Perth-headquartered People Diagnostix has provided a practical, psychologically-based web application for schools.
In July 2017, the company launched its Flourishing at School web application to help schools measure and track individual and collective well-being, and develop and assess targeted interventions for staff and students.
The aim of the online survey is to provide periodic assessment of student well-being. This enables objective assessment of the success of well-being interventions and can also be used to benchmark student and staff well-being against a normative sample.
The Flourishing Profile draws upon positive education principles and is consistent with the NSW Department of Education Well-being Framework for Schools (2015) and the Geelong Grammar School Model for Positive Education (2013).
Central to the Flourishing Profile model (FP) model is that well-being can be developed from several sources. The acronym used to describe these components is PERMA standing for positive emotions, engagement, positive relationships, meaningfulness, and accomplishment.
The FP also includes the component of positive health as it is well understood that nutrition, physical activity and sleep play an important role in positive mental health outcomes.
Graeme Ditchburn and Libby Brook of Murdoch University have led large-scale validation studies of the underlying survey measure – including the ‘Flourishing at School Study’ of 2016, which included 15 Australian secondary schools and more than 7,500 students.
“We were fortunate to have a valid and reliable survey tool for measuring wellbeing, and a base of approximately two dozen schools who were involved in the research and proof of concept stage.
“With the organic growth of our school client base exceeding expectations, we wanted to ensure we could make the tool accessible to every school who wanted to use it. To reach that scale and price point, we needed to create a software solution,” People Diagnostix Managing Director Jason van Schie said.
Based in Bentley Technology Park, People Diagnostix is a provider of practical, psychologically based training and consulting services to clients such as Medibank and Woodside, that optimise individual health, well-being, productivity and safety.
Another Perth-based company, Lateral, provided support for the self-funded project.
“It was a pleasure to work with People Diagnostix to develop the Flourishing Schools application and it’s exciting to see Perth continuing to produce innovative solutions and cutting-edge technology,” Lateral’s CEO Tommy Chinn said.
Established in 1987, boutique custom software development firm Lateral is the team behind the software solution. It has a large team of highly qualified professionals with significant depth of experience, all based in Australia across two offices with clients including Wesfarmers, Samsung, Curtin University of Technology, AHG, Crown Perth, Honda Australia and CBH Group.
The software is a web application available for schools to purchase directly from the website: www.flourishingatschool.com.