Stormbirds – growing from natural disasters

Program description

Stormbirds is designed to support students to develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to understand and manage experiences of change and loss following natural disasters. It is a small group program catering for students aged 6–14 years, that consists of 4 x one hour-long sessions.

The small group peer learning uses a range of age-appropriate activities and creates a safe space for young people to practice new ways of thinking and responding to the loss that has happened in their lives.

Stormbirds training also builds the capacity of the school community to support children and young people to gain new knowledge, skills and way of thinking to help them adapt, strengthening social connections and a sense of inclusion, developing resilience and contributing to students’ present and future wellbeing.

School staff are trained to deliver the program to students enabling the school to offer the small groups on ongoing basis.

Intended outcomes

• Increased knowledge of and capacity to communicate about change and loss experiences and related feelings, thoughts and beliefs
• Increased self-confidence, coping, problem solving and decision-making skills
• Increased staff/parent knowledge and skills, and community capacity to support children/young people coping with loss and change following a disaster
• Sustained higher levels of children and young people’s resilience and wellbeing

Program details

Implementation considerations

• Target population: Primary and secondary school staff, and primary and lower secondary school students aged 6–14 years who have experienced a natural disaster.
• Program adaptability: The program is suitable for diverse cohorts including:
  • Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students
  • culturally and linguistically diverse students
  • LGBTIQA+ students
  • neurodivergent students
  • students with a disability.
• Staffing: Schools wishing to send teaching staff will need to arrange backfill for their absence as they attend the one day of training and later for the Stormbirds session implementation (approx. one hour per week, for 4 weeks). Schools can elect to train non-teaching staff to support delivery of the program during class time.
• Training requirements: Facilitators are required to register and complete the one-day training workshop in full to receive the program instructional materials required to implement the program in their schools. Facilitators will need timetable release from class to implement all program sessions.
• Factors to consider: The program is designed for 4–7 student participants per group. Stormbirds small group program on an ongoing basis, as appropriate for the school community. Stormbirds consists of two levels for ages 6–14, adapted to different learning/cognitive abilities with 4 formal sessions of 60 minutes per session with a final celebration session.
• Australian context: This program has been developed, evaluated and applied in Australia. This program has been used in response to bushfires, flooding and COVID lockdowns in Australia.

Cost

Minimum cost

From under $1,000

Detailed cost

Stormbirds training workshop (online, includes facilitator instruction manual and one set of student journals for reference) costs $750 (including GST).

Additional costs include:

• student journals (pack of 21 for primary school students is $294 including GST)
• postage and handling ($35.70 including GST)
• a per-participant fee for attendance of Stormbirds one-day training workshop on-country ($150 including GST).

Additional student journals for implementation of the primary and secondary levels are available for purchase at additional cost.