Childfriendly

Last week I put my hand up to join a local committee the child friendly city working party.

Did you know that Bendigo is the first city in Australia to be recognised as a Child Friendly City by the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in 2007. That is pretty exciting!

Not long ago I had a job interview with the Children and Family services with the local council to be one of their project workers and put together their children's festival. At the interview I experienced total memory recall of a past life working in a local government setting and it wasn't the greatest! So I decided to stick out my current job, despite working within unrealistic hours and goals. - but then who isn't?

So I hope through joining this committee I still have the opportunity to focus Council's activities more sharply on children.

There are a lot of things happening with children services and schools here that make me cross - this concept of SUPER schools, the one stop shop for childcare, kinder and maternal childhood services - madness - completely kills community, culture and simply builds a bigger bureaucracy for people to wade there way through - forget encouraging exceptional children, families. This is one reason that we are selling up and leaving the community we are living in. I am not keen on my children growing up in a SUPER sized community.