Young children in local communities can be prepared for, cope with, and recover from natural disasters and stressful events through the resources of Birdie's Tree shared in the South West Queensland Birdie Calls tour. Birdie and Mr Frog, the stars of Birdie Calls, spread stories of resilience, feelings, and support through hard times including "the virus", drought, storms, very hot days, and fire. The characters encourage young children to emulate their resilience through their stories of facing difficult times, recognising their feelings, and how things do improve through the support of friends, family and their community. The resources enhance the emotional vocabulary of young children. Ability to voice feelings assists a young child to process traumatic and stressful events. The connection between the community presenter, the young person and their parent or caregiver creates a sense of safety to talk about challenging events and their impact. The evidence is extensive that children benefit from age-appropriate information around disasters and stressful events. Increasing their knowledge and their vocabulary, increases their sense of agency and decreases anxiety. Most importantly, the program creates a scaffolding for how adults and communities will handle a natural disaster. "Something stressful occurs - feel big feelings - the stressful event will end - people will help - things will get better - you are not alone". This is how young children develop resiliency. This change is not visible to the eye or easily measurable but will become apparent in the years to come. Birdie Calls South West Queensland is a highly successful, collaborative partnership between SWHHS's TRACC, Ed-LinQ, and Healthy Communities, school communities, regional councils, and Queensland Centre for Perinatal and Infant Mental Health (QCPiMH). A train-the-trainer program, the first in Queensland, evolved from the partnership followed by an extensive tour of the South West.

Young children in local communities can be prepared for, cope with, and recover from natural disasters and stressful events through the resources of Birdie's Tree shared in the South West Queensland Birdie Calls tour. Birdie and Mr Frog, the stars of Birdie Calls, spread stories of resilience, feelings, and support through hard times including "the virus", drought, storms, very hot days, and fire. The characters encourage young children to emulate their resilience through their stories of facing difficult times, recognising their feelings, and how things do improve through the support of friends, family and their community. The resources enhance the emotional vocabulary of young children. Ability to voice feelings assists a young child to process traumatic and stressful events. The connection between the community presenter, the young person and their parent or caregiver creates a sense of safety to talk about challenging events and their impact. The evidence is extensive that children benefit from age-appropriate information around disasters and stressful events. Increasing their knowledge and their vocabulary, increases their sense of agency and decreases anxiety. Most importantly, the program creates a scaffolding for how adults and communities will handle a natural disaster. "Something stressful occurs - feel big feelings - the stressful event will end - people will help - things will get better - you are not alone". This is how young children develop resiliency. This change is not visible to the eye or easily measurable but will become apparent in the years to come. Birdie Calls South West Queensland is a highly successful, collaborative partnership between SWHHS's TRACC, Ed-LinQ, and Healthy Communities, school communities, regional councils, and Queensland Centre for Perinatal and Infant Mental Health (QCPiMH). A train-the-trainer program, the first in Queensland, evolved from the partnership followed by an extensive tour of the South West.