The Magic Coat - Creating Calm, Confident and Caring Kids

Making a Difference to Kids Mental Health

What is the Magic Coat?

The Magic Coat is a tool that has been developed to help create confident, calm and caring kids who know how to problem solve, feel safe and manage their emotions appropriately so that they have good mental health and well being. Our program helps children learn to take control and responsibility for their own world and to create positive relationships with adults and children around them.

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About the Founder

Di Wilcox is the founder of The Magic Coat. Di has a Bachelor of Social Science in Women and Children Studies and a Diploma of Education. In 2013 she received Momentums Most Inspirational Woman of the year award and in 2012 and 2014 she was a top three finalist for the Pride of Australia Medal. Most recently in 2017, Rotary International presented Di with a Pride of Workmanship award.

After teaching both nationally and internationally, Di was astounded at the number of children who were unable to focus at school. She spent her recess and lunch times speaking with children who she could see were struggling to concentrate, to find out what was going on in their minds. Di discovered that most of these children loved school but could not focus because of all the worries that they had going on in their lives both in and out of school.

After some research, particularly in the area of Positive Psychology Di wrote lessons for her own class to help them manage these worries and build resilience. It didn’t take long before other teachers were asking her to work with their students and then other schools. Soon Di left teaching to focus 100% on developing a program that could provide a common language for adults and children to share, that would help children to build confidence, manage their emotions, build resilience and encourage empathy for others.

This is when The Magic Coat Program was developed and, after three years of piloting the program, Di now presents to hundreds of parents and children but also trains teachers, psychologists, social workers, women refuge workers and the police in how to use the program and resources with the children with whom they work.

Di is available as a keynote and inspirational speaker for corporate events globally and also provides life coaching for children and their families.

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The Magic Coat Foundation

The Magic Coat Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation, focused on providing preventative mental health programs to Western Australian children. The Magic Coat Foundation implements this through a number of different projects, with a strong focus on the well-being of young children and the care that they receive from adults in their lives.
 
History of the Foundation
Make A Difference WA Foundation (MAD) was established in 2006 by a group of Western Australian business people who wanted to raise funds to help individuals in the community who had fallen through the cracks and were not getting the help they needed from the government or other charitable organisations. The key purpose of the foundation was to ensure that the majority of funds raised through events and donations went to those people who needed it most, and that the money wasn’t soaked up by exorbitant administration or overhead costs.
Since establishment, MAD have supported individuals and groups in the community, ranging from our inaugural project to build a house for Guy Wallace and his family, through to supporting the sporting pursuits of underprivileged teenagers. In more recent times, MAD has trended toward supporting and developing programs for children’s mental health.
 
Through a partnership with The Magic Coat for Kids Pty Ltd, the ability to impact this increasingly important cause has stood out. Because of this, the decision was made to bring the Magic Coat Program into MAD and to develop the foundation with the focus of implementing the program into the wider community to create a positive impact on children who are the future of our society. To do this, MAD rebranded as the Magic Coat Foundation (MCF), with the intention of the foundation to securing extra funding to then broaden the delivery and reach of our programs and services.
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