Friday, August 19, 2011

Occasional Child Care Funding Rally

A recent move by the Baillieu Government to scrap the Take a Break occasional child care program will have many local families forced into finding alternative services. The Take a Break program provides occasional child care for parents who otherwise may not have had the chance to have some important time to themselves.

The program gives parents the opportunity to do ordinary chores such as the shopping or housework or to undertake studies or to simply to have an uninterrupted rest. It also helps children learn to interact and get on with other children. This budget cut will affect 220 childcare centres across Victoria with parents now either facing increased fees or in the worst case scenario, that their child care services may be closed altogether. Occasional child care centres at risk include services in Panton Hill, Eltham, Diamond Creek, Warrandyte, Montmorency and Greensborough.

On 18 August 2011, parents, children and child care workers gathered on the steps of Parliament to lobby the State Government.
The protest drew attention to the 9,000 families across Victoria affected should the programs funding not be reinstated. And to the the loss of 140 jobs that will go with the scrapping of the program.
Impassioned speakers from the community let it be known how the Take a Break program benefits them and implored the Government to reinstate the 1.9 million dollar funding needed for the program to continue.

Out of many great speeches from very passionate protesters, one mother's words really stuck strongly in my brain. She talked about the toll of not having the opportunity to have a break has on parents.
Being a busy mother, she often never had any time for herself. 
She spoke about the relief that occasional child care had brought her and how much it had helped her health. 
The protesters felt let down by the Baillieu Government as other Australian states have continued to fund their occasional child care programs, despite the Federal Governement no longer directly funding the schemes.

To let the Government know how important occasional child care is, you can sign the petition at 
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/reinstate-funding-for-occasional-care.html.

I'd love to hear your views on the matter and how this issue may affect your community.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Motivation. Or lack of it.

Motivation. Sometimes I have a great struggle finding it.
For a long time I thought that motivation is a bit like a trait, you're born with it or developed it at a young age.
Everyone knows a person who seems to push through everything to fully achieve their goal.
It is amazing to see them in action. But nobody can do this all the time though and despite how natural it looks, when it comes down to it: you can decide. You can decide to take the opportunities you get and use them to your full advantage. You have the choice to sit back and relax or finish the job you're working on.

Try as I do sometimes I just cannot push myself to work to achieve a goal.
You could make me to read a hundred inspiration quotes but still there is this almost unmovable barricade blocking my path. When I should be leaping up and over, I find myself sitting slightly to one side barely attempting to recognise its existence. And I'm not the only one.
Various people I've known seem to sit in the same position, on the same path and feel unable to progress at all. We seem to be stuck in this inevitable loop of realising that there is a problem, half-heartily attempting to fix it and failing dismally. It really is quite depressing cycle and many go through it.
Even that talented achieving acquaintance.

It can be unbelievably hard to break this continuous pattern without some kind of aid.
Sometimes it helps just to talk to someone, even just for a short while because it is always useful to see a problem from a different perspective, perhaps you'd never seen it in that light.
You might even be surprised with the number of those who can relate, who've been there at some point and worked through it.

For me, motivation really comes in quite random bursts. A rush of inspiration might come at an inconvenient time, when I have no pen or paper to take it down or maybe in the night when I wake with an idea but know that I probably should try and return to sleep. So it drifts out of my mind and never gets developed. What motivates you? Can you easily find inspiration?