Youturn believes the emotional and physical wellbeing of our employees is paramount.  Our wellness partner Benestar provides 24/7 confidential support to all our staff, in addition to a huge amount of helpful information available to support with the daily stressors of life (particularly in COVID).

In particular our frontline child protection workers often face complex, highly stressful, emotionally and psychologically taxing situations and, at times this can result in exposure to trauma and aggressive behaviour from at-risk children and their families.  Even for the most dedicated and experienced staff, this eventually takes its toll, and can typically result in a high turnover of staff.  Consequently, Youturn’s Child Safety team is proactive in developing organisational strategies to foster the wellbeing of our frontline child protection workforce to help them navigate the stressors and manage, as well as prioritise their wellbeing and self-care.

Our Child Safety team this year participated in Equine Therapy, an activity that they often make referrals to.  This gave them all a greater understanding of the benefits of Equine Therapy in reducing anxiety and building communication skills.

Some of our teams, took a much-needed break to participate in a fun, relationship building activity by spending a day at the Big Kart track. This was a great opportunity to bond, refresh and get to know each other.

To make our staff feel valued, our leadership team post signed birthday cards as well as thank you cards with movie ticket vouchers to acknowledge hard work and show appreciation. In addition, we have a ping pong table set up in the warehouse at Maroochydore which is utilised daily by staff during their lunch break to help unwind.

To coincide with Are You OK Day, our leadership team introduced “Self-Care September”, where the services of a massage and reiki therapist was engaged to offer weekly sessions to those who were interested.  Although staff were responsible for their own costs, having this service on site encouraged staff to participate in self-care.  It has been well utilised and staff feedback has been very positive, with the possibility of offering it ongoing.