HEALing Matters Online Training

HEALing Matters is a Victorian Government funded online training package and knowledge exchange platform for foster and kinship carers. Developed by health and psychology researchers at the Health and Social Care Unit, Monash University, the program is based on extensive end-user, community service organisations and stakeholder engagement. The primary aim of HEALing Matters is to improve the nutrition, physical activity habits, wellbeing and life skills of young people living in foster and kinship care.

The online training and knowledge exchange platform involves the completion of six core modules. 

Module 1: Attunement - This domain covers strategies to help you build a reciprocal relationship with a young person, where you really get to know the young person and, in turn, they get to know and trust you. Being able to offer personalised care and knowing what is right for a particular young person, will help create a space to explore healthy lifestyle behaviours, non-judgementally.

Module 2: Shaping Routines - This domain covers strategies to help you set consistent routines and expectations. Routines that are predictable are important for development, providing a feeling of safety and security. They can also help a young person to learn how to receive care, and how to show care to others.

Module 3: Food for Thought - How we ‘do food’ and the routines and rituals that this involves interlinks with our values, and how we care for others and ourselves. This domain covers strategies that will help you use food to create a homely, family atmosphere, and help young people learn about their relationship with food.

Module 4: Physical Activity for Thought - Participation in both structured and unstructured physical and/or recreation activities provides an everyday opportunity to help young people feel connected, to form new relationships and gain a sense of belonging. This domain covers strategies to help you look for opportunities to help young people build physical activity into their everyday routines.

Module 5: Health Literacy - This domain covers strategies to help you identify the health care needs of the young people in your care, as well as behaviour change techniques to help you encourage healthy lifestyle behaviours. In this module, we provide you with the facts, then show you different ways to help achieve a healthy living environment.

Module 6: Self Care - This domain covers strategies to help you reflect on the impact of a young person’s behaviour on your own thoughts and feelings and will help you identify opportunities to maintain your own physical, mental and emotional health. More specifically, Module 6 was designed to help foster and kinship carers deal with the stress and challenging interactions they often face.

There are also eight new modules that have been added to the HEALing Matters Training that you will also have access to: 

• Understanding Eating Behaviours
• Sexual Health & Respectful Relationships
• Gender & Sexuality Diversity
• Oral Health
• Physcial Activity & Disability
• Healthy Eating & Disabilty
• Living Smoke Free
• Mental Health

This online training takes roughly 1 hour per module to complete.

To register for this online training please complete the Registration Form here.  Once registered, our team will be in contact to provide you the necessary information to login to HEALing Matters and begin completing each module.  

For more information you can download the the HEALing Matters Overview pdf document by clicking HERE.

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Resource Name: HEALing Matters Online Training

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