We would like to say a big ‘thank you’ to all the wonderful foster carers for attending our Fostering Wellbeing Event at Tompkins Park. We would not be able to reach our vision of nurturing our children to flourish without your dedication for caring and supporting our Koolangah (children)
Yorganop Cultural Practice Leader Jinni Dingo under the guidance of Yorganop CEO Dawn Wallam opened the event with a beautiful Acknowledgment of Country and smoking ceremony, overlooking the Derbarl Yerrigan (Swan River). A smoking ceremony is a ritual to cleanse and purify an area and also cleanses the spirit, body and soul. It helps to ward off Warra Wirrin (Bad Spirits) and bring in the blessings of the kwop wirrin (good spirits)
Jindee from Yorgum gave a talk on Flower Essences Healing and how it can help ourselves and young people. She passed around a variety of scents for staff to smell and learn about the healing properties.
We all worked together to identify what strong emotions we find hard to handle and to list ways that help us to calm down. We then created our calm down plans with pictures that we could keep with us as a reminder of what we can do in the moment to come back to a calm state or ‘remain regulated’ when we are feeling overwhelmed or stressed out.
To learn more about calm down plans visit https://yorganop.org.au/sanctuary-tools-for-yorganop-carers/
Carers in attendance were gifted a take-home wellbeing bag filled with self-care items and a beautiful custom ‘thank you’ cookie created by Just Because Cookies.
This event was supported by Mental Health Week WA. Mental Health Week in WA was held from 8-15 October with the theme: “Mind, Body, Environment”.
https://mentalhealthweek.org.au/ (link Mental Health Week WA)
