Blog

Thanks to the generous support of our various sponsors, many of our programs and sessions can be accessed for free or for a reduced price.

When you’re chatting to other parents at school pickup, or on the sidelines at Saturday morning sport, have you ever noticed how often (and quickly) parents love to say that their kids play rep sport?

We get it, making a rep squad is an achievement, and it’s natural for parents to be proud. However, many of us place tremendous weight on the success of our kids in the sporting realm.

None of us set out to have a negative impact on our kids when we start enrolling them in
junior sport but along the journey something changes. SALT’s Positive Parenting course re-sets the dial. Through
smart, positive sports parenting, we can help prepare our kids for life and one day they will
thank you for what you did.  

Sport and Life Training (SALT) gets a lot of calls from local sporting clubs when things have gone wrong.

‘We need a course on respect and equality’ explained the President of this typical suburban footy club. He went on to explain why.

‘Our women’s teams do the warm-ups with our men’s teams at training. One of our young blokes said quite loudly, ‘Why do we have to train with these ****s?’ The Pres explained that they had dealt with it strongly. ‘We suspended him for 4 weeks and during those weeks he had to run the water out to the women’s teams. We need to follow up with some in-club education,’ he explained.

We think that it is important that we are clear on why we exist and why we think our work is so important. There is so much that needs to be done to impact positively on the lives of people, many of which have experienced complex and difficult times over the last few years. 

It’s been a very insecure and rocky road since the beginning of 2020 and mental health issues have been a very natural fallout of the times we’ve been through.

But there are large number of Australians who believe they are coping.  They are working productively (whether at home or at the workplace), looking after their families and loved ones, doing what activities are allowed dependent on the times and generally feeling like they are in control.  They have energy and they aren’t depressed but they may not anticipate anything in the future like they used to do. Describe “languishing” to them and see the understanding dawn in their eyes.

The social isolation experienced by so many club members during the COVID-19 lockdowns, has bought into sharp focus the need for sporting clubs to modify how they operate and to make nurturing the mental wellbeing of their members a centrepiece of their operation

Values, standards, ethics, principles – whatever you call them – are central to building a club that is successful not just on the field, but as community centric organisation that is also trusted with helping young people grow and develop.