Healthy Start is an Australia-wide strategy to support parents with learning difficulties and promote a healthy start to life for their young children.

The Healthy Start website www.healthystart.net.au can provide you with the following resources that support your work with parents who have learning disabilities.

• An active interagency and multidisciplinary network at local, state and national levels.
• Practice tips for family support services
• Practice tips on child protection
• Access to free training
• On-line support
• Access to DVDs and training packages
• Promotion of research-informed practice through an information-rich website; online professional development; workshops in every state and territory; and, the dissemination of proven parent educational resources designed for parents with learning difficulties.

Healthy Start helps all families with a parent with a learning difficulty, including parents with a diagnosed intellectual impairment.

Healthy Start Hubs

The Healthy Start Learning Hubs are networks of individuals & agencies. They can be based on geography, interests or pre- existing networks. The Healthy Start conveners may facilitate a meeting or add Healthy Start to the agenda of an existing interagency or forum.
For further information about hubs, please access the website http://www.healthystart.net.au/

Healthy Start Training Opportunity

During July 2009 there is one Healthy Start Training Event available:
The Parenting Young Children program has been re-scheduled for 27th – 28th July in the ACT
To learn more about this program, or to view upcoming events for future months, visit the Training section of the website. Participants will need to contact the Healthy Start Team to request a Registration Kit for all training events.

New to the website

A new resource is now available on the Healthy Start website. The Self-Directed Learning Practice Point discusses what is meant by ‘self-directed learning’ and gives an overview of the literature on the effectiveness of self-directed learning techniques. Suggestions for your own work with parents with learning difficulties are also provided. You can view and download this resource from the Practitioner Resources section of the website.

Your web favourites

The Healthy Start website showcases the community activities of local area Learning Hubs from around the country. The Local Stories page is found in the Learning Hubs section of the website, and contains: downloadable articles about how the Learning Hub planned, resourced, and implemented their activities; links to Learning Hub profile pages; and an archive of hubs that were highlighted as the previous Hub of the Month feature. These resources are great for getting a sense of what is happening in local communities around the country, and to source new strategies/ideas for capacity building activities to that could be applied in your own community.

Contact the team

If you have any queries about the Healthy Start strategy or activities, you can contact the national project team at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , or phone (03) 8660 3500.

If you would like to update your E-Network contact details, or unsubscribe from the list, you can email the national team with your details.

This E-Network alert is also available in PDF format at the Newsletter page of the Healthy Start Website. Please click here