In 2022, the Diocese released its Strategic Plan for 2022-2026, which includes the core values of our organisation as a whole, relevant to all areas of the Diocese, including St Nicholas. These values are: Compassion, Hope, Integrity, Justice and Participation.

St Nicholas’ purpose–our ‘Why?’–is the reason that we come to work every day. It is a statement that any person in any role across our organisation can connect to and acts as the foundation for all our decisions and daily activities. Our ‘why’ is this:

‘We believe in supporting communities to flourish.’

Everything we do in St Nicholas, and the Diocese more broadly, is done to support communities so that they flourish, whether this is caring for and educating young children, providing support for families in need of care so that they may participate in paid or unpaid work to support themselves and their community, or to provide training and pathways to employment within a community. This ‘Why?’ statement is linked to the Diocesan Purpose and Mission, and it is also aligned to the purpose of our sector.

Building on our ‘Why?’ statement, we have sought to understand what each of the Diocesan values mean to us in the work we do every day. Through a wide discussion, many team members across St Nicholas have contributed to the generation of the following statements that explain what each of these values mean to us as an agency:

It is important that we all consider how what these statements mean to our daily work and how, as an organisation, we can demonstrate them in our actions with each other, with our families and the children in our care, and with our wider community. Teams across St Nicholas are working to incorporate these values them into our day-to-day work. You will see them begin to come up regularly in messaging across the organisation as we learn to connect with them and hold each other accountable to them.