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Healthy Places - Healthy Futures

Community-wide benefits for EACH Child through Healthy Places

EACH Child has made a big impact by making incremental changes on its journey through Healthy Places (formerly known as the Achievement Program). Located at Ringwood East, EACH Child is an inclusive community offering early childhood education and care to its 122 children. It joined Healthy Places in 2022 and has since gained recognition across all six health and wellbeing priorities.

Centre Manager Tracey Matthews said the Centre joined Healthy Places to further support the health and wellbeing of their community using evidence-based practices.

“We wanted to use a recognised framework to assist us in designing and implementing new activities and learnings to foster and enhance health and wellbeing at EACH Child,” Ms Matthews said.

Since joining Healthy Places, EACH Child has implemented several initiatives including:

  • Updating their policy and signage around vaping

  • Increasing outdoor play

  • Installing a child bike/scooter rack to encourage active travel to and from the Centre

  • Creating a community vegetable garden

“We have introduced a range of new initiatives to teach children about the importance of sustainability and caring for the environment. We also encourage the use of recyclable items and natural resources in play,” Ms Matthews said.

These initiatives have resulted in positive benefits not only for the children at EACH Child but also for the community as a whole.

“Our decision to review our policy on vaping became the impetus for EACH to undergo an organisation-wide review on the same policy,” Ms Matthews said.

Ms Matthews said staff member’s mental health and wellbeing have improved and families have provided feedback that they are spending more time outdoors together.

“We are extremely proud of our service that focuses on promoting health and this has resulted in ongoing benefits to our community’s health and wellbeing,” Ms Matthews said.

EACH Population Health Officer Rachael Cavanagh said it has been great to see EACH Child’s participation in Healthy Places as the benefits it has reaped have extended from the EACH Child community through to the wider EACH community.

“A good example of this is the updating of signage and policies to include “no vaping” across all EACH sites,” Ms Cavanagh said.