Welcome to Sustaining Community
Families, community engagement and environmental sustainability – for parents, students, practitioners and anyone who wants to make a difference. By Graeme Stuart from Newcastle Australia.
Follow me on social media
- Follow Sustaining Community on WordPress.com
-
Join 2,924 other subscribers
Read in other languages
My most viewed posts (past 48 hours)
-
My most recent posts
What I write about
- Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) (41)
- Being an academic (59)
- Blogging (22)
- Environmental sustainability (209)
- Facilitation & teaching (61)
- Families & parenting (153)
- Family Action Centre (6)
- Good articles/links (42)
- Nonviolence and conflict resolution (24)
- Personal (43)
- Saturday quote (22)
- Schools (27)
- Social change (79)
- Song for Sunday (32)
- Strengths-based approaches & ABCD (66)
- Uncategorized (16)
- Working with communities (277)
Tag Archives: Children
Cathy, upcycling and raising children
Cathy (my partner) has just been featured in Textile Beat, a website about slow clothing, dressing with conscience and natural fibres. The associated story discusses Cathy’s passion for upcycling as a way of challenging consumerism and over-consumption, our approach to … Continue reading
Posted in Environmental sustainability, Families & parenting, Personal
Tagged Children, Parenting, Upcycling
2 Comments
Over 60 ideas to consider for strong supported playgroups
How supported playgroup programs deliver their services vary. There are a wide range of practices involved in providing specific program elements, activities, procedures, philosophies, and policies that effect the way each program is provided to families. Attracting parents to the … Continue reading
An overview of literature on supported playgroups
Family services have been using supported playgroups widely for many years to work with families who may not access community playgroups and other services1. The high cost and complexity of conducting research that clearly demonstrates the effectiveness (or otherwise) of … Continue reading
A literature review on supported playgroups
Do supported playgroups actually make a difference? A recent literature review of research on supported playgroups [1] found that, while they are very popular, there is not a strong research evidence base demonstrating their effectiveness. The lack of research evidence … Continue reading
Posted in Families & parenting
Tagged Children, Evidence-based practice, Expert panel, Playgroups, Research, Working with families
3 Comments
Write4Fun – maybe it’s not just about fun
[Updated 17 October 2017 to correct links and add comment about schools] This week Alexa (11) learned a hard lesson about business ethics. Yesterday she rang me at work all excited because a great short story she had submitted to … Continue reading
Why I’ve gone rainbow-coloured
As you might have noticed, I’ve changed the background colour of my blog and twitter account to rainbow-coloured. I’m going to leave them like this until Australia joins countries like New Zealand, Ireland and the USA in legalising gay marriage. … Continue reading
Posted in Families & parenting, Social change
Tagged Children, Families, Gay marriage, Marriage equality, Rainbow
Leave a comment
Climate change, health and children
Our health is dependent on a healthy planet and ecosystem [1, 2], and thus climate change is a global public health problem [1, 3, 4]. The longer we leave taking serious action, the harder it will be to address the … Continue reading
The still face experiment
Imagine growing up in an environment where you were neglected, abused or ignored. Unfortunately this is the experience of far too many people (including, I’m sure, some readers of this blog). As the videos I recently posted show, “serve and … Continue reading
Posted in Families & parenting
Tagged Brain development, Children, Expert panel, For students, Neglect, Video
Leave a comment
Childhood trauma and brain development
Research is increasingly showing the huge impact trauma can have on the development of children. The following three short videos (under 2 minutes each) from the Center on the Developing Child help to explain the impact of trauma on brain … Continue reading
Posted in Families & parenting
Tagged Brain development, Children, Expert panel, For students, Neurology, Trauma, Video
3 Comments
What are authoritarian, permissive, uninvolved and authoritative parenting styles?
Not surprisingly, our parenting style has a major impact on our children. Based on the work of Baumrind [1, 2] and Maccoby and Martin [3] we often talk about four broad styles: authoritarian, permissive, uninvolved and authoritative. These four parenting … Continue reading
Posted in Families & parenting
Tagged Authoritative, Children, Discipline, For students, Parenting styles, Parents, What is
7 Comments
Sustaining Community 