News
Living Ripples in your school community
Implementing the Living Ripples process in a school community usually begins with a formal locally led introduction. The aim is for the school’s leadership team to share its engagement in the Living Ripples process across the wider school community and encourage participation among students, staff, parents and carers and the community.
This introduction, or launch, invites all those involved in supporting young people to understand why the school is implementing the Living Ripples process.
How schools facilitate community engagement varies. What remains constant is the importance of inclusion and participation. Bomaderry Public School, featured in our last newsletter, runs their whole of community workshops each term. Others run a session at the beginning of the school year, before they start the Living Ripples process.
The session can be facilitated by the school itself, by a member of the community or by someone or a team engaged by the school.
The aim is to ensure everyone is included as the Living Ripples process works best when it is built on real-time data and evidence.
Some schools like to invite engagement from local organisations, associations, community groups, councils and youth organisations and businesses along with others in education to support their students.
Our Resources page has information on setting up an in-school community launch and a checklist of people from within the broader community the school may like to involve. During the session, it is always good to share what’s next with those attending. For most it will be to complete the survey. Explain the timing and how the information will be delivered and when there will be updates.
Introductions
Living Ripples is a national initiative supported by The Phillips Foundation, a private ancillary fund established by Anthony and Liz Phillips in 2017. It shares its name with the for-purpose charity organisation facilitating the Living Ripples Model.
The Living Ripples Process
Survey results
Last edition we focused on the survey and gathering data. With the results collected, the next step is to review and analyse the findings.
Once a school completes the survey, each school accesses the consolidated survey data through their Living Ripples Portal. To do this, they use their school’s unique username and password.
From within the Portal, the survey data is collected in three groups: students, staff and parents. Beside the All Surveys tab is the Reports tab. This is where the tools are available to access and generate reports to focus on specific strengths, interest areas or priorities.
Accessing, interpreting and acting on the data is the next step in the Living Ripples process. This is called the School Wellbeing Action Plan (SWAP). The SWAP development is led by the school using its recently collected data and is supported by Living Ripples partner, Resilient Youth Australia (RYA) with advice from the University of Adelaide Wild Lab. Together, the school, RYA and the University co-create a plan of action. This begins with a scheduled 90-minute online session.
For schools keen to immediately access their results, the survey data is populated into data sets. These that can be accessed through a formatted PDF Report or available through the Interactive Report options.
A good starting point are the PDF Reports: the Snapshot Report and the Mental Health Report. The Snapshot Report provides an at-a-glance overview of your students’ strengths and challenges in percentage terms, colour-coded against the Australian norms.
The Mental Health Report provides more detail presenting all your student mental health data in one place. It includes standard measures of mental health, each reported by year level and gender against Australian Norms. The six measures reported are: Life Satisfaction, Hope, Anxiety, Depression, Coping and Connection to Nature.
Through the SWAP process and gaining familiarity with the data and possibilities, schools can configure and review the data in ways that best support their students.
For more on how schools are supported to review, interpret and manage the data through the SWAP process, visit our website.
The Living Ripples Pool
Our online community of practice portal
Learning with and from schools is the foundation of the Living Ripples community of practice. There are many ways to share stories. Connecting and showcasing the schools implementing the Living Ripples Model is one way we do this.
Living Ripples Partner Profile
Berry Public School
Founder, innovator and advocate.
Berry Public School, on the south coast of NSW in the Shoalhaven region, was the first school in Australia to participate in the Living Ripples process. The appeal for Berry Public School was that the process engages the whole school community, gathers and uses real time data and is aligned to the school’s enduring commitment to the value and importance of student wellbeing. Berry Public School saw Living Ripples as an opportunity to innovate and enhance the school’s wellbeing ecosystem.