Working together to support students and families

Sydney Catholic Schools has a strong community network which provides outstanding assistance to our students and their families. Addressing pressing needs within our Catholic school communities, such as child and youth mental health, family relationships and bursaries, we are able to refer on, or step in, to elicit support from the most relevant agency. Please see below, our network partnerships.

Providing before and after school care, as well as long day care, Sydney Catholic Early Childhood Services is a not-for-profit service available for children and families from our schools and local community. They offer quality education and care programs with qualified and passionate educators where each child and family is recognised as unique and valued individually for their diversity and difference. Our educators provide opportunities for children to develop a strong sense of identity and social competence, where qualities of fairness, humour, empathy and understanding are developed within an exciting, spontaneous, hands-on, stimulating, relaxing and comforting indoor/outdoor environment.

The Catholic Education Foundation honours the Sydney Archdiocese commitment to ensure that no child is denied the opportunity for a Catholic education due to genuine financial hardship. The bursary categories include the Financial Hardship Bursary, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Bursary and Refugee Bursary and are subject to selection criteria. Bursaries are open to students enrolled within the Sydney Catholic School system from Kindergarten to Year 12. These bursaries are non-transferable across dioceses but are honoured from school-to-school within the Sydney Catholic Schools system.

Good mental health is essential for students to learn and function well at school. Therefore, Sydney Catholic Schools partners with CatholicCare to provide a free counselling service in addition to the wellbeing programs already offered at our schools.

Our counsellors can assist with issues such as stress, underachievement, mental health, family breakdown, grief and behavioural difficulties that impact on the student’s learning. Therapeutic support can take the form of individual counselling or evidence-based group programs for students, as well as presentations and workshops for parents and school staff.

School counselling undertaken by CatholicCare is provided by qualified counsellors, social workers or psychologists. CatholicCare has a range of other services such as parent education, family recovery, and a Family and Relationships Program that compliment the school counselling service and can be accessed through CCareline on 13 18 19

For phone support Parent Line NSW has counsellors available to respond to enquiries or concerns about parenting children from 0–18 years. The Parent Line counsellors have qualifications in counselling, social work or psychology and are experienced telephone counsellors with specialised knowledge of evidence-based parenting strategies and programs.

Parent Line NSW counsellors can be accessed by calling 1300 1300 52 or through the Parent Line NSW website where you can ‘chat’ via Facebook Messenger. The service operates from 9am to 9pm Monday to Friday, and 4pm to 9pm on weekends.

SCS Partners