Doveton College – school-based community support
Doveton College is a school that offers health and family support alongside its education service for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Catherine Fritz-Kalish, General Manager of Global Access Partners, says this model would be beneficial for all communities.
I recently went to Melbourne to visit a school called Doveton College, which is a special school for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. I sit on an Advisory group working to reform early childhood education regulations. June McLoughlin, Director of Doveton College and fellow Advisory member, invited me to see her school in operation.
The college is unique. It is the first to have a significant financial contribution from a philanthropic organisation alongside government funding, and it is also the first to provide wrap- around health, family support and education services from birth through to year 9. The long-term aim for the college is to become a community centre where families can find help for everything, from parenting problems to cooking queries, gain access to the internet, seek advice on finding work, or just have a cup of coffee and a chat.
Doveton College has been specifically set up to help children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Doveton is culturally diverse – 29 languages are spoken across the school, a proportion of the students and their families are recently arrived refugees, other students have lived in this community for generations and are entrenched in the cycle of drug addiction and alcoholism, violence and abuse.
Doveton can make a difference to this community, if the community decides to take full advantage of the gift that it is.
What struck me was how beneficial this model would be if adopted by all public schools throughout Australia. If there were a universal model of excellent quality early childhood education, integrated with family support services and linked to public schools in every Australian suburb, the opportunities for our children and our families would be significantly improved.
Doveton College is a pilot for school-based community support for disadvantaged areas, but I think it should be a pilot for all communities.
Catherine Fritz-Kalish is the co-founder and Managing Director of Global Access Partners (GAP) and Director of the International Centre for Democratic Partnerships (ICDP) and ICDP Foundation. She also holds Board positions for a number of not-for-profit organisations.
