Contact MCSA

You can contact the Mobile Children's Services Association of NSW at

www.mcsa.org.au

Mobile Children's Services Association of NSW Inc

PO Box 39

Boolaroo

NSW 2284

Australia

(02) 4958 7888

The MCSA website will be updated, where as this blog will not. See you over there!

Mobile Children's Services - Welcome to 2009

Hello everyone!

Welcome back!

The team at MCSA hope you had a good break over Christmas and New Years.

We have hit the ground running, providing a Manual Handling Workshop on Tuesday in the Hunter Valley and heading to the Riverina next week to run and Introduction to OH&S as well as Manual handling - All adapted to the circumstances of Mobile Children's Services.

We will be very busy in Term 1.

Tim will continue the work with Mobile Preschools and funding issues as well as working with small centre-based services to see if becoming Mobile is a better option. Please call for copies of MCSA's templates on Business Planning. DOCS is re-convening the Preschool Investment and Reform Working Group.

Tim will also be contributing the Children's Services Regulation Review Industry Reference Group which convenes for 2009 on 3rd February. Call for your copy of MCSA's submission to the Review.

Please continue to refer any of your governance and management issues to Tim.

Melissa continues to pull together a lot of information on Early Childhood practices and is facilitating MCSA's activities in organsiaing Mobile Meet 2009 which will be held in Sydney, probably in Week 2 of September.

Please continue to refer any of your early childhood practice issues to Melissa.

As well as keeping the office and the books running, Di is also contributing to MCSA's strategy to connect the admin/bookkeepers in Mobile Children's Services. Give Di a call.

Please keep an eye out for our first e-letter in week 2 of term.

If you would like to be on our e-list, give us a call: 02 4958 7888.

Regards,

The team at MCSA

Di, Melissa and Tim

MCSA - Mobile Meet and website

1. Mobile Meet 2008

We are finalising the program and workshops for the Mobile Meet to be held in Wagga Wagga in early September 2008.

Registrations forms should be out in the first week of Term 3, 2008.

The NSW Department of Community Services [DOCS] has provided a subsidy, so this conference will be the best value going around. We have also asked the Federal Department of Employment, Education and Workplace Relations [DEEWR] to subsidies their Mobiles.

The full program means that participants travel on Tuesday 9th September - Registrations will be taken from 2pm. We provide dinner and an activities evening.

The next day, Wednesday 10th September, has the opening and keynote as well as the service type and regional meetings in the afternoon, folowed by the AGM and display companies.

Thursday 11th September is the full workshop day: 9am to 5pm, folowed by the Conference Dinner with the dress up theme of 'Carnivale'.

We ar expecting up to 60 Mobile Children's Services and 140 participants.

2. MCSA's website

MCSA has finally got its website up: www.mcsa.org.au

We have had some training on how to operate it ourselves. Slow going so far because we are very busy with organising Mobile Meet and doing all the things an organisation needs to do at change of financial year.

Please have a look at all of the headings and sub-headings. We hope to eventually have a space for each Mobile and a Google Map of base and venue locations.

New Website for MCSA: www.mcsa.org.au

Just to let you know.

We should have MCSA's website up and running very soon. Di and I are doing some training with TriCommunity this Thursday so we can administer the new site.

We are starting out very simple, with a few pages of resources and a link to our Flickr photo website and this blog.

We'll eventually build on this.

Regards,

Tim

We are back!

Just back after the Mobile Meet at Orange, sorting some junk and found the username and password to this blog. I lost the details soon after I set the blog up. I had a username that I was never going to remember. Now have fixed it up under MCSA's google account. All consistent with our other usernames and passwords.

I thought this blog was lost forever in cyberspace.

The Mobile Meet went really well with nearly 60 services attending and 160 participants on the big day, Thursday.

Tuesday night's games went off well, with lots of fun.

The VIP bit on Wednesday morning was really good, with the Minister opening, Gillian Calvert's great speech and the two Judi's inpirational talk on the history of MCSA.

The 'service type meetings' seemed to go well, although we will only see the benefit of this networking over the next period. There seemed to be some good connections.

The AGM. Well, what can you say about AGM's. It went off without a hitch and we were able to fill most positions, including all the executive. Now for the paperwork to Fair Trading!

We had terrific feedback about the workshops. I think we had an exceptionally strong workshop program this year.

The DOCS Forum was also a success, with many key policy issues canvassed and services made aware of the issues to deal with over the next 12 to 18 months. Thanks to John and Denise for taking the day out to come to Orange.

The FACSIA Forum was very lively, with many issues on the boil right now, setting both a short-term and medium term agenda. Thanks to John and Michael.

The Conference Dinner was great fun, with a very danceable band, and everyone dressed to the nines.

The staff at Orange Ex-Serviceman's couldn't have been more flexible.

Now for the clean-up and reporting!

The True/False game at Tuesday night's ice-breaker.

Please put your photos on disc and send to MCSA.

Mobiles Rsourcing Project Update #1

The Mobile Meet Organising Committee met yesterday at Bingara to continue the organising work for the Mobile Meet. An Advance Notice has been e-mailed and mailed to everyone - Still waiting for some replies!

The program for the Meet was finalised yesterday. We decided to bring the IR Forum up the agenda to after lunch on Wednesday - A half-hour 'taster' for the 1.5 hour IR workshop on Thursday afternoon.

We also did some work on the Tuesday evening ice-breaker, Friday pep-session and the Wednesday morning pep-session - It's looking very inspirational.

Most of the workshops have been organised. For the others, we have decided on the topics and the content.

I'm off to Sydney on Wednesday for a meeting with DOCS on the Children's Services Costing Manual - Should be interesting!

On Thursday, I'm also in Sydney for a forum organised by 'A Good Start Alliance' on the development of a decent early education and care system in NSW. I'm a delegate from the NSW Children's Services Forum for this. There will be plenty of shakers and movers at this forum, so it may have some impact. Perhaps if it was connected with a parent/users action group? That is, connected to a lobbying strategy that has seen the NSW Preschool Campaign post some successes.

On Friday, I will do another e-letter. This one will concentrate on DOCS' Funding Reform and the various bits and pieces of documentation that contribute to this - DOCS' funded children's services aren't first cab off the rank for this, but they will be included later. I'm particularly interested in how the reforms will play out with the supposed new money coming into DOCS' Children's Services program after the NSW Budget on June 6th. Wednesday's costing manual meeting should give me a better idea of how this is travelling.

I'll also be drafting a letter from MCSA to Children's Services Central on the subject of the importance of the 20 odd FACS funded Mobiles being properly resourced by those experienced in Mobiles and with a long history in Mobile affairs.

Tim

Paroo Mobile Children's Service - The road to an outback property

Paroo Mobile Children's Service - Road to a property
Originally uploaded by Mobile Children's Services in NSW.

Deniliquin Mobile Children's Service - Vehicle

Deniliquin Mobile Children's Service - Vehicle
Originally uploaded by Mobile Children's Services in NSW.

Deni Mobile's old pantech with lift

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

A source of information on Mobile Children's Services in NSW

The Mobile Children's Services Association of NSW Inc. is currently developing a web-site.

In the meantime, this blog will provide information on Mobile Children's Services and contact details.

The road from Tibooburra to Broken Hill, NSW