The child in view
Children’s rights come first, so what a child actually experiences remains the measure of whether the design worked.
Home · About
The Story
From the early childhood sector to the page.
How more than twenty years across children’s services, field officer leadership and consultancy became an instructional design practice built around children’s rights and child safety.
Professional Summary
The child stays in view.
Nicole Talarico is a highly respected Instructional Designer, Resource Writer and early childhood consultant with over twenty years of active involvement in the early childhood sector. Her career spans a diverse range of roles, including managing local government children’s services teams, leading a childcare field officer team, and serving as an early childhood consultant and trainer at Gowrie Victoria. She is the founding director of Talarico Consulting and Medical Action Bag.
Nicole is best known as a passionate advocate for professionalism, children’s rights and child safety, consistently bringing a social justice lens to her work. Her expertise encompasses educational leadership, curriculum development, child protection, environmental education and sustainability, and she is recognised for her ability to help teams exceed service delivery standards, create and maintain positive workplace cultures, and foster strong community engagement.
Her coaching strategies and insights have been featured in a range of early childhood sector publications, particularly in the areas of ethical decision-making, educational leadership and child-safe environments. A sought-after presenter, Nicole regularly delivers keynote presentations at conferences nationwide and is a key contributor to professional learning calendars and local government professional development programs. Her recent work includes authoring a book on asserting a culture of child safety.
Helping teams exceed service delivery standards, create and maintain positive workplace cultures, and foster strong community engagement.
The Talarico approach
The Approach
How Nicole works
A social justice lens
The same lens is carried consistently through every piece of work, from curriculum decisions to the way a team is led.
Beyond the standard
Teams are supported to exceed service delivery standards rather than to sit quietly at the line they describe.
Culture, deliberately built
Positive workplace cultures are created and then maintained, alongside strong engagement with the wider community.
Ethical decision-making
Coaching strategies grounded in ethical decision-making and educational leadership, shared openly through sector publications.
Environment and sustainability
Environmental education and sustainability sit inside the expertise, shaping the curriculum decisions that follow.
The Work
What the desk carries
Design
Instructional Design
Learning resources shaped so the content holds together and the learner is never lost inside it.
Practice
Talarico Consulting
Founding director of Talarico Consulting and of Medical Action Bag, alongside her work as an early childhood consultant and trainer.
Advocacy
A Culture of Child Safety
Authoring and advocacy guiding education and care services to create and maintain safe, inclusive environments for children.
Sector
Early Childhood Australia
Committee member and convenor of Special Interest Groups for the Victorian Branch, and a member of the National Reconciliation Advisory Group.
Next step
See where the work leads
Sector leadership, published coaching insights and postgraduate study in child and family practice.