Being Equal: Gender Equality and Respect in the early years
Being Equal supports early learning services to promote gender equality and respectful relationships among children, educators and families. The aim of the program is to create an environment where everyone is valued and respected with equal opportunities. The program draws on the Our Watch’s Change the Story Framework which outlines the gender inequalities that drive gendered based violence and the Rights Resilience and Respectful Relationships in schools model.
The Being Equal model follows a continuous improvement cycle to support services to reflect and to benchmark change processes and practices in six areas.
Our evaluation of the pilot program in 2021 highlighted that the five participating early learning services made considerable progress to embedding changes across all benchmark areas and and that this led to changes in the experiences of educators and children. A further seven services enrolled in the program in 2020. Being Equal is a finalist in the 2021 Victorian Early Years Awards.
You can read more about the program:
Resources to support services: Educator guide and Review and reflect tools (coming soon)
Respectful Relationships in Schools
BHN support schools in with their Respectful Relationships program. The Respectful Relationships (RR) program supports schools and early childhood settings to promote and model respect, positive attitudes and behaviours. Since 2016, RR has been core component of the Victorian Curriculum from foundation to year 12.
Our Health Promotion team is a ‘critical friend’ to schools, providing support, knowledge, and sharing practices.