From the Parish House

The full return to primary schools is welcomed by students, parents and teachers alike.  Next Monday will see around 600 students return to schools at Our Lady of Good Counsel, Deepdene, Our Holy Redeemer, Surrey Hills and Our Lady of Perpetual Succour Surrey Hills.  Teachers, parents and students have done an incredible job during remote learning.  Many lessons learned during this year will be embraced by teachers and students alike.  Students have shown high levels of resilience, the ability to be self-motivated, to set learning goals in conjunction with their teachers and then to work towards them, achieving great outcomes.  But, nothing beats the interaction and communication that happens in the school environment where students and teachers extend each other and grow together in the teaching and learning playground that we call school.  We welcome all students and families back to school and wish then great success for the remainder of the term.

Unfortunately, our parish Churches are not in the same position as our schools and we are still unable to open our Church buildings for public worship.  However, we know the day will come soon enough and we are planning for the re-opening of our Churches as soon as we can.

In thinking about our school and churches re-opening we have been planning our Safely Re-Opening campaign around four C’s: Covid Safe, Child Safe, Community Safe and Cyber Safe.  This is a great opportunity to make sure that our mind-set is on looking after each other and particularly the most vulnerable in our communities.

As we open our places of worship we will have an emphasis on asking each parishioner to re-commit to our commitment to child safety.  We will also be asking all those in any ministry or voluntary role to ensure that they have signed our parish code of conduct.  You can access that document at any time.

We have relied considerably more on electronic means of communication during the course of this year and the key ability for us to do that is having your details up to date.  As we look towards reopening we ask you to consider registering with our parish, if you have not done so, or of updating your details if there have been changes to your household or if your contact details have changed. This will allow us to ensure that we can make contact with you and that you do not miss out on important parish life information.  It also prevents us from sending information to outdated addresses and thus keeps your information safe.

I am proud of the way that our parish and parish schools have supported one another during this most extraordinary year.  As we emerge from this stage of lockdown in the coming weeks let’s continue to build up a safe and connected community.  There has never been a more important time to care for one another and keep each other safe.