Safeguarding Children
At the Y, we believe that children and young people flourish when they feel safe, valued and heard. Our belief guides our stringent approach towards safeguarding children and young people.
657 staff participated in our national Feel Safe, Be Safe Safeguarding induction and refresher training this year, educating and reminding them of our commitments to children and young people.
Our safeguarding policies are guided by robust licensing standards, against which we are externally audited by the Australian Childhood Foundation (ACF). These audits ensure our safeguarding practices and culture is embedded consistently throughout the organisation. Our most recent ACF review evaluated our approach as Excellent- the highest level awarded by the ACF.
To this end, our programs and services advocate for children and young people to air their concerns with our services and be confident in offering their feedback. Furthermore, we ensure our staff are training regularly to ensure they know how to identify indicators of concern and support these when they arise.
Children’s Services
We continued to provide strong foundations, enabling the children in our care to flourish across our 36 early childhood education and care sites, which comprises of, 14 Early Learning Centres, 22 Before and After School Programs including Vacation Care, and 1 Family Resource Centre that supports 29 educators in Family Day Care and In-Home Care.
In the last financial year, 1762 children attended our Early Learning Centres, 4405 children attended our Before and After School Programs and 2648 attended our Vacation Care.
Youth Services
We provided opportunities for all young people to flourish through a diverse array of programs, services and activities.
With 11 youth services / programs across Metropolitan and regions across Western Australia we have had 19,744 occasions of participation with young people. In addition, at our CARE school in Mirrabooka we have supported 86 students to re-engage in the school system to help them prepare for life after school.
Community Family Support Services
We continued to strengthen our connection to families in different communities across the state through our family support programs and play groups.
In the Great Southern, our Play in the Park program continues to grow as parents and children come together to play, learn and grow- rain, hail or shine.
Our playgroup at Boronia Reintegration Centre continues to support women, connect and build stronger relationships with their children through guided play, activities and support.
Our Play at the Park program offered through our Child and Parent Centre in Port Hedland is a local favourite with more than 600 parents attending and over 800 pre-kindy children.
Health and Wellness
Our recreation centres are more than just facilities, they nurture the body, mind and spirit to support attendees to flourish in all aspects of life. Each centre is an important hub in the local community offering a range of different programs and services.
We operate three recreation centres, with two through managed contracts and one owned site. Over the 2022– 2023 financial year we had 1,753 members use our gym facilities and 578 people attend our swim school.
Our People
We continued our journey of creating a workplace that stands out from our competitors, delivers our strategic imperatives and ultimately enables our people to flourish
In the year 2022-2023, we employed 516 staff, with 271 permanent and fixed term employees and 245 casual employees. Of our 516 staff 26% are under the age of 25.
Our Highlights
In a year where we continued to navigate the long term effects of the pandemic which placed significant pressure on the recruitment, capacity and performance of our Early Learning Centres in particular, we are pleased to be able to celebrate and share the following highlights.
Our Leaders
In the second year of the Growth for Impact Strategy, 2022 – 2023 saw us embed the concept of human flourishing as our organisational wide Impact Strategy, ensuring that all our services, programs, teams and people have the same laser-like focus on delivering flourishing outcomes for young people.
Our CEO, our President and Youth Advocate share their messages regarding the year that has been.
Our Stories
We have many stories to share but for this year we are focusing on stories that illustrate “Impact in Action.”
Impact can be defined as “having a strong effect on someone or something” and in relation to our stories we focus on the positive effect on young people being able to flourish.