The WELL Ripple: Wellbeing Training for Early Childhood Teams

It's the question I get asked more than almost any other.

“Can I send my educational leader, or my director, to do the WELL Framework, and have them bring it back to train the rest of my team?”

I understand exactly why it comes up. Wellbeing training that only reaches one person in a service can feel like a hard sell to justify, when there's a whole team who could use it.

If I'm honest, my first instinct was to say no - and if you've seen my reel on it, you'll know I meant it. Not because the idea was wrong, but because I didn't yet have a way to say yes properly. A course this personal, one built on reflection, honesty and real change, doesn't translate well if it's relayed second-hand over a staff meeting. It needs to be done right.

I thought saying no would be enough. But the question kept coming - not once or twice, but from services of every size, right up to multi-site organisations and Family Day Care approved providers, all asking for exactly this. So I started brainstorming: how could I actually make this work?

Introducing The WELL Ripple

The WELL Ripple is what came out of that thinking - a genuine pathway for centres who want to bring the WELL Framework in-house for their whole team. Down the track, that could even include a “We Are A WELL Framework Centre” certificate for services who complete it - something to actually display, not just a line item.

Here's the part that isn't changing, no matter how this grows: before anyone can facilitate this for their own staff, they have to go through the full sixteen-week program themselves, as a real participant. Not a summary. Not someone else's notes. The reflection, the workbook, the Live WELL Circles, all of it.

That's not a hoop to jump through, it's the whole point. You can't hand someone a shortcut to lived experience. The only way I know to protect what makes this course work - the honesty, the depth, the change people describe going through - is to make sure the person bringing it home has genuinely been through it first.

From there, there'll be a path to certification and a facilitator licence, with options built around what a centre actually needs. I'm building the finer details deliberately, one piece at a time, and I'm genuinely open to your thoughts along the way - I'd rather get this right than get it out fast.

Meet the WELL Ripple Leader

This pathway needs a name for the person carrying it, too. I'm calling them a WELL Ripple Leader - the staff member who goes through the program, then becomes the one their whole centre grows through.

Remember what a ripple actually is: it doesn't start with something strong or powerful. It starts with the smallest disturbance on the surface of the water - barely anything at all - and moves outward from there, further than that first small motion could ever have gone on its own. That's the whole idea behind the name. A WELL Ripple Leader isn't chosen because they're the loudest, or the most senior, or the most powerful person in the room. They're chosen because they're willing to be that first small movement - and let it travel.

Here's what I want to be really clear about: that person doesn't have to be your educational leader, your director, your assistant director, or anyone with “leader” already in their title. It could just as easily be an educator on your floor who's never held a formal leadership position in her life.

That's actually one of the things you'll learn in Module 2 - that leading is more than a title. Someone doesn't need a position to already be leading, quietly, in the way they show up for the room and the people in it. Becoming a WELL Ripple Leader isn't reserved for people already in leadership. For a lot of educators, it might be the thing that puts them there.

So before you send anyone through the doors of the Founding Cohort, it's worth actually sitting with this: who on your team could carry this - not who already has the title, but who has this in them?

Do you have someone who's weathered real challenges at work, and come out of them more grounded, not less?

Someone who leads with purpose, even in the moments no one else is watching?

Someone the rest of your team already turns to, without you having to ask them to?

Someone empathetic enough to hold space for everyone else's hard days, not just get through their own?

Someone still genuinely curious, still willing to learn and grow themselves, even after years in this field?

If someone came to mind while you read that list, that's probably your answer — even if it surprised you.

One more thing worth saying honestly: that person might not want it. Stepping into something like this is a real ask, and not everyone is in a season where they're ready to carry it, even if they'd be brilliant at it. That's completely okay. This only works if the person doing it wants to be there - so if you ask, ask it as an invitation, not an assignment, and let the answer be genuinely theirs to give.

If This Is You

If you've been one of the people asking, here's where to start: send that person - your educational leader, director, or whoever they turn out to be for your team - into the program. That's step one, and it's open right now.

And if you're reading this thinking your centre could really benefit from it, but you're not the one who makes that call - you don't have to wait to be asked. Send this post to your director. Send them the details on what the WELL Framework actually is. And if it helps, reach out to me directly - I'm genuinely happy to have a conversation about how this could look for your specific centre, and what your team actually needs.

The rest of The WELL Ripple will take shape over the coming months, and I'll share it as it does. The name felt right the moment I landed on it - one person, genuinely changed, carrying that back into a whole room of people they work alongside every day, isn't so different from what I wrote about a few weeks ago in The Ripple Effect of Responsibility.

I believe wholeheartedly that the WELL Framework is the start of changing the culture in early childhood education. We have to start somewhere. And it only takes one person to start that ripple.

Reflection Question

If you lead a team, who's the person who came to mind while you were reading this? I'd love to hear about them in the comments below -

and if that's you, even better.

💙 Rachel Smith

The Educators Well

Wellbeing First • Empower Through Learning • Lead With Purpose • Lift Each Other Up