School’s new pet happy to help

It took Rachel Thomas an interaction with an autistic student to decide she needed to expand the well-being team at Irymple Secondary College. She talks with Danielle Meddemmen about how the school’s newest addition is helping students and staff. Pictures: Krystal Torney

RACHEL is the wellbeing coordinator at the secondary school, and has paved the way in Sunraysia for student wellbeing. 

From Term 1 2020, Rachel introduced Wallace the companion dog to the school to help with student management and staff morale. 

“One day I was working with an autistic student and he was having a meltdown – really struggling with his emotions,” she says. 

“That was until we started having a conversation about his dog. 

“It was simple things like him starting to make eye contact with me, he took his head out of his hood, he could speak with me. 

“It was like everything that had happened in that last half an hour, he had forgotten about – it was as simple as that.”

After a lot of research and the go-ahead from school principal Jo McQuinn, Rachel decided on Wallace, a golden retriever-poodle cross who would have a calm temperament and hypoallergenic fur to help her with her day-to-day wellbeing tasks. 

He will be a jack of all trades at the school, working with vulnerable and anxiety prone students as well as boosting staff morale. 

Rachel studied social work at La Trobe Mildura and always had an interest in working with young people. 

She become the wellbeing coordinator at Irymple Secondary College straight out of university, and is now starting her fourth year with the school. 

“Day to day I work with our more vulnerable students so I do case manage our out of home students who live in foster care or kinship arrangements and our students who either have an intellectual disability or physical,” she says. 

“I case manage them so they have different curriculum areas, they have individual learning plans and we have to have care team meetings for everyone who is involved so it’s about taking a really holistic approach with these students and have a wrap-around support network for our most vulnerable.” 

“If we can build positive connections that are consistent with these kids, that builds their trust and they have that one person they trust, which builds into a team of people.”

The school has one of the largest student support teams for its size, with a full-time chaplain, two full-time youth workers, a part-time nurse and now Wallace. 

Wallace will live with Rachel and work a Monday to Friday roster like all other staff, although Rachel says an important part in the decision was to account for mixed feeling towards animals. 

“We are going to be really mindful of any feeling people may have because of different cultural aspects or experiences with animals, we are just hoping that can be a part of opening up conversations about why, and then educating them about this as well,” she says. 

“We want to really acknowledge everyone’s experience of this because not everyone is going to be for it but we hope that opens up those conversations.”

Rachel hopes Wallace will settle into his role with the school as well as she has, and has the ability to help a magnitude of students. 

“I think our students with the anxiety tendencies and the ones who struggle in mainstream classes are really going to benefit from having Wallace here, or those who struggle to vocalise those uncomfortable feelings,” she says. 

“They can sit with those uncomfortable feelings but how can we support you to do that without actually talking you through that.

“From what I have seen from him so far I think he will really help with those who struggled to bring themselves down from heightened emotions and so much more.”