Our Place and History
Werrington is a suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is 48.5 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Penrith and is part of the Greater Western Sydney region.
Prior to European settlement, what is now Werrington was home to the Gomerrigal-Tongarra people who spoke the Darug language. They lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle governed by traditional laws, which had their origins in the Dreamtime. Their homes were bark huts called ‘gunyahs’. They hunted kangaroos and emus for meat, and gathered yams, berries and other native plants.
Our Beliefs:
- We believe in providing children with ongoing opportunities to allow them to develop, establish and maintain open two way trusting relationships with educators.
- We value and recognise the importance of families being the primary influence in their child’s life, and therefore we will continually strive to develop and maintain collaborative partnerships with all families.
- We aim to provide for the changing needs of the local community, and to ensure the cultural diversity of our community is recognised, valued, respected, as well as actively encourage community participation within our centre.
- We aim to provide environments that are safe, inviting, inclusive and rich in possibilities, one that reflects the local community and the families who use the service.
- We value and believe in providing all staff with a comprehensive induction process when they commence, that will provide all staff with the opportunity in building strong team relationships together with being confident in knowing our service systems and procedures.
Our commitments:
- We will always treat every child and our families with respect that will extend into building strong collaborative relationships with all children, families, staff and where possible our community.
- To incorporate experiences into our curriculum that has a focus on anti-bias focus that will allow for children to learn about various cultures, traditions and values that are reflected in our community. This will be inclusive of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
- To provide all of our staff with open ended opportunities to engage in various professional development education that will extend and enrich their current learning development, experiences and practices.
- To provide an environment that will establish and build on positive team relationships that will foster and mould a strong collaborative staffing team.
- To ensure that children with special needs are always included into our learning curriculum and environment and to provide them with ongoing support and opportunities that will assist them in developing their skills and learning.
- That each child has the right to have the opportunity to involved in on going learning that will foster and develop interests and establish a secure sense of ‘belonging, being and becoming’.
- To follow and implement the requirements under the National Quality Frameworks and Standards and always be striving to be meeting exceeding themes outlined in these standards.
Our goals and aspirations:
- To provide a curriculum that is based on the fundamentals of the Early Years Learning Framework and that will allow children to flourish and to enrich their learning.
- In collaboration with the implementation of our Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) our program will encourage all children extend on their interests and development and enable them to develop their capabilities, build on their needs and challenge their strengths.
- To interconnect our ‘Transition to school Program” together with our Early Years Learning Framework curriculum to provide children with a successful transition to school.
- To provide a caring, safe, secure and welcoming environment that fosters open exploration and positive interactions between staff, families and children.
- To provide natural environments and resources for educators and children to develop environmental awareness and a platform for on going environmental education.
- To continually provide all children with the education in the importance of healthy eating and active lifestyles to know the importance of this. This will be extended in providing healthy and nutritionally balanced meals throughout the day via our menu.
- To continually advocate for the participation of the community and continually work towards building strong partnerships with our community.
Our intentions for action:
- To ensure that all of our families and educators are actively involved in the on going development and reflection of the philosophy.
- To review our services philosophy annually and ensure that we provide the opportunities for the reflection of our philosophy with our families and staff as a team.
- To continually implement innovative ideas to encourage ongoing family participation into our centre.
- Ensure as a service we are continually committed to reflecting upon our service’s practices, policies and procedures to allow us to continually extend our goals, aspirations, beliefs and commitments.
- To ensure that our Quality Improvement Plan (QIP) is developed and implemented to self-assess our performance in delivering quality education and care and to plan future improvements. Together to aim to have our staff, families and community a part of this process.
- To continually to be striving to be meeting the exceeding standards and themes under the National Quality Frameworks and Standards and for our staff to be a strong part of this.