Presentation by author, Di Wilcox, on The Magic Coat: Creating calm, confident and caring kids. Presented at the Western Australian Mental Health Conference 2019.
5. To enable children to LIVE with the mental
health strategies that The Magic Coat
provides we run parent and child
workshops as well as parenting workshops.
6. To enable children to LEARN the
strategies of The Magic Coat we run
school workshops and train teachers with
a teachers resource manual.
7. Why should we care so much about mental
health as part of a child's education?
• Mental health disorders have affected 1 in 7 students in the last twelve months
• Students with mental health disorders scored lower NAPLAN results on average in every test
domain and year level.
• On average, students with a mental disorder in Year 3 were 7-11 months behind those with no
mental disorder, but by Year 9 were on average 1.5 - 2.8 years behind.
• Students accessing services for mental health disorders benefit but the gaps do not fully close.
• In Years 7-12 students with a mental disorder missed an average of 24 per days per year
compared with 11 days for students without a mental disorder.
• Students with mental disorders have lower levels of connectedness to school and engagement
with school work.
• The combination of mental disorders and socio-economic disadvantage compounds the impact
on academic achievement.
Source: youngmindsmatter.telethonkids.org.au/NAPLAN
8. How do we engage families in the
workplace?
Have you ever gone to work worried about the mental health of a child?
How productive was your day when you are concerned with the welfare of your
child?
The Magic Coat program has just started offering parent/child workshops in the
workplace to give families a common language to manage mental health in
their children.
9. How do we bring PLAY into the
Magic Coat strategies?
10. It is important to understand that The
Magic Coat has been created around the
idea of Positive Psychology.
"Positive Psychology is the study of
strengths and virtues that enable
individuals, communities and organisations
to thrive”
Source: Positive Psychology Institute
11. The Magic Coat has been created with
bright colours and characters that
encourage the children to connect with
the program and the messages that each
character represents.