OK, after yesterday’s explosion, I thought I’d best let anybody who read it know that I’m OK. I find writing therapeutic, and have had blogs in the past… I knew I’d have at least 1 melt-down over the blogosphere when I saw blogging was a requirement for this course!
Anyway, I’ve finally finished that damn report, come what may, and I’m ready to pack my bags.
I hope you continue to enjoy your placements. I’ll be normal next time I write, I promise!
Cheers
Annette
Well, it seems that I haven’t yet completed the tasks for weeks 3 and 4 yet. So now I will!
Provide a brief overview of your project
I think I’ve described the project before, but I’ll give a broad description here:
As a part of Munch & Move – a NSW Health program that aims to improve the health and wellbeing of children through providing resources and professional development to early childhood educators – my project focuses on increasing the rates of breastfeeding for infants who attend early childhood services.
Resources were developed in the initial phase of the project (2014-2015) and they were delivered to relevant early childhood services in the area of the Southern NSW Local Health District. However, there was no follow-up with these services to determine whether the resources were distributed to the appropriate area / educators (ie babies rooms and room leaders of these rooms) or whether the resources were helpful. My part of the project is to survey these educators to find out this information. I will also develop additional resources to help educators of young infants encourage mothers to continue breastfeeding when they start using childcare. This is likely to be a demonstration kit of equipment required to transport breastmilk to the children’s service.
Additionally, the initial phase of the project created some links to the Australian Breastfeeding Association (ABA), which I hope to reinforce locally. We also aim to build links between ABA and local community health nurses with early childhood services, so that there can be communication and support for staff who are working with breastfed infants. And we will be completing a needs assessment of local mothers to find out whether returning to work has indeed been an influence on their decisions to continue breastfeeding their infants, as suggested in the research in this area (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare [AIHW] 2011). Fortuitously, a local Baby and Toddler Expo is running on 20 April which will enable us to gather information from mothers that we may potentially not have been able to access otherwise.
3 Individuals / Positions who could serve on a planning committee for the project:
References:
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) 2011, 2010 National infant feeding survey: indicator results, viewed 23 March 2016, http://www.aihw.gov.au
Gosh, first term (my TAFE term, not CQU term) has gone by so quickly! It’s been so full-on and quite stressful, so I’m really looking forward to the next couple of weeks away from both work and placement. I’m going on a cruise next Thursday for 9 nights to the South Pacific Islands of Noumea, Isle of Pines and Mare, that I’m starting to get excited about. I’m going with my BFF – we’ve been friends since we were 12 (we’re 50 this year!) – and some of my extended family. I’ve never considered going on a cruise before, but when my cousin asked if I wanted to go and support her 11 year old daughter who’s dancing a couple of times with her dance troupe, I figured it was a no-brainer. And then we looked at the cost, at $750 it’s almost cheaper than staying at home!! Woohoo!!
Anyways, I’d best talk about placement as that’s the point of this blog! My last 2 weeks have been focused on getting bits and pieces ready for the project to roll out. I’ve created a couple of surveys to use with different stakeholders. One of these surveys was just to be used for telephone surveys, so initially I didn’t bother with adding the logo of the health promotion unit, but M said that these resources are shared with other local health districts, so it’s important to claim ownership. I hadn’t considered that they might be used by other users, so I became a little intimidated. I suppose it’s common for health promotion resources to be re-used by other programs, so its something to get used to. Us TAFE teachers share resources among our discipline areas too, but I suppose I’m more confident with this as I’ve been doing it for so long.
The other survey is focused on gaining information from mothers, and I realised that I needed to ensure it was usable by various levels of literacy. I’m really grateful to Ivanka for talking about the reading level assessment that can be added on Microsoft Word. I found her blog on this and adjusted the settings on my Word program at placement. I discovered from this that the literacy level was likely to be too high for some of the potential users (eg teen mums, Aboriginal / Torres Strait Islander mums etc) and as I really don’t want to ostracise anybody, I adjusted it. I also created a table that could be used by a playgroup leader to gather the responses of a group of mums. Hopefully this is helpful!
All of this focus on surveys actually influenced my work in my TAFE job. I’ve been booked to run a Child Protection workshop for the local FDC educators, and had a brainstorm to send a ‘survey monkey’ survey out to them to determine their existing knowledge and experience. This workshop is something that is supposed to be updated regularly, so I expected that most of them would have attended workshops on this topic previously. My survey monkey taught me that 95% of the educators have completed this training before. But I noticed a gap in their knowledge relating to privacy / sharing information for a few of them. This means I’ll adapt the workshop to review the basics, and focus on more practical aspects, such as providing trauma informed care and who they are legally expected to share information with. How’s that for a crossover between worlds!
Well, that’s enough for this blog. I now need to look at my older blogs to see whether I’ve actually completed the blog activity for weeks 3 & 4. I forget!
Ciao for now (I’m the kisser, not the kissee!)
OK, so now’s the time to ponder the questions that are required by this blogging assessment task.
References
World Health Organization [WHO] 1948, WHO Definition of Health, viewed 20th March 2016, http://www.who.int/about/definition/en/print.html
WHO, 1986, Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, 1986, viewed 20th March 2016, http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/129532/Ottawa_Charter.pdf
Hey there
I haven’t blogged for a couple of weeks. I caught up to week 5, I think, and it’s now officially my 7th week of placement. I feel the need to confess that a mental health day was taken for the 6th week… I’ve had quite a stressful start of the year at TAFE (my regular work) and I’m currently writing this whilst on the phone to the Child Protection line. This is my second child protection related incident this year (and while I’ve taught the unit on risk of harm for about 5 years, this is the first time I’ve actually had to log a call myself). It’s not fun! It’s interesting how issues like this affect my ability to cope with the additional requirements of the placement and study.
I woke up on the morning of 9/3/16 with the fogginess of head and feeling of dread that I relate to burn-out or depression and knew I needed some me-time. I dragged myself through breakfast and dressed myself in 
my gay-pride joggers, trying to life my spirits a bit. I decided to go in to placement for a little while as I haven’t yet worked out how to read the placement emails from home and wanted to touch base with M. Luckily I did go in as the ABA representative I’d been trying to connect with had emailed me, saying that her car had broken down… Apparently she thought I’d confirmed a meeting, when I’d just suggested it, to be confirmed later, so all worked out well there! Phew, I’d hate to put off a supporter!
Anyway, after reading over my emails (mostly hospital related stuff I have no interest in or understanding of!), M dropped into the office I work from and I told her of my mental state. She was fine with me going home, and said that I’d made speedy progress with the project. We didn’t have any appointments, so I headed back home for time on the couch. It was great. I couldn’t even concentrate on Lifestyle channel (which isn’t taxing in the least!) and nodded off for a while with the air con making the temperature somewhat bearable.
(Meanwhile – OMG – the phone was just answered by the Child Protection line… That took 1 hour of waiting!!! My ear is hot and I’m so glad I started this or I’d be going nuts with boredom!)
Anyway, that’s my reflection for week 6 of placement. I’ll write another blog entry for this week’s placement day, and then consider the questions that are required for the assessment task.
Fair thee well!
Annette 🙂
image is from little mochi blog, sourced 5/3/16.
I’ve now been attending my placement for 5 weeks, without blogging about the experience. To start the ball rolling, I’ll review my notes from these weeks and just summarise my observations and reflections below. Then I won’t have anything hanging over my head to catch up on and will be free to focus on the here and now…
3rd Feb 2016, Week 1
This was a pretty overwhelming day, where I focused on getting to know my supervisor a little better and was introduced to the hospital community. On arrival to the community health building, I was kidnapped by the child and family health nurses who had heard about me and the project I will be working on. They knew more about it than I did! Obviously the gossip mill in the hospital had worked well in this regard. I ended the day back in a meeting with my supervisor (I’ll call her “M” from now on) and these community nurses, sharing a little bit about the project. We made a follow-up appointment for a month away to share how the ideas had progressed.
10th Feb 2016, Week 2
M and I reviewed the Industry Placement document that M had received from Cathy. M introduced me to the Core Competencies for Health Promotion Practitioners to help me to determine my goals and objectives for my placement. This was a great idea, and really helped me to hone in on what I want to achieve from the placement. If you’re reading this and are in the early stages of your placement, I’d recommend clicking on the link to help with this part of the Industry Placement document.
I was also introduced to the Breastfeeding Kit, which is a core aspect of the project I will work on. Basically, the project entails working with the early childhood community, and other stakeholders, to improve the rates of breastfeeding in mothers who return to work at the 3 month stage. The resources to support this have been developed, and children’s services in my area have received a copy of the kit, however M hasn’t had the resources (time) to support its introduction and implementation. I’ll also help to determine the barriers to breastfeeding beyond 3 months in my local area.
17th Feb 2016, Week 3
Much of today was spent wandering around the hospital, finding the colour photocopier and preparing the hard copy versions of the Breastfeeding Kit to share with the child and family nurses in a few weeks. I had one prepared example of it, and discovered that I couldn’t find some of the documents that were included in it anywhere. Along the way, I ran into an early childhood director from my local area in the hospital, so I chatted to her about the project. She discussed the facilities her early childhood service offers breastfeeding Mums, and she gave me a few ideas about some difficulties mothers have with continuing breastfeeding once they return to work. This then helped me as I started to brainstorm where to go with the project, what I could use as methods to gain information and build community partnerships. I emailed the local Australian Breastfeeding Association group to introduce myself and ask for some help finding resources that were included in the hard-copy of the Breastfeeding Kit I was copying to share with the community health nurses.
images sourced from ABA, 5/3/16
It’s mind-boggling how much time just copying and putting together folders of paper resources takes! I was expecting to have this finished in about an hour – hahahaha!
24th Feb 2016, Week 4
This morning, M was booked in to present a session on “Eat it to Beat it” at a primary school in the region, so I tagged along to watch / help. This is a standardised presentation developed by the Cancer Council that targets parents and aims to improve the dietary habits of the community. A very strong focus of the presentation was the 2 & 5 message about fruit and vegetables. There were only a handful of parents (mothers) turn up to the session, apparently this is normal in our area. Apparently another Health Promotion Officer further south had 40 attendees at her session, which M was a little envious about. I wonder what the differences in the community dynamics is?
images sourced from cancer council, 5/3/16
One pearler of a comment from M stuck in my mind. On the drive back to the area, she mentioned that people can only attend to and retain so many health messages. She said that 2 & 5 is so effective because it is so simple. If people remember this, and strive to reach it, they have less room in their diet for the sometimes foods and will improve their nutritional intake because of this (and as a flow-on effect, their health markers). We also discussed the focus on obesity at a policy level, and how she doesn’t like having to mention this as people tend to freeze up and expect to be chastised or told to eat less. The word or concept acts as a road block to the health message as people feel shame about being overweight.
I had a reply email from the ABA representative and gave her a call. She lives in the next beach around from my place, so I dropped in to her home to collect brochures and other resources after placement. She sounded really excited about the project and has offered to help in any way she can. It felt great to make some inroads into the community networks. And I got to eat yummy frozen blueberries with her wild nudist kids!!
2nd March 2016, Week 5
Yay, I’m finally up to date!
This week I was busy pulling together the last missing pieces of the resources to share with the child and family nurses whilst finalising the project goals and outcomes. It was really helpful to locate the documents from when the project was proposed to the manager of the public health team. They shone a strong light onto the breastfeeding statistics for the region and the reasons the project was funded. They also help to guide the direction of my project for the upcoming year.
M and I ended the day meeting with the child and family nurses to discuss the project and gain some insight from them. I proposed developing a resource pack to share with breastfeeding mothers who are about to return to work, and asked them whether they could store the pack and give it to the relevant mothers. I wondered if the nurses could do this as I’m aware of the difficulties the early childhood (EC) services have with storage. It turns out that this is a problem for the nurses as well! So, rather than have a collection of packs (which will require substantial funding and storage), it may be better to have example packs for both the nurses and the EC services to share with families. There are many other aspects to the project, and gaining local information about the barriers to breastfeeding is important. I now have to hone my ideas and “just do it” – organise the focus meetings, contact the EC services, reach out to the other breastfeeding and maternal support groups in the area…
Way way back in mid-2015, I started trying to coordinate this placement. I work in TAFE NSW in a small rural campus, and I didn’t have anybody to relieve me from my role. So I had to find somebody. This required a few posts on Facebook boards (that focus on my teaching area). It took some work, but I managed to find someone! Yay! Step 1 achieved. There is no way I would have been given time off if I didn’t have a replacement teacher. I haven’t been able to be sick for years – lucky I’m pretty solid and healthy (touch wood).
Step 2, find somewhere… I approached 2 local organisations that I’ve had contact with – NSW Health Population Health / Health Promotion (who run training in Fundamental Movement Skills for my students and children’s services in my area) and Medicare Local (who are now called Grand Pacific somethingorother). Both were happy to have me, but the Medicare Local mob only have a secure contract til the middle of 2016 and I want security for the placement. So, NSW Health it is! Which meant working through not only the TAFE bureaucratic BS, but also NSW Health’s BS… There were SOOOO many forms to fill, health checks to take, phone calls to make, but finally it came together. And the week before I was due to start, I had the official OK from TAFE to take one day off a week for the year. Phew.
Step 3, placement begins. But that will be a new blog…
Placement blog for S0238690 