Health, Safety and Wellbeing

Build a culture of shared responsibility for the health, safety and wellbeing of staff, students, and the school community.

Through the Safe and Well in Education Strategy and Framework, discover how to build and maintain a positive safety culture in your school, explore your responsibilities and available department support, and how to effectively manage risks. This training is intended to enhance your capability and knowledge of available systems and tools to support effective safety management.

This program aims to empower school leaders to look after their own health and wellbeing, connect with key department supports and grow a safe and supportive environment to work and learn. 

Leave feeling confident in your ability to lead the creation of sustainable and positive cultural improvements in your school, with a view to becoming an effective wellbeing leader. During this training, you’ll become familiar with the tools and concepts to enact the principles of “promote, prevent, respond, and recover” and how that links directly with teaching and learning outcomes.

Audience

Designed for Victorian government school leadership cohort including principals, assistant principals, aspiring principals, business managers and OHS delegates.

This program is not suitable for participants from outside the government school sector.

Facilitator

Co-developed by a team from the Department of Education’s Health, Safety and Wellbeing team and  experts at Ernst & Young, the program will be co-facilitated by a current school Principal Christine Finighan, and a master facilitator from Ernst & Young.

Structure of program

This program comprises a full-day workshop, and post-workshop support and resources will also be provided.

Workshop

Over the full-day workshop you will learn how to:

• identify your accountabilities and responsibilities for promoting and maintaining a safe workplace
• seek support for your occupational health and safety management system at your school via department resources, systems and programs
• have supportive conversations with staff that promote positive mental health and wellbeing
• identify, assess, control and monitor hazards and safety risks commonly experienced in schools, including psychosocial hazards
• practice positive self-care and manage your own wellbeing, and
• responsibly manage worker’s compensation and support injured staff to return to work.

Pre-workshop activities

Prior to the session, you will be expected to:

• Locate and familiarise yourself with your school’s risk register and activities calendar. 

You will need access to a copy on the day of your session. If you are unable to locate copies of these documents in your school, you may download the template from the Resources section of the Policy and Advisory Library (PAL) website.

Learning outcomes

You will gain knowledge and understanding of:

• creating a shared culture of responsibility and support for staff, students, and your school community
• building a health, safety and wellbeing support network.

You will develop the skills to:

• prevent and respond to existing and emerging health, safety and wellbeing challenges and risks
• manage risks to employee mental health and wellbeing.