator, there was the visibility and the connection in the community of those educators. And those were the things that were really important that they felt needed to be emphasized and thought about and connected to.

What came out of that was the educators on the working group, in particular, thought it was really important to have some sort of workbook or some way of looking at the philosophy and breaking it down and understanding what was actually meant by the messages in that philosophy.

The decision was made to develop a suite of resources that we could all use together so that everybody was getting the same information delivered in the same way to support coordinators, to work with educators, to support educators, to work through the process of reviewing their own philosophy, and to support educators to work with each other in that process as well. Where we ended up with this was that we've now got a suite of resources that we are going to be presenting to you, which is part of this presentation and this selection of presentations.

And in that suite of resources, we have the updated philosophy, which you'll all get a copy of. A laminated version of that, that you can then put up in your service for families to see. As well as that, you will have a workbook. There's a guide and workbook that are all one document, but what that does is give you some information about the journey that we've been on, the process of review and the outcome of the review, as well as the workbook. The workbook is the bit that will be most important for you to work through that, to have a look at each of those messages in the philosophy, and to understand what they mean for you. We'll talk more about that in part four of this group of sessions.

The other resources that will be available for you are these presentations. These presentations, as you would've heard in the introduction will be presented to you with your coordinators in the first instance, but will be available for you after that, to look at and go back and revisit. Thank you for listening to this presentation, and now we're ready to start working through the workbook, which will be in part four.

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So, if I was going to ask you what is a philosophy, I would say that the word's probably not unfamiliar to anyone listening in today, anyone who has read or written a statement of philosophy will already be familiar with the word. But what exactly are we talking about with the word philosophy? What does that word mean? Well, if we were academics at work in a university, we might say something like philosophy is concerned with the clarification of concepts and propositions in which our experiences are intelligible. Probably doesn't make a lot of sense to many people other than those academics. Outside of the university, we would simply say that a philosophy is a theory or a belief that guides our behaviour, or perhaps more accurately, theories and beliefs that guide our behaviour because none of us has just one philosophy that covers every aspect of our lives.

Now, all philosophies, the theories and beliefs that guide our behaviour, are underpinned by beliefs about what we think is real, what we think is true, and what we think is good or of value. And those questions represent three broad areas of philosophical inquiry, namely ontology, epistemology, and axiology. So ontology is about things that we think are real. Epistemology is about what do we think is true? And axiology is a branch of study that investigates what we consider to be good or of value. All philosophical inquiry is based on those three big, broad areas of understanding.

So if we were to play around with that idea, I might ask you, what's your pizza philosophy? Are you team pineapple or are you team no way, no pineapple? Or maybe you just don't care, but you could pretend just for a minute. So let's think about these two statements in terms of them being a philosophy about pizza. Let's think about how beliefs about reality, truth, and value are embedded in each position. So this first statement, pineapple does not belong on a pizza. It's gross. Real pizzas do not have pineapple on them.

So the reality, pizzas with pineapple are not real. Truth? The truth is that pineapple does not belong on a pizza. And the value or the good, pineapple on a pizza is gross. The second statement, pineapple is delicious and should always be on a pizza, especially a Hawaiian pizza. It's not a real pizza if there's no pineapple. Reality? Pizzas without pineapple are not real. Truth? The truth is that pineapple should always be on a pizza. And value, pineapple on a pizza is delicious. Now team pineapple and team no pineapple have very different philosophical beliefs about pizzas. Why? Well, there are many different factors that shape our philosophy, our cultural experiences, family experiences, age, educational experiences, geographical location, personal tastes, et cetera.

But what is important in this discussion is that our pizza philosophy will influence how we behave. So a team pineapple person will probably eat pizzas with pineapple on them. Whilst the team no pineapple person probably won't or will avoid them as much as possible.

So a philosophy generally says something about how you behave, but it might not do that because you can have a philosophy about something and then act in ways that are completely inconsistent with what you say you believe. For example, a team no pineapple person might eat a pizza with pineapple on it, because the context they're in means that it would be very rude for them to refuse to do so. The main point here is that there isn't always a straight line between a person's philosophy about something and what they actually do. There are a whole range of factors that impact on what we do versus what we believe. And whilst our aim should be to behave as consistently with our philosophy as we can, we can also think of a philosophy as something aspirational rather than actual. That is a statement about where we want to be or what we want to do, even if we aren't quite there yet.

Let's have a look at another couple of philosophical statements. The first statement, children should be seen and not heard. They should do as they're told and never argue with adults. In early childhood settings, adults should make all of the decisions. And the second statement, children have a right to a voice in matters that affect them. Adults should listen to children's opinions and incorporate their ideas wherever possible. Now, like the pizza statements, both of these statements reflect beliefs about truth, value, and reality. But my guess is that there would be less division amongst us. And that most would agree with the second statement rather than the first.

How do we account for that? Well, in this instance, we're all drawing from a similar body of professional knowledge and a shared understanding about how best to work with young children. Now, one of the things about personal philosophies is that we're often unaware of their presence. So when we shout at our partners to pick up the towels in the bathroom, we don't see that as representing a particular philosophical view of the world that says bathroom should be neat and tidy. We don't see ourselves as working philosophically in that moment. We often just think about things as being the way that they are or should be.

What that means is it is frequently only when something conflicts with our personal belief that we might become aware of the philosophy that is driving our own view of life. And that can result in confusion, argument, unhappiness, debate, dissatisfaction. Now, in terms of the work that you are doing, this raises an important point. The national law requires all services to have a statement of philosophy. This means that rather than having a secret philosophy, that only becomes evident when conflict arrives, the national law requires you to make your philosophy visible and transparent, so that the beliefs that underpin practice and service delivery are clear to families, educators, and to children. Or in plain English, everyone knows what your service is about.

Developing a statement of philosophy might seem a daunting task, but starting from an understanding that we all already have philosophies that shape our actions can make the task a little less overwhelming. Rather than writing a philosophy statement, think of the process as one of making visible the beliefs and theories that guide your current practice and help to make the connection to the overarching Family day care service philosophy. This is a fantastic opportunity for you to think deeply about what is important to you and the children in your care and how you can make that visible to everyone. And most importantly, don't forget to have fun along the way.

Fantastic.

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Welcome to part four of this introduction to the Family day care philosophy and the process of reviewing your own personal philosophies. In this session, we'll do a breakdown of the workbook that's been developed in consultation and in collaboration with the working group. The workbook has two parts to it. It's actually a guide which talks about the philosophy itself and some of the information leading up to the review and the outcome of the review, but it also has a workbook element within that. So what I'm going to do is talk through each of the sections with you step by step to give you an idea of what's included in this document. The important thing to remember is that while your individual philosophy is what drives you, it is important that it connects to the bigger overarching service philosophy because we should all be aligning to the same outcomes.

This guide will help you to answer some of the following questions of where do I start? Is my philosophy still reflective of what's important to me and why it's important? And how would someone coming into my environment see this philosophy in practice? And what's influencing my thinking? So it might take you back to some of those messages that were part of Sally's presentation where she got you thinking about what's important to you? What informs and influences what's important to you and your own personal philosophy? The intention of this workbook is to help you to familiarize yourself with the updated Family Day Care service-wide philosophy. To get to know it, get to know the meaning behind it, the messages in it, what the intention behind those messages are, and then think about how they connect to what you find important and what your philosophy is and make that connection between the two.

So this workbook is divided into a few sections and as I said, we'll go through each section so that we can outline what each one of those includes. So section one is the index. So here you'll find a list of contents that would help you identify all the different information that's held within the document itself. In this section, the introduction section, it talks a little bit about how you could use this guide. There's a bit of a guide there that says you could start with reading the philosophy. That's what we would recommend, that you read the updated service-wide philosophy first.

As you're reading through it, you might find that there are a couple of words that you're not really familiar with or phrases. So you could actually then refer to the glossary. If the information's already in there, this will help you to understand and make sense of that information. If that word or phrase is not in there, then there's an opportunity for you to actually add that yourself and find the definition of it or talk to your coordinator about what does that actually mean?

Then I suggested that you might want to start working on through the workbook itself. So section five of this document. And so that's really where you will start to familiarize yourself with each of those statements within the philosophy and what the intended meaning behind them are. So you start to read through them, what do we actually mean by this? What other bits of information can I source that's going to help me understand it better? And then start to think about what does this mean for me? There's a section there that you could start recording your own information.

Once you've done that, you might want to then go and visit the philosophies alive. So they're the stories that were captured as part of the consultation from different educators and how their philosophy was demonstrated in practice. And then you might want to finish off by going and having a bit of a read about the story and the background and what informed this right from the start. Why did we review? Why did we update the philosophy and how did this guide come about? It's really up to you. There's no right or wrong way of using this guide. That's just a recommendation. It's really up to you what section you engage in first, what sequence you follow, and how you engage with the workbook part of it.

So section three of the guide is a glossary of terms. So the working group members when we first started looking through the philosophy identified that there might be some words or phrases in there that might be unfamiliar to people. And so the decision was made to develop a glossary of terms where some of those key words could actually be identified for people to go and have a look at what the definition behind those key words or phrases might be. We also thought that there might be words that were familiar to some but unfamiliar to others. So we've created some space in that section for you to add your own words if you need to.

The idea behind that would be that you would be able to put those words that you are unfamiliar with, talk to your coordinator about understanding them better, look them up, talk to other educators so that you have a clear understanding right from the onset of what the messages and the words and the phrases within that philosophy mean. It was also identified that while it was important to maintain a level of professionalism in the language used, it also needed to be user-friendly, relatable, and understood.

Section four of this workbook is the philosophy statement, so the Family day care service-wide philosophy statement. Each of you will also have a laminated version of this as part of the resources that are provided to you. It's been added to this workbook so that it's there for you to refer to as you're working through the other sections.

So section five is the interactive tool that will support your connection to the revised philosophy and guide your review of your own philosophy. We're calling this the workbook section. It's divided into the three parts of the philosophy. So our vision, our priorities, and our approach. And each of those sections will have a statement from the philosophy that fits into each of those categories and then broken down under there we'll have what the meaning behind that statement is as well as some recommendations for further reading that will help reinforce and support that message.

Once you've worked through that, you'll be able to look at what this means for you. So there's a section in there where we have allowed a text box for you to add your own information. This is where you will think about what this statement means for you. And what does it look like in your environment? This is where you'll start to make that connection between the bigger overarching statewide philosophy and your own individual personal philosophies.

Remember that you have got other tools in this document that can support you. So you've got your glossary of definitions. They're the words that will help you to support and understand the meaning behind the statements. There's also the National Quality Standard, the guide to the standard, which will help make those connections and give you further reading, as well as the learning frameworks. And of course you always have your coordinator who will be there to work with you and help you work through this process if you need it and your other colleagues. So you could work as a group, as a small group of educators and work through that together, or you might just want to do it on your own. It's completely up to you how you complete this process however works best for you.

Section six of the workbook, we've called philosophies alive. These are stories that were gathered as part of the consultation process that demonstrate educators' philosophies in practice. Really important to note at this point though that these are intended just as examples to demonstrate how different environments and influences can be reflected in individual philosophies. You may or may not relate to some of the information in these stories and it's important for you to remember that your story and how it influences your philosophies will be individual to you. So these stories can be read at any time throughout this process. The intention behind them was to really just get to know some educators and hear about what was important to them and then look at how that was reflected in what they did every day and in their practices.

And each of these educator environments were unique just as yours will be. And so they were influenced by things like the environment that they lived in, the community that they lived in, their background, what was important to them, what they were really passionate about. So that's what you will draw on when you are looking at your own philosophy and reflecting on that. But these are examples that might support you to have a bit of a think about what it might look like in practice.

So section seven is the philosophy story. So this is about the background about why there was a review and what the process that was undertaken was. This was talked about a little bit in part two of these presentations where we talk about the background and what informed that and what the process of review was.

So where to from here? It's really over to you now to work out the best way to use this tool, to become familiar with the revised philosophy and support you in reviewing your own philosophy. I'll leave you to work with your coordinators to work out the best way that's going to work for you to go through this process. You might want to do it one-on-one, you might want to do it in small groups, you might want to have some information sessions as part of your scheme meetings. It's really up to you how to use this guide and it's up to you to work through it at your own pace with the support of your coordinators as you need it.

So some of the ideas that people have come up with in being able to work through this is to do it individually with educators as part of a home visit. So you and your coordinator sitting down, having a look and working through the workbook, picking out some of those statements, talking about what they mean, what they mean to you as part of a home visit. It could be that you work with a few educators in a hub group style environment where a coordinator might be part of those conversations and you start to unpack as a group what the meaning and what the main messages in the philosophy might be and what they look like for you. What resonates with you? What connects to what is important to you?

It could be that you use your scheme newsletters to pick apart key messages within the philosophy and unpack them further over a period of time. It could be that you use your Facebook pages that most of you are quite engaged with to encourage open conversations about different topics and messages within the philosophy. It's really up to you how you use this information and how you work through it as best suits you.

Thank you for listening to this presentation, and I wish you luck working through your own personal philosophies.

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