The Victorian Early Years Awards celebrate the exceptional contributions that individuals and organisations make to improving the learning and development of young children and their families.

The awards were presented by the Department of Education and Training on Monday 23 October 2017.

The Centre for Community Child Health is proud to have two of its flagship programs nominated as finalists for the Victorian Early Years Awards.

Winner

Empowering Parents Empowering Communities (EPEC) took out the award for the Supporting parents to build their capacity and confidence category.

This category recognises “services or partnership initiatives that support parents and carers to feel confident and capable in their parenting role and actions, and to recognise their role as first teachers in supporting their child’s learning and development”.

EPEC is a community-based program training local parents to run parenting groups (in pairs) through early years and parenting focused services. Parent facilitators trained to work in the EPEC program are employed, supported and supervised by a specially trained practitioner within a local community organisation.The program brings practitioners and parents together as partners in a culture of shared practice.

EPEC is a model that challenges traditional hierarchical service constructs and levels the playing field to enable community members to work alongside practitioners in the co-delivery of a parenting intervention. The dynamic of local parents working within the system, alongside practitioners, spans the boundary between services and families disengaged from the system. The active involvement of parent facilitators in EPEC gives credibility to the system in the eyes of families that have previously found services difficult to access.

The EPEC program in Victoria is led by the Victorian Cooperative on Children’s Services for Ethnic Groups New Futures in partnership with:

• The Smith Family – Brimbank Communities for Children
• Uniting/Hume Communities for Children
• Centre for Community Child Health at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute
• Centre for Parent and Child Support

For more information on EPEC, visit rch.org.au/ccch/epec

Watch a short video on EPEC from the Victorian Government Department of Education and Training.

Finalist

Let’s Read Wimmera was a finalist in the Creating collaborative community partnerships category. This category recognises “services or programs that promote collaborative practice to support and demonstrate positive outcomes for children and families”.

Let’s Read is a national, evidence-based early literacy initiative that promotes reading with children from birth to five years. Its vision is for all Australian children to share books, stories, songs and nursery rhymes every day from birth with the important people in their lives.

Let’s Read was developed by the Centre for Community Child Health at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and The Royal Children’s Hospital. The Murdoch Childrens Research Institute and The Smith Family have partnered to implement Let’s Read with communities across Australia.

The Let’s Read Wimmera is led by Wimmera Southern Mallee Local Learning and Employment Network.

For more information on Let’s Read, visit letsread.com.au