HANSARD
SITTING CALENDAR
SEARCH
LIVE BROADCAST
Hansard Dynamic Subject Index
House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-05-07 Daily Xml
Contents
Pdf Xml

ELIZABETH GROVE COMMUNITY CAMPUS

The Hon. L. STEVENS (Little Para) (15:26): The Elizabeth Grove Community Campus consists of the Elizabeth Grove Primary School, the Elizabeth Grove Children's Centre and the Kids N You Family Services Centre and is supported by a range of organisations including Good Beginnings Australia and the Women's and Children's Hospital. It has been clever enough to have received a Community Voices Grant from the Office for Volunteers to provide and put together a film focusing on the remarkable development of the campus over recent years. The film is being made in conjunction with Flinders University, which is providing the evaluation of the campus, and the South Australian Film Corporation. I was delighted to be asked there this morning to at least give my input, as the local member for the area and someone who has been around for all the years during which this remarkable campus has developed, over the last five or six years or so.

What has happened at Elizabeth Grove is that the primary school, through the leadership of its principal, Moya Wellman, has made links with a non-government organisation, Good Beginnings, and its CEO, Barbara Wellesly, and put together a whole range of programs to support early development of children in conjunction with their parents. That is how it began. The school also did this in partnership with the state government, and the state government has now responded by making Elizabeth Grove Primary School one of the sites for an early childhood development centre. I hope that we will then be able to interest the federal government in relation to the things that have happened there.

It really has been an amazing effort, and I think that there are three main things about the school that made these achievements a reality. First, it required vision. It required people in leadership positions—the principal of the school and the non-government organisation, Good Beginnings—to work with others, including me, as the local member and the then minister for health, and also the Minister for Education and Children's Services here in South Australia. It took the vision of those people to understand and know that what was needed was something that the entire community could come to and partake in.

So, it is vision first and secondly, partnerships, and they have done this to the full. They have involved a whole range of people working together to provide supportive programs for families. Finally, it depends on the nature of the people providing leadership. I mentioned the principal of the school and also Good Beginnings, but I would like to pay tribute also to Flora McDonald who, as the key worker on the ground, really drove the grassroots participation in a whole range of programs.

Just today they provided me with the latest things that they are offering at that place. They have things going on Monday to Friday, morning and afternoon. They do a whole range of things from play-based learning to fathers' groups to special groups for communities with children with autism and Aspergers spectrum disorders. They have playgroups, 'play and learn', and a whole range of things. They told me that they are now having allied health workers and nurses through the Kids Anew program, which is auspiced by the Women's and Children's Hospital, based in that school. We have all these programs, all free, all available to any member of the community who has a young child, or supports a young child or children, mothers, fathers, grandmothers—everyone is welcome. It is a remarkable achievement, and I look forward to seeing their video.

PARLIAMENTARY BUSINESS
MEMBERS
GET INVOLVED
ABOUT PARLIAMENT
VISIT
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
CONTACT