Towards best practice during COVID-19: A responsive and relational program with remote schools to enhance the wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students

Abstract

Purpose From 2018, the Schools Up North (SUN) programme worked with three remote Australian schools to enhance their capability and resilience to support the wellbeing and mental health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and staff. This paper explores the implementation of SUN during the first two years of COVID-19 (2020–2021). Method: Using grounded theory methods, school staff, other service providers and SUN facilitators were interviewed, with transcripts and programme documents coded and interrelationships between codes identified. An implementation model was developed. Results: The SUN approach was place-based, locally informed and relational, fostering school resilience through staff reflection on and response to emerging contextual challenges. Challenges were the: community lockdowns and school closures; (un)availability of other services; community uncertainty and anxiety; school staff capability and wellbeing; and risk of educational slippage. SUN strategies were: enhancing teachers’ capabilities and resources, facilitating public health discussions, and advocating at regional level. Outcomes were: enhanced capability of school staff; greater school-community engagement; student belonging and engagement; a voice for advocacy; and continuity of SUN's momentum. Conclusions: The resilience approach (rather than specific strategies) was critical for building schools’ capabilities for promoting students and staff wellbeing and provides an exemplar for remote schools globally.

Resilience to COVID-19 challenges: Lessons for school psychologists serving school-attending youth with experiences of marginalization

“…In this regard—and following from the Theron et al (2022) paper on this themed issue—there is likely to be merit in SPs focus on developing teachers’ capacity to better support students (especially girl students) to be school engaged. Similarly, and as reported in the McCalman et al (2022) paper on this themed issue, there is resilience-enabling value in enhancing teacher capability to provide contextually relevant mental health support. To that end, SPs could facilitate teacher professional development to better understand, engage and support students (e.g., by training of teachers in Social Emotional Learning [SEL] and trauma-informed approaches; Abramson, 2022).…”

“…The papers in this special issue provide some pointers to how the adults associated with a school community could form a caring whole and support the resilience of students challenged by various forms of marginalization. While the geographical contexts reported in the papers on this resilience-themed issue vary (e.g., students from rural/urban USA [Chatlos et al, 2022; Goodwin et al, 2022]; remote Australia [McCalman et al, 2022], and South Africa [Mohangi, 2022; Pillay, 2022; Theron et al, 2022]), as do the marginalization experiences (e.g., disability or special education needs ([Chatlos et al, 2022; Goodwin et al, 2022], rurality/remote location [Chatlos et al, 2022; McCalman et al, 2022], visible minority [Goodwin et al, 2022], and/or structural disadvantage [Mohangi, 2022; Pillay, 2022; Theron et al, 2022]), the capacity of caregivers and school staff to support student resilience during the pandemic was invariant. For instance, Goodwin et al (2022) reported mental health benefits for American elementary school students and their caregivers when elementary school teachers and caregivers shared a sense of supportive connectedness.…”

“…Luthar et al (2020) have been vocal in this regard. The special issue paper by McCalman et al (2022) was a timely reminder that parents and school staff capacity to champion student resilience is responsive to intervention. Drawing on the implementation of the Schools Up North (SUN) program in remote Australia during the pandemic-related lockdown, the McCalman et al (2022) paper showed that purposeful capacitation of teachers and school staff yields dividends for student wellbeing.…”

“…As noted earlier, this is especially true when SPs work with students who are under-represented in the resilience and developmental literature (Blum & Boyden, 2018). In this regard, the papers by Goodwin et al (2022), McCalman et al (2022), Mohangi (2022), and Pillay (2022) directed attention to how cultural context shapes which resources are valued by students and how cultural responsiveness plays into resilience. For instance, Mohangi's (2022) study, which included five African family units, underscored the importance of extended family members (like grandparents) to how students’ households coped with family violence and acute financial stress.…”

“…For instance, Goodwin et al (2022) reported mental health benefits for American elementary school students and their caregivers when elementary school teachers and caregivers shared a sense of supportive connectedness. Likewise, McCalman et al (2022) reported wellbeing benefits for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students following teacher capacity to better support student wellbeing. Similarly, Theron et al (2022) reported that higher pre-pandemic school engagement buffered the negative effects of pandemic-related school disruptions for a sample of girl students in a disadvantaged South African community.…”