Latest / Sarah Knows Support Workers / 💬 “If You’re Going to Be in This Sector — Don’t Be a Dickhead” | Nicole Doherty on Respect, Care & Leadership

Transcript

💬 “If You’re Going to Be in This Sector — Don’t Be a Dickhead” | Nicole Doherty on Respect, Care & Leadership · Sarah Knows Support Workers

• 0:00
  Hi everyone, It's Sarah from the support workers store.
• 0:02
  Today I've got Nicole. Nicole, you're from Empowered
• 0:05
  Livability. I'm so excited to have you.
• 0:08
  Haha. I got you.
• 0:10
  Now I'm just going to get straight into it.
• 0:13
  And can you tell us a little bit about yourself, Nicole?
• 0:16
  Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much for having me.
• 0:18
  There's so much to tell. I guess you career wise, I guess
• 0:21
  I've been in the community services sector for about 25
• 0:24
  years. I think I started when I was 20,
• 0:26
  sort of started, I thought I wanted to do law and very
• 0:29
  quickly once sort of gone to union going, you know, into
• 0:32
  actually working in firms, I've found out very quickly that
• 0:35
  wasn't for me. And sort of fell, fell into
• 0:39
  community services when a family friend was, you know, had a
• 0:41
  small agency and very much fell in love straight away.
• 0:45
  I knew that it was exactly where I needed to be.
• 0:47
  But yeah, so I'm a mum. I've got a 11 year old who is,
• 0:51
  we were just talking about very much a, a character.
• 0:53
  He's a very funny kid. He's autistic, ADHDPDA,
• 0:58
  dyspraxic, jokingly calls himself the alphabet because he
• 1:02
  gets getting a new diagnosis every time he goes to the
• 1:04
  doctors. But very, yeah, very funny
• 1:09
  musical kid. So that's, you know, obviously a
• 1:11
  huge, huge part of my life. And yeah, my wife, a trainer, a
• 1:16
  counsellor, you know, business owner, a bit of everything.
• 1:20
  But yeah, thank you so much for having me.
• 1:22
  I'm really excited. I can't wait because I've got a
• 1:25
  heap of questions that I and I'm sure many other people would
• 1:28
  love to ask you. They just, we just never have.
• 1:31
  So I'm going to, I want to take this back a couple of steps.
• 1:34
  You said that you studied and then you went into a disability
• 1:39
  based business. If you don't mind me asking, was
• 1:43
  that quite was it a few moons ago?
• 1:45
  Was it like how? Where did it all start?
• 1:47
  Yeah. So as I said, I did say I did an
• 1:50
  advanced diploma in business legal practice, which was my
• 1:53
  backdoor into becoming a lawyer. But after doing that, I sort of
• 1:56
  went into working in legal firms and accounting firms and just
• 1:59
  absolutely hated it. I hated that corporate
• 2:02
  environment. It was so fake and just wasn't,
• 2:04
  was not me. I've come from a very salt of
• 2:06
  the earth kind of background family wise, you know, growing
• 2:10
  up in Geelong, we're a very, I guess very salt of the earth
• 2:14
  town, very country beach, if you could sort of sum up Geelong
• 2:16
  people. But yeah, so I went into a
• 2:18
  family, friends business who was doing support work, went in
• 2:22
  there to do some support work. And very quickly they realized
• 2:26
  that I had admin skills that they thought that they could
• 2:28
  use, which was great. But I did a lot of support work
• 2:30
  working with people who were actually moving into housing.
• 2:33
  I think it was DHS and Eurella and Scope who had done a
• 2:36
  collaboration, many, many, you know, this is 25 years ago,
• 2:39
  moving people into their own kind of villas, I would say,
• 2:42
  that were accessible. And I was super excited just to
• 2:45
  help people move and to help them move their furniture around
• 2:48
  so that they could get in and get around the house.
• 2:50
  And it just very much sparked, I guess that interest of
• 2:53
  accessibility probably for one, but I probably quickly learned
• 2:57
  personal care was never gonna be for me.
• 2:59
  I just, you know, as a 20 year old girl, it just was not my
• 3:03
  thing at the time. But I loved that kind of in the
• 3:05
  old school what, what would have been our kind of class as
• 3:08
  community access. I loved that kind of stuff.
• 3:10
  And I loved the really, I guess I loved working with people who
• 3:14
  other people either didn't wanna work with or couldn't work with
• 3:17
  well, and sort of working with them to find out what they
• 3:21
  really wanted. And it was, you know, I guess
• 3:23
  now and, you know, I've had many conversations about this now
• 3:26
  kind of the real starts of that, you know, personalized support
• 3:30
  and, you know, that really first stages of independent living of
• 3:33
  people moving into villas by themselves out of kind of
• 3:35
  institutional care. And that was more from TAC.
• 3:38
  So it was people who had acquired disabilities.
• 3:40
  So, yeah, absolutely found my passion very, very quickly.
• 3:43
  And you know, 25 years later, I'm still here and evolving and
• 3:46
  still learning. Well, you said something that
• 3:50
  was really interesting. I hope you don't mind.
• 3:52
  You talked about the Big 3, some really big three providers in
• 3:56
  say in Victoria, Melbourne that you were at the beginning of
• 4:00
  your career. I worked for one of them and I
• 4:02
  will stay that I'm now and clicked over the other day at
• 4:06
  work. I'm now 17 and something years
• 4:09
  in the sector and I worked for one of the big three and the
• 4:12
  skills that I had learnt from working with them I still carry
• 4:15
  today, 17 years later. Is there any skill sets that you
• 4:20
  have developed from working for one of the big three?
• 4:23
  Yeah. Well, I was actually, so I was
• 4:24
  working for an independent smaller agency at the time, but
• 4:26
  we were contracted out to most of those big providers in
• 4:30
  Victoria. So we worked with Melbourne's in
• 4:31
  Mission Ecto, which used to be wind support back in those days,
• 4:36
  Obviously Scope, Purella, Gelly brand, lots of those kind of
• 4:40
  bigger services. And I think one of the big
• 4:42
  things that I took from from them was that they were always
• 4:45
  learning and evolving no matter what.
• 4:47
  You know, I guess even from a, you know, 100 year old kind of
• 4:52
  industry where we've learned that there's been a lot of abuse
• 4:55
  and neglect and a lot of those big older providers were part of
• 4:58
  that. But I think what I've seen from
• 5:01
  them and that the rest of us have kind of taken is that they
• 5:03
  were always, no matter how bad things were, they always wanted
• 5:07
  to do better. And the people on the ground
• 5:09
  always wanted to do better. And they only ever wanted to
• 5:12
  weed out the bad, the bad seeds that weren't doing good support.
• 5:15
  And I think that's something I always took always they, you
• 5:19
  know, as much as there's been, I guess negative in, and I'm not
• 5:21
  pinpointing any of those providers, but there's always
• 5:24
  been negative talk about some of those older providers that were
• 5:27
  the, you know, they were the stalwarts of the, of the sector
• 5:31
  be like that anymore. We want to keep moving forward
• 5:34
  and evolving and making sure the people that we work with have
• 5:37
  dignity, respect, independence, you know, all of those things
• 5:41
  that those providers definitely stand for now.
• 5:44
  And I think that's something I always took on that no matter
• 5:46
  what happened, take responsibility, move forward and
• 5:49
  just constantly improving and doing better.
• 5:51
  So I think that's probably the biggest thing I took from kind
• 5:53
  of being around those big providers.
• 5:56
  My God, the skill sets that I have now I'm still using and
• 5:59
  that's 17 years later. The to be able to continue to
• 6:03
  use that and have those skill sets and you like, you know, to
• 6:06
  benefit it had shaped me career wise by working for them for a
• 6:10
  short period of time. So yeah, like, who knows in that
• 6:14
  way, like the skill set, you can't go past it.
• 6:17
  Exactly. Did you always like so once you
• 6:23
  were doing your support work as a one to ones and in the agency
• 6:26
  and doing the transition into homes, was there a moment that
• 6:29
  or like a person that you worked with where you're like, haha,
• 6:33
  like you know, I have found my calling like this, this is it.
• 6:37
  Like I am feeling this. Like did you have an aha moment
• 6:40
  when you're working with someone?
• 6:43
  Yeah, definitely. And I think it was more, it was
• 6:45
  actually two people probably almost simultaneously within
• 6:48
  about a year of each other. And they were both vocational
• 6:50
  educational trainers, both very much became mentors to me,
• 6:54
  especially around that continuous improvement kind of
• 6:57
  stuff and, and the how important education is for people working
• 7:02
  in the sector. And definitely, I think pushed
• 7:05
  me to go further. They must have seen something in
• 7:08
  me, you know, potentially from a lived experience point of view
• 7:11
  or just that, you know, that unconditional positive regard.
• 7:14
  They both of them really hammered home all of the time.
• 7:18
  And they both really inspired me to want to do more and to
• 7:21
  always, I guess, kind of hold education and knowledge and
• 7:26
  experience really, really high with anyone I work with.
• 7:29
  So whether that's for myself, always trying to learn more,
• 7:32
  constantly doing more courses, more workshops, more
• 7:35
  qualifications, but also offering that to my team no
• 7:38
  matter what that team was. So from a support work team, you
• 7:41
  know, that was that was constantly trying to help skill
• 7:44
  staff all of the time. But even now, sort of moving
• 7:47
  more into the housing space and having more of AI guess more of
• 7:50
  a social work support coordinator like tenancy
• 7:53
  management kind of team rather than direct care workers, is to
• 7:57
  constantly be offering that training and building our own
• 8:00
  training so that we're then not just educating our own team, but
• 8:03
  educating the sector as well. Consistently wanting to grow and
• 8:07
  develop. Yeah.
• 8:09
  And I think it's learning, you know, not even just in the
• 8:11
  traditional sense of, you know, training and workshops and, and
• 8:15
  education, but I think the learning from, you know, as we
• 8:17
  just said about older providers, learning from their mistakes as
• 8:20
  much as learning from what they've done well.
• 8:23
  So, you know, wanting to make sure.
• 8:24
  And, you know, and this has even come from, you know, working in
• 8:27
  a corporate environment of never really wanting that environment
• 8:30
  for my workplace that, you know, we wanted a bit more of a
• 8:33
  relaxed environment where you can still be professional, but
• 8:36
  you don't have to be over the top ridiculous.
• 8:38
  And that people can bring, you know, and something that I've
• 8:41
  kind of always pushed forward to bring themselves to the
• 8:44
  environment that that there is a bit of a seamless transition
• 8:46
  sometimes between home life and work life.
• 8:49
  And that as much as we say that they should be kind of, you
• 8:52
  know, both of them should be left at the door, I think that's
• 8:55
  kind of bullshit, to be honest. I think you no matter what, if
• 8:57
  if crap's going on at home, you're bringing it to work.
• 8:59
  And if crap's going on at work, you're bringing it at home.
• 9:02
  And I think just owning that and kind of wearing your heart on
• 9:04
  your sleeve because if people don't know what you're going
• 9:06
  through, they can't support you. So, you know, I think that's
• 9:09
  something that I've always from, from a workplace point of view
• 9:12
  is that if you need support, whether it's at work or home,
• 9:14
  you need support. So, you know, let's work
• 9:17
  together to to work that out. Well, it's a people business,
• 9:21
  like, and when I talk about this, when I say it's a people
• 9:24
  business and our, our main job for the people that we serve is
• 9:28
  to turn up and be a person, not a robot.
• 9:30
  And we can't do that unless we're not our authentic self in
• 9:34
  that sense, or, you know, we're a bit down to earth.
• 9:37
  It's easier to communicate with people when we're all on the
• 9:40
  same level field of playing. Exactly.
• 9:44
  Exactly. Now you said that your son plays
• 9:47
  a huge part in the work that you do.
• 9:51
  Can you tell me a little bit more?
• 9:53
  Yeah, for sure. I mean, obviously I was already
• 9:55
  in community services in general, you know, prior to
• 9:58
  having him. So he's 11 now and I've been in
• 10:00
  the sector 25 years. But I think he's definitely
• 10:03
  shaped the way that I look at the work that I do.
• 10:06
  That's probably shaped the way that I that I support carers,
• 10:09
  you know, from whether they're, you know, parents, siblings,
• 10:13
  children looking after parents. I think it's definitely shaped
• 10:16
  that. And I think for me from as a
• 10:17
  housing provider, it's also made me look at our housing to see if
• 10:21
  this is something that I would want for my child as they grow
• 10:23
  up and as they're becoming more independent and moving out on
• 10:26
  their own. Is this the type of property or
• 10:28
  the trouble location or, you know, services around that
• 10:31
  property that I would want for him.
• 10:33
  So I think it's definitely influenced and helped me grow, I
• 10:36
  guess, as a as a mum, but as a as a leader and as a service
• 10:39
  provider as well. You know, looking at how, I
• 10:42
  guess how we show up, you know, with everyone that we work with
• 10:46
  and, and knowing that, you know, whether it is a parent that, you
• 10:50
  know, is having to put their child or guess, support their
• 10:52
  child into more independent living as they're growing up.
• 10:55
  That counselling part of actually working with the the
• 10:58
  parents on how to help them let go and cut the apron string a
• 11:02
  little bit. But also understanding from a
• 11:04
  parent's point of view how unbelievably difficult that that
• 11:07
  would be, but also knowing that they need that independence as
• 11:10
  much as their adult child does as well.
• 11:13
  So yeah, absolutely. Massive part of kind of who I am
• 11:16
  and what I do and why I show up the way that I do.
• 11:20
  I feel like there's a lot there to unpack because I like when it
• 11:23
  comes to being a provider and being a mum.
• 11:25
  Now you do look at things a little bit differently and am I
• 11:29
  OK to walk past this situation? Would I be OK to have my loved
• 11:33
  one in care? It does open that can of worms
• 11:36
  for you and I get does make you question what you're doing and
• 11:39
  how we're doing it. Absolutely.
• 11:40
  And it makes you question, you know, for us, I guess we're
• 11:43
  empowered being a housing provider, we work with a lot of
• 11:46
  care providers that are providing on site supports.
• 11:49
  And when I have family say, because a lot of the time I'm
• 11:51
  very honest about, you know, being a mum and having a child,
• 11:55
  you know, who has a disability as well.
• 11:58
  One of the first questions I get would, would you put your child
• 12:01
  in this house with this provider?
• 12:03
  And I think that that's probably, rather than having to
• 12:07
  have the difficult conversation around that, I just make sure
• 12:10
  that we're working with quality providers so that that question
• 12:12
  is always a yes. I would never want to go.
• 12:15
  I don't know. I'm not sure I would trust them.
• 12:18
  I think if I wouldn't trust them with my kid, then they're not
• 12:20
  going to be someone I would trust in our house.
• 12:22
  And as much as we have to obviously uphold choice and
• 12:25
  control and we want, you know, we want participants to choose
• 12:28
  their own seal, there's still that level of even pushing back
• 12:31
  sometimes on the participant to say, Are you sure about this
• 12:34
  provider? You know, 100% we'll, we'll go
• 12:36
  ahead with them. But if we have concerns, we'll
• 12:38
  voice those concerns very early on.
• 12:41
  How do you weed them out? Because I'll be honest, I'm I'm
• 12:45
  generally a friendly person, but sometimes I find it really
• 12:48
  difficult to weed out and pick who is who is all talk and who
• 12:54
  isn't. And there's so many providers to
• 12:56
  choose from. Do you have a method to wedding
• 12:58
  out people or you know providers that you believe are you deem is
• 13:03
  not the best choice for a person?
• 13:06
  Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things that we do, we have a
• 13:09
  bit of a bit of a filtering system anyway.
• 13:12
  And, and part of that is to push back on the provider to say
• 13:15
  here's our, you know, our kind of not really an application,
• 13:18
  but basically a process that we require you to go through that
• 13:21
  will show what your management team is like, what your backup
• 13:25
  if something, you know, obviously COVID helped us with
• 13:27
  this, but if everyone goes down on and needs to go off because
• 13:30
  of COVID, what's your backup plan?
• 13:32
  What's your own call system? Really wanting to make sure that
• 13:35
  we've got really good relationships, those providers.
• 13:37
  And I think luckily enough, us being a bit of a thorn in their
• 13:41
  side helps them move on very quickly anyway.
• 13:44
  And they, they will decide that they don't want the level of
• 13:47
  oversight that we actually kind of insist on because we're there
• 13:51
  to ensure that participants are safe and we want that
• 13:53
  transparency between housing and supports.
• 13:55
  And unless we're a pain in the ass, unfortunately, that is
• 13:59
  where abuse and neglect is still going to go to hide.
• 14:01
  So we're quite proud of being pains in the ass that are
• 14:04
  actually going to put that back on a provider to show what they
• 14:07
  what they're capable of and what they're actually going to do and
• 14:09
  how they're going to support people and, you know, uphold
• 14:12
  choice and control. And they, funnily enough, fall
• 14:16
  off pretty quickly if they're if they're not OK with that or they
• 14:18
  don't want that scrutiny. Paint somebody else or we just
• 14:21
  have a benchmark that we believe that should be met.
• 14:25
  I I don't know if you're a pain in the ass.
• 14:27
  I think you've just got expectations that have been met
• 14:29
  that a person requires. Like I don't, I don't see that
• 14:32
  as a pain in the ass. I think that we, we call it out
• 14:36
  like we're very good at calling ourselves out.
• 14:38
  So we know sometimes that we are, we are going to be painful
• 14:40
  for some providers because again, if you're not doing the
• 14:42
  right thing, we are going to be painful.
• 14:45
  So we're quite proud of our pain in the arse, you know, kind of
• 14:49
  system and. Is a pain in the ass or non
• 14:51
  negotiables because I I do believe that there are non
• 14:54
  negotiables that have to go with it.
• 14:56
  You can call it pain in the ass, but there is this non negotiable
• 14:59
  that you know what I expect XY and Z when supporting this
• 15:04
  person. And the reason why is because
• 15:06
  this is the expectation of quality care.
• 15:08
  I hear a lot of people call the word quality care, but I haven't
• 15:11
  like I'm I don't know if it is like it's an easy word to say 1
• 15:16
  to actually commit to and tick the box here.
• 15:18
  I don't know. Yeah.
• 15:21
  And I think it is. Yeah, I think it is a little bit
• 15:23
  of both. I think because of choice and
• 15:25
  control. Sometimes if people can talk a
• 15:28
  big game, they can talk families and participants into thinking
• 15:32
  that they are the best provider for them and they may be.
• 15:35
  And you know, we try and give everyone the benefit of the
• 15:37
  doubt. Someone who may have been a not
• 15:38
  good a provider for one person may be fantastic for another
• 15:41
  person. So you still want to make sure
• 15:43
  we're upholding that choice and control.
• 15:45
  It's just that we would put extra measures in place if we
• 15:49
  didn't have a good gut feel about a provider.
• 15:51
  And then it's usually then when they're not doing the right
• 15:54
  thing is that they feel like we're not the right provider to
• 15:57
  collaborate with and we're OK with that.
• 15:59
  So I'd say that that's probably, you know, where we kind of sit.
• 16:04
  You got to kiss a couple of frogs.
• 16:06
  That happens. Yeah.
• 16:07
  But do you think it's from the experience that you've gained?
• 16:11
  Because at one point you went from being a case manager to a
• 16:14
  director, and then you jumped into your own baby, your own
• 16:19
  business. Yeah.
• 16:21
  So that, you know, that first provider that I started working
• 16:25
  for with, with the family friend that actually I became the, you
• 16:28
  know, sort of moved through the ranks from kind of reception
• 16:30
  admin to, you know, rostering to then, you know, sort of care
• 16:34
  management and did support coordination and case
• 16:37
  management. And then that company was
• 16:38
  actually going under and myself and my business partner at the
• 16:42
  time decided to take over the business.
• 16:44
  I was only 27 or something at the time because I didn't as I
• 16:48
  was going kind of into administration.
• 16:49
  I, my biggest question was, well, what will happen to the
• 16:52
  participants? What will happen to the staff?
• 16:54
  And the administrator said that like just nothing.
• 16:56
  And I'm like, what do you mean nothing?
• 16:58
  Who's going to get them out of bed tomorrow morning?
• 17:00
  They're like, that's not our problem.
• 17:01
  And I said, we'll buy it right now, I don't care.
• 17:03
  And so we took it over. Absolutely.
• 17:05
  I was completely out of my depth, had no idea how to run a
• 17:07
  company, probably always learned how to bite off more than I can
• 17:11
  chew and then learn how to chew later.
• 17:13
  And that was definitely, definitely that.
• 17:15
  So that company became Wingate Care.
• 17:17
  So I've had Wingate for nearly 20 years now.
• 17:20
  And from that, I guess again, from my own mistakes, learning,
• 17:25
  you know, what staff want, what participants want, always seeing
• 17:30
  lots of people falling through the gaps.
• 17:31
  From a housing perspective, I very much questioned, you know,
• 17:35
  why were people getting put into really horrible, horrible
• 17:39
  hotels, motels, caravan parks, you know, hostels obviously age,
• 17:44
  you know, age care and, and hospital settings and just
• 17:47
  couldn't understand why there wasn't a better system.
• 17:49
  And I think from there, I think NDIS was just kicking off and I
• 17:54
  just had my little guy. So I spent a lot of nights
• 17:57
  breastfeeding and reading legislation that was kind of my
• 18:01
  3:00 AM fun mum introduction. And that's where, you know, SDA
• 18:06
  was just being introduced. So specialist disability
• 18:08
  accommodation was just rolling out and I kind of had a bit of
• 18:13
  an epiphany at the same time. So my sister, who had become the
• 18:17
  care manager of Wingate, actually suffered A spinal cord
• 18:20
  injury from a prolapsed disc and was being sort of paralysed, you
• 18:24
  know, in real time. And as she was being rolled into
• 18:28
  surgery, I kind of had this moment of what am I going to do?
• 18:32
  How do I help her? She just purchased her own home
• 18:35
  That was the most inaccessible little cottage that you could
• 18:38
  possibly, I think of. And I knew that if she was
• 18:41
  coming out in a wheelchair, there was no chance she was
• 18:43
  going home. Luckily, the surgery went well
• 18:45
  and she had to go to age care for her rehab.
• 18:48
  But I sort of had promised, I guess to myself or the universe
• 18:52
  or whoever you kind of believe in that I was going to do
• 18:55
  something about that, that young people, you know, she was just
• 18:57
  over 30, I think at the time. So young people shouldn't be
• 18:59
  going to age care for rehab or, you know, not being able to go
• 19:03
  home if that's where they they should be.
• 19:06
  And sort of did some research, spoke to a lot of Geelong people
• 19:08
  who I know had been quite prolific in kind of accessible
• 19:13
  housing. And that's when, yeah, as I
• 19:15
  said, that kind of burning the midnight candle and finding SGA
• 19:19
  was kind of, you know, I don't know, I think if when people
• 19:24
  used to choose to be nuns and they'd have that apparently
• 19:26
  divine thing happened was almost what I had.
• 19:30
  It could have been some new mom delirium.
• 19:32
  I think it was really. But yeah, I knew that that was
• 19:35
  kind of my calling. And I thought, this is where I
• 19:37
  need to actually, you know, head next.
• 19:41
  And then created this most random kind of little video
• 19:46
  PowerPoint presentation to send to a couple of friends who Goro,
• 19:50
  who had been like a property strategist who I'd been sort of
• 19:54
  talking about doing a kind of investment property with, and
• 19:58
  Joseph, who worked for him. Who was like a project manager
• 20:02
  of normal builds. And I sent it to them at 1:00 at
• 20:04
  night saying this is what I want to do.
• 20:06
  Can you guys help me? I want people with disabilities
• 20:08
  to own their own home. I've researched it.
• 20:11
  I've read every bit of legislation.
• 20:12
  It's just kicking off. No one else is really doing it
• 20:14
  yet. And then I think I met with them
• 20:18
  the next day. They were already in tears from
• 20:21
  the video that I sent them and just they were they were on they
• 20:25
  were on board. And I thought it was going to be
• 20:27
  this little side, you know, side thing to Wingate where I'd do
• 20:31
  one house, they would do the housing, I'd do the supports and
• 20:34
  that would be it. And then the next thing I knew,
• 20:37
  again, a bit of mum delirium, next thing I knew, we had 25
• 20:40
  houses being being built, that we'd somehow got invested.
• 20:44
  No, it was, yeah, it was a bit, it was crazy.
• 20:46
  It was crazy. I knew I was pervasive, but I
• 20:49
  didn't know I was quite that persuasive.
• 20:51
  But yeah, like somehow we had to fill 25 houses in one go.
• 20:55
  But again, the, the luck of the draw was that no one else was
• 20:58
  doing it. So it was a little bit easier
• 21:00
  back then, you know, nine years ago to, you know, to fill houses
• 21:04
  to work directly. You know, we work directly with
• 21:06
  Jen Yu and Jelly Brown. We're our first two kind of
• 21:09
  providers. You know, they were going to
• 21:12
  take 10 houses each. And we're all working together
• 21:14
  to try and fill them. And they helped with the designs
• 21:16
  and that sort of stuff. And somehow those houses are
• 21:19
  still kicking around, still stacking up, still probably
• 21:22
  bigger than half the housing being built now, but we're a
• 21:25
  little bit more old school with the massive bathroom for two
• 21:28
  people to shower someone in a shower bed compared to kind of
• 21:31
  the ensuite since that we we have now.
• 21:33
  But yeah, it was a wild, very, very wild ride.
• 21:37
  Those first 25 houses that I thought was just going to be 1
• 21:39
  little side one from Wingate doing some so you know.
• 21:45
  What I think I just nailed on the head, I haven't met a
• 21:48
  founder yet that wasn't a little bit delusional.
• 21:52
  Yeah, I was delusional and delirious.
• 21:53
  So, you know, you combine the two and yeah, from a.
• 21:57
  Crazy idea that it expands itself like it's only from like
• 22:01
  these, these pivotal moments like like you said, you know,
• 22:04
  1:00 AM in the morning that you can build and create an idea
• 22:07
  because it annoyed you enough that you knew that you had to do
• 22:10
  something. It's like a call.
• 22:13
  Yeah, Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
• 22:17
  Yeah. A little bit of delirium, a
• 22:19
  little bit of crazy and somehow we have built a business from
• 22:23
  that. I feel like every founder that
• 22:25
  I've spoken to has said the same thing.
• 22:27
  So you were not alone. Just I think we all just put our
• 22:30
  hands up and say, yeah, I did that.
• 22:31
  That was I owing that. But it it does.
• 22:34
  I feel like the point of your story when you were talking
• 22:37
  about your sister wondering, you know, what will happen next and
• 22:40
  that element of like, right, there's a problem.
• 22:45
  There is a calling I need to serve.
• 22:46
  I could do it. Well, nobody else is going to do
• 22:48
  it. So I'm it, let's go.
• 22:49
  I don't see this as some sort of like money, profit spinning
• 22:53
  machine. That was a real duty to serve,
• 22:55
  to make sure that people did have a home to live in.
• 22:59
  Because when you built these houses, you're building houses,
• 23:02
  but you're really creating a home environment for an
• 23:04
  individual to live there, not for now, but for decades to go.
• 23:08
  Like that's something quite special in ourselves.
• 23:11
  Yeah, for sure. I think that, you know, that
• 23:13
  upbringing of, of always being told if it's meant to be, it's
• 23:16
  up to me. I think I've always just, no
• 23:18
  matter what I do, I've always taken that on board.
• 23:21
  You know, I'm not sort of one that sits back and doesn't sort
• 23:24
  of roll up my sleeve and have a crack at pretty much everything.
• 23:27
  I think that very much was, I saw that.
• 23:30
  I guess I saw the problem and thought I can't see anybody else
• 23:34
  really doing anything about it. I think, I think young care and
• 23:38
  summer foundation had just kind of started kicking off as well
• 23:41
  and they were very much sort of doing apartments and and I sort
• 23:44
  of felt that that wasn't really our niche.
• 23:47
  And we went down that, you know, that very first, you know, one
• 23:50
  to three ratio because the participants that I actually had
• 23:53
  that needed housing at the time very much needed that one to
• 23:56
  three ratio. They weren't, there was super,
• 23:59
  super high medical needs and they were not able to live at
• 24:03
  apartment or anything like that. And their families all really
• 24:06
  wanted a family environment and they wanted it to feel like a
• 24:09
  family environment. And they still do.
• 24:11
  You know, that very first participant who we talk about
• 24:15
  quite a bit in our kind of, I guess our origin story or
• 24:17
  whatever you would want to call it.
• 24:19
  Eddie had been in in an aged care sort of hospital setting
• 24:22
  for a long time and he was quite young.
• 24:24
  I think he wasn't even 30 and his family really wanted a
• 24:28
  family environment in his community where he grew up right
• 24:32
  in the middle smack bang of his two sisters and his parents.
• 24:35
  And they still to this day are around there every week.
• 24:39
  They've having games nights with him.
• 24:41
  They very much, you know, built a family environment for that
• 24:44
  house and for the participants in that house to have
• 24:46
  Christmases together, you know, to have Easters together.
• 24:50
  It's just, you know, it's been something that I think again,
• 24:54
  that's still the old house. It's still the same house that
• 24:56
  he's in. He's the first participant that
• 24:58
  moved in. And I think for me, that's
• 25:02
  probably one of the biggest, I guess, success stories to know
• 25:06
  that that family were able to have their son back home.
• 25:08
  They weren't travelling every single day to visit him.
• 25:11
  He's 5 minutes away from all of them now and they're able to
• 25:14
  keep that family environment for him, which is what they really
• 25:16
  wanted. Sorry, probably think a lot of
• 25:20
  people want to cry because you really like we had an
• 25:22
  opportunity to develop a whole life approach.
• 25:25
  It wasn't just a house approach. It is a whole life approach
• 25:28
  because you've got family nearby, it's accessible, you're
• 25:31
  in a community that you lived in and you can continue to live.
• 25:34
  And that's quite a special story about Eddie.
• 25:37
  Yeah, absolutely. I think Ed, you know, I still
• 25:39
  get goosebumps when I think about when we first saw Wingate
• 25:43
  had actually started working with Eddie prior to us sort of
• 25:46
  starting empowered livability. So we were sending staff to
• 25:50
  staff I think every day into the aged care setting to work with
• 25:52
  him because he was so medically high needs.
• 25:55
  And I think just that if I guess that kind of affinity with the
• 25:59
  family and I'd sort of told them, I think this is what I
• 26:01
  want to do housing wise. And they said, look, we're in,
• 26:04
  if you find something that's in our community, you know, we will
• 26:07
  move Eddie to that, that place. And true, you know, true to
• 26:10
  their word, they, they were able to choose the seal provider that
• 26:12
  they wanted. And I think they've, you know,
• 26:14
  in that sort of couple of years, I think it's been there eight
• 26:17
  years or something now 7 or 8 years, but they've probably
• 26:19
  chosen 3 or 4 different seal providers over that period of
• 26:22
  time. You know, that big bathroom that
• 26:24
  now everyone would complain about in reality in the new
• 26:27
  market is perfect for him because he's showered, you know,
• 26:30
  in a shower bed and, you know, he needs that level of support.
• 26:33
  But I think that family probably pushed me along to make that a
• 26:37
  reality just as much as, you know, my sister's kind of spinal
• 26:40
  cord injury. And I think the two of them kind
• 26:42
  of really go hand in hand, the reason why I kind of really
• 26:45
  stepped into that housing kind of space and why that's become
• 26:50
  my absolute passion now over kind of everything else.
• 26:53
  So. With this, the people that you
• 26:56
  serve like your sister and Eddie in particular, it means that you
• 26:59
  would have had some really big challenging moves to make as a
• 27:03
  leader without breaking any confidentiality whatsoever.
• 27:08
  What was the biggest challenge for you?
• 27:10
  I think the biggest thing that I realized very quickly that
• 27:14
  Empowered was not going to be this little side thing that I
• 27:17
  thought it was going to be with, you know, one house and
• 27:20
  providing supports even that at the time was probably just going
• 27:23
  to be a big challenge anyway. Like going from direct sort of
• 27:26
  community access, home care into kind of what would have been a
• 27:30
  seal space, you know, back then, like very early SEAL space, that
• 27:34
  would have been a big enough challenge anyway.
• 27:36
  But to realize very quickly that that was not going to be the
• 27:39
  case and that this was going to be far bigger than anything I've
• 27:43
  ever done before. The hardest part was actually
• 27:46
  letting go of Wingate and my leadership there and being able
• 27:50
  to trust kind of the team that I'd built to take that on and
• 27:53
  keep keep that going and and still continue.
• 27:57
  Maybe not to grow as as vastly as we had in those those years
• 28:00
  before, but to keep maintaining while I thought I was just going
• 28:03
  to be, you know, over over here doing this other little thing
• 28:06
  and I'd be back. And I think that was probably
• 28:08
  the the hardest thing. And I think that though has then
• 28:12
  probably prepared me, you know, 8-9 years later to then be able
• 28:16
  to look at Empowered in the same light and look at the team.
• 28:19
  You know, we've grown from the three of us, myself, Goro and
• 28:22
  Joe, you know, building that company with no money, no
• 28:25
  clients, no houses, nothing. Completely bootstrapping that,
• 28:31
  putting our own kind of funds into, you know, to kick it off
• 28:36
  to then building to now a team of 16 about being able to kind
• 28:39
  of move other people into leadership roles to free me up
• 28:43
  to then look at you look at the bigger picture again and look at
• 28:45
  where, you know, our next phase potentially will be.
• 28:49
  And I think, yeah, that's probably the the biggest thing
• 28:51
  is being able to trust in the team and just say, OK, I'm
• 28:53
  throwing you guys in the deep end.
• 28:55
  I'm still here with the life raft on the side.
• 28:57
  But you guys are going to sink or swim.
• 28:59
  And seeing people who you've worked with developed, you know,
• 29:03
  kind of hopefully nurtured into that leadership role.
• 29:06
  Absolutely not just swim, but do backstroke and synchronize
• 29:10
  swimming. It's just like mind blowing in
• 29:12
  itself. But yeah, that's probably been
• 29:14
  the hardest thing is just to to let go as a leader and not be so
• 29:19
  operational, but moving really more into that leadership kind
• 29:22
  of space. How do you get Because it's your
• 29:26
  baby. This is your company, your baby.
• 29:27
  How do you get the your employees to love your business
• 29:31
  the way that you love it? I think it's some of its luck,
• 29:33
  but I think it's good hiring decisions as well and sometimes
• 29:37
  hiring people who I have just had probably such alignment with
• 29:42
  and they maybe didn't have the skills yet and just needed, you
• 29:44
  know, some upskilling and nurturing.
• 29:47
  But really looking at that culture, we've got a really
• 29:50
  amazing culture at Empowered. And it's probably something I
• 29:52
  never got to build at Wingate because everyone's so out on the
• 29:57
  floor, you know, working in different houses, they really
• 30:00
  see each other, let alone, you know, see us as a as a
• 30:02
  management team. So having that opportunity to
• 30:06
  build a culture that we're really, really proud of, like I
• 30:10
  mentioned before, they're almost with most of the team isn't much
• 30:13
  difference between house and work.
• 30:15
  Like there's literally everyone brings their stuff, you know,
• 30:18
  everyone wears their heart on their sleeve.
• 30:20
  Everyone knows when something's going on with someone and we
• 30:22
  back each other up and we support each other.
• 30:25
  That's really, really hard to build in a team.
• 30:27
  And it's taken a long, long time.
• 30:29
  And there's been, you know, people that have worked with us
• 30:31
  along the way that haven't necessarily had that same, I
• 30:34
  wouldn't say the same mindset, but I'd say they haven't had
• 30:37
  that 100% buy in. Whereas I think, you know, we've
• 30:41
  got people who have only been with us for a year or two that
• 30:44
  are so hardly bought in that it's almost a little bit, maybe
• 30:49
  it's a little bit sort of cult like in some weird way, but not,
• 30:53
  you know, not in a bad way. But they are so on board and
• 30:56
  love what they do and are really passionate about what they do
• 30:59
  and believe in what we're trying to do and, and believe in that
• 31:02
  we're trying to, even when we stuff up that we're always
• 31:04
  trying to improve and we're always kind of owning it and
• 31:06
  putting our hands up and going shit, we stuff that up.
• 31:08
  Let's do better. How do we fix this?
• 31:11
  I think that that's something that's really, really special,
• 31:13
  but really, really hard to build. 100% And then how do you,
• 31:20
  so there's an element that you do have to keep business because
• 31:23
  we need to keep things in line to make it operational and keep
• 31:27
  running and running and running smoothly.
• 31:29
  But then you've got the element of having here for the people
• 31:33
  that we serve, how do you balance the two to make sure
• 31:36
  that one never overshadows the other or in like, I don't know,
• 31:40
  I'm old school. So I kind of feel like maybe,
• 31:42
  you know, care year and the balance.
• 31:45
  You do you. You tell me which one.
• 31:49
  Yeah, yeah. I don't think I've ever truly
• 31:52
  found a really perfect balance. I think again, I learnt very,
• 31:56
  very early, and this again could have been from working in
• 31:59
  accounting and law firms where this was not even thought of, I
• 32:03
  don't think. But if you look after your
• 32:04
  people, they will look after their people.
• 32:07
  And I think that's probably something that we've done, I
• 32:10
  hope really well is that we look after our team and that again
• 32:15
  gives them that buy in and that passion and that loyalty.
• 32:19
  They, like our staff, are like acrobats, the way that they bend
• 32:22
  over backwards for their participants.
• 32:24
  And it's not even just the participants, it's the
• 32:25
  participants families, it's the SEAL providers, it's the support
• 32:29
  coordinators, the OTS, you know, the community access teams, like
• 32:33
  every participant almost has about 10 people around them that
• 32:36
  you need to build a relationship with.
• 32:39
  And I think that because we build such good relationships
• 32:42
  with our team, it's just that overflow of them then going out
• 32:46
  and building amazing relationships with everyone that
• 32:48
  they work with. So I think that's probably been
• 32:50
  the balance. And I think going from being
• 32:53
  someone who I was that person, so I was always the person who
• 32:57
  was building those relationships with those participants and
• 33:00
  their families and everybody around them, their care teams.
• 33:03
  And that's probably how we built, that's how I built Wing
• 33:06
  Gate. And it's how I initially built
• 33:08
  Empowered. But being able to, again, slowly
• 33:12
  hand those off to other people who I trust, again, meant that I
• 33:15
  had to have people around me that I really trusted each
• 33:18
  participant with. And now those people probably
• 33:20
  just like, how's Nicole going? But they're so like before they
• 33:24
  were like, I don't want to speak to anybody else.
• 33:26
  I just, I trust Nicole and I know what she has done, you
• 33:29
  know, to make this work. Now they're I'm almost which is
• 33:33
  great. Again, you want to be someone
• 33:34
  who's able to be replaced and to be able to replace yourself.
• 33:37
  But it is hard, like it is hard to let go and ensure that the
• 33:41
  people that you're entrusting your participants to that you
• 33:44
  trust 100% so that then the participants trust them 100%.
• 33:48
  And I think that's all. That's probably the only balance
• 33:51
  I've been able to get right. I don't, I don't think I'd do
• 33:53
  anything else very well from a balance perspective.
• 33:55
  I certainly don't do self-care very well, but it is something I
• 33:59
  kind of harp on about more to the team and I have tried to be
• 34:03
  better with in recent times because again, if I'm not going
• 34:05
  to walk the walk with self-care, then they're not going to
• 34:08
  either. So I think that that's something
• 34:10
  that I have very much as I get older, that wisdom starting to
• 34:14
  kick in at the same time as the body is starting to kick out.
• 34:17
  So I think that's been pretty lucky.
• 34:19
  We did some shady stuff 20 years ago when they came to personal
• 34:23
  care. There was there's no role Matt
• 34:26
  stuff. Fucking why do Yeah.
• 34:33
  But our bodies are more failing. Yeah.
• 34:36
  Well, we don't have the technology that we have now that
• 34:39
  makes it so much easier to support somebody.
• 34:41
  So it, you know, I get it now. As you're in this phase of, you
• 34:46
  know, you're slowly handing over the keys at points.
• 34:50
  Did you have like, do you take mentorship that you give to your
• 34:54
  staff members? Is that something that you do or
• 34:57
  is that something that just comes naturally?
• 34:58
  Or do you mentor other people outside of your business?
• 35:03
  Yeah, I probably do more mentoring almost outside of the
• 35:05
  business, probably to more younger people getting into sort
• 35:10
  of that SEAL space or support coordination space.
• 35:12
  I've done a bit of business coaching and stuff over the
• 35:14
  years as well. But again, as Empowered's got
• 35:16
  bigger, that's sort of almost become a bit impossible.
• 35:19
  So I do, you know, I do try to spend that time mentoring where
• 35:25
  I can, but I think the difference over the last few
• 35:28
  years is where originally I was hiring people that needed that
• 35:31
  mentorship, that needed my kind of holding hand in that early
• 35:35
  stages. And again, as you grow and as
• 35:39
  you get better, you start realizing that you're going to
• 35:42
  have to try and build a business that brings on people that, you
• 35:46
  know, has that talent acquisition that are ready to go
• 35:49
  and ready to hit the ground running.
• 35:51
  So my mentorship, I hope is more probably lead by example now
• 35:55
  rather than, you know, sort of that one to one.
• 35:57
  And it's more that I've, I've got team around me that now
• 36:00
  being mentors to the rest of the team, which I think has worked
• 36:04
  really well for us. But yeah, I, I hope, you know,
• 36:09
  I'm kind of always there if anyone has a question or if
• 36:11
  anyone, you know, has a curly thing happening with a
• 36:14
  participant wherever they work, whether it's another SDA
• 36:17
  provider or any other provider, I hope that they would always
• 36:20
  feel like they could reach out. I've always tried to be someone
• 36:23
  that can help where I can. So, yeah, but I would love to
• 36:27
  kind of be freed up more to do a lot more of that mentoring,
• 36:30
  definitely. You said something quite
• 36:32
  interesting that you have been able to hire people with
• 36:36
  different skill sets that come with different talents, so it
• 36:39
  made it quite easy. This sector is really hard to
• 36:42
  hire people to be honest with you, because there's not that
• 36:45
  many people that have got the skill sets that you need.
• 36:48
  How do you source out these amazing people to hire?
• 36:52
  Where are you finding them? Because I'm sure a lot of
• 36:54
  providers out there would like to know.
• 36:56
  Definitely. I think early on, you know, when
• 36:59
  we first started looking for tenancy managers in this space
• 37:02
  with disability experience and housing experience, they didn't
• 37:05
  really exist because nobody had really, I guess in this space
• 37:10
  had actually had to deal with more from a real estate point of
• 37:13
  view than a than a care provision point of view.
• 37:16
  And we really wanted to be, I guess, a provider who always was
• 37:20
  a disability provider who happened to have to do real
• 37:23
  estate rather than, you know, a lot of other providers have come
• 37:26
  from that real estate or development background trying to
• 37:29
  do disability. And so I think, you know, the
• 37:30
  first lot of our staff and, and a lot of them are still around.
• 37:33
  They've come from either working with Wingate as support workers
• 37:37
  and eventually, you know, moving up sort of team leaders type
• 37:41
  people that have then come over to empowered and, and stayed and
• 37:46
  nurtured and built their skill set from there.
• 37:48
  But I would say, and I've never experienced this before until
• 37:52
  probably the last couple of years, it was always us trying
• 37:55
  to find people and trying to get the right people.
• 37:58
  We've almost tipped into a bit of a provider of choice when it
• 38:01
  comes to employment. So we have now a lot more people
• 38:04
  coming to us and saying we love your culture, we love what you
• 38:08
  do, we love your passion, we love that you guys wear your
• 38:11
  heart on your sleeve. We want to work with you.
• 38:14
  Do you have anything coming up? So the last couple of hires have
• 38:18
  been a little bit more on that side, which is which has been
• 38:23
  amazing. You know, some of our team I've
• 38:24
  known for 20 odd years because I've worked with them and kept
• 38:27
  in touch with them wherever they worked and other people have
• 38:30
  come on board that we had no prior experience with.
• 38:35
  We just got a really great vibe from them and you know, they've,
• 38:38
  they've come to fill probably more roles that we haven't.
• 38:44
  We've come from a very disability grassroots background
• 38:47
  as a, as a organization and having to, you know, have more
• 38:52
  very polished financial people and, and marketing.
• 38:55
  And you know, that business acumen has been something
• 38:58
  different to me. And I've still wanted people who
• 39:01
  either have lived experience of disability, have a disability
• 39:04
  themselves, or very much have worked in the sector for a long
• 39:07
  period of time. Because everything we do,
• 39:10
  whether it's finance, whether it's maintenance, whatever it
• 39:12
  is, has to have that disability lens first.
• 39:15
  So that's been something that's been really important to our
• 39:17
  entire team is to make sure that people understand it from that
• 39:21
  side. Can you give me an example of
• 39:24
  somebody giving you a like an employee that would like to work
• 39:27
  for you, giving you a good vibe and a bad vibe?
• 39:31
  Yeah, I think we've probably seen it over the years.
• 39:34
  I think people that are a bit too presumptuous or too cocky
• 39:38
  and just assumed that they were going to fit into our team and
• 39:42
  never made any kind of effort to even before like and and never
• 39:45
  got through the door anyway. So I think there's been that
• 39:48
  kind of vibe and then there's just been people who straight
• 39:51
  away of coming in, they either have a disability or have kids
• 39:53
  with disabilities or family members with disabilities who
• 39:57
  just get what we're about and, and straight away are so
• 40:00
  passionate that you, you know, you see them.
• 40:02
  Most people would see them. They probably think we're
• 40:03
  weirdos because we're all sharing our stuff over every
• 40:06
  social media because everyone just is really passionate about
• 40:10
  what we do and we don't we're quite unapologetic about it.
• 40:13
  Like, we don't kind of care what other people are saying about us
• 40:17
  or, you know, any of that stuff doesn't really faze.
• 40:22
  Most of our team, it's just like, no, we are, we are what we
• 40:24
  are. We do what we do, we love what
• 40:26
  we do and we love each other and we'll support each other and we
• 40:29
  don't care how weird we look doing it.
• 40:31
  So yeah, I think it's just that kind of those people just tend
• 40:35
  to vibe with the rest of us and just fit in completely
• 40:38
  seamlessly. So this to be able to hire
• 40:42
  somebody and you know, to build a team, it does take a couple of
• 40:45
  stuff UPS. It does, it does take some real
• 40:48
  learning curves. Did you have to get a mentor
• 40:51
  yourself or a business coach yourself to be able to build
• 40:55
  these skill sets, to be able to grow your team?
• 40:58
  Yeah, definitely. I've had some amazing business
• 41:00
  coaches over the years and and done some amazing sort of
• 41:03
  business course coaches. I'm sorry, business coaching
• 41:07
  courses, a lot of them have been quite female leader based for
• 41:11
  me. I feel the disability sector,
• 41:14
  there's so many direct care support workers and you know,
• 41:19
  probably was support coordinators I would say, and
• 41:22
  OTS that were very feminine based, but leadership roles were
• 41:25
  very masculine based. We're starting to see a little
• 41:28
  bit of a shift in that. But I still see a lot of, it's
• 41:31
  hard to say without being politically uncorrect, but
• 41:33
  there's a lot of people who have not done a thing in this space
• 41:36
  that have just waltzed in and become support coordinators
• 41:40
  without any real background. And I feel a lot of that is the
• 41:46
  males in the space. Whereas the females in the space
• 41:48
  of being the people who have done the hard yards for 20 years
• 41:52
  and then decided, oh, maybe I've got the skills to be a support
• 41:54
  coordinator or maybe I've got the skills to be a team leader.
• 41:58
  There's no, I think there's a lot of impostor syndrome with
• 42:01
  females. And that's amazing that males
• 42:04
  are a little bit more confident in, in that kind of sense, which
• 42:07
  is great for them. And again, that's me just
• 42:10
  completely, you know, being stereotypical and PC, but this
• 42:14
  is purely just anecdotal of what I actually see.
• 42:18
  And then I see a lot of the CEOCFOS and the Cos are all are
• 42:22
  all male and a lot of them have been in the sector for under 3-4
• 42:26
  years. And then I see, you know, women
• 42:28
  such as, you know, Belinda from including you or you know,
• 42:32
  there's so many others who have been in the sector for so long.
• 42:35
  And unless we run our own businesses, we're not even
• 42:37
  thought of really as leaders. So a lot of that coaching for me
• 42:41
  has been around how to also build amazing female leaders
• 42:45
  around me. Our CEO and our CEO are both
• 42:48
  females and both incredible strong, you know, empathetic
• 42:51
  women. And they weren't, you know, they
• 42:54
  weren't put in those positions because they were females.
• 42:56
  They were put in their positions because they were absolutely the
• 42:58
  right people for those, those roles.
• 43:01
  But I, yeah, most of the coaching I've done has been
• 43:03
  around how to step into my own, I guess, confidence around what
• 43:07
  I've done and, and my lived experience.
• 43:10
  And, you know, I don't have necessarily lived experience of
• 43:13
  disability. I have what I call loved
• 43:15
  experience of disability with my son and with other family men,
• 43:18
  you know, family members. I call that kind of more from a
• 43:20
  carers perspective, loved experience.
• 43:23
  My lived experience has been more around mental health and
• 43:26
  drug and alcohol and trauma. That's that's very much my lived
• 43:29
  experience. But yeah, I think there are so
• 43:33
  many people in the space that have that real lived experience,
• 43:36
  male or female or or other I'll say that have lived experience,
• 43:41
  but have those leadership qualities that we a little bit
• 43:43
  of mentoring, a little bit of coaching, a little bit of extra
• 43:46
  qualifications and experience could absolutely step up to be
• 43:50
  amazing CEO's, CFO's, you know, OPS, managers, whatever what it
• 43:55
  is. I agree with you 100%.
• 43:59
  And the reason why is that if I go back to the very beginning of
• 44:02
  my career and I remember doing some training and all the
• 44:06
  support workers around me were female.
• 44:08
  So I was like, Oh yeah, cool. Like, you know, rows and rows of
• 44:11
  female support workers surrounding me and the people on
• 44:14
  stage were all male. And I remember seeing their 19
• 44:18
  year olds. They were going, what the fuck?
• 44:20
  You know, how is it that I've got all these confident women
• 44:24
  around me and they're not, they're not running the
• 44:26
  training. Like, why?
• 44:28
  Like it doesn't, it doesn't add up.
• 44:30
  Like it doesn't make any sense because you would have thought
• 44:32
  if this is a numbers game, at least one or two of you should
• 44:36
  be up there sitting amongst it doing the training or, you know,
• 44:39
  presenting the training because you know this sector so well,
• 44:43
  you've been here long enough. You're quite intelligent and
• 44:45
  smart. Like, I always found that
• 44:47
  fascinating. And I remember being like 19
• 44:50
  year old Sarah going, what the fuck?
• 44:52
  Yeah, but. Yeah.
• 44:53
  And I don't think it's an inherently male or female issue.
• 44:57
  Like I don't think it's, you know, males getting more
• 44:59
  opportunity or females getting less.
• 45:00
  I think a lot of it from what I see, again, this is purely just
• 45:04
  from my own personal perspective.
• 45:06
  I just see a lot of women who don't have the confidence have
• 45:10
  that imposter syndrome of I possibly couldn't know enough
• 45:13
  when they are so knowledgeable and so experienced and so
• 45:18
  incredible. And as leaders, you know, often
• 45:22
  so their empathy and, you know, unconditional positive regard is
• 45:25
  just natural in a lot of people. So I don't and I think there's
• 45:29
  still that old school mentality of unless women are over
• 45:33
  childbearing years that they're just not, they're not getting
• 45:36
  those opportunities in those leadership because that's
• 45:38
  assumed that they'll all they're going to stop and go have kids
• 45:40
  anyway. And then they'll just have to
• 45:41
  come back lower again or whatever the case is.
• 45:44
  And, you know, I'm sure these conversations I've had with
• 45:47
  many, you know, many women in the space around how they think
• 45:51
  they've been looked over sometimes.
• 45:53
  And sometimes they haven't actually been looked over.
• 45:55
  They just haven't even put themselves forward at all, which
• 45:58
  I think is a huge shame. So I think, you know, that
• 46:00
  imposter syndrome stuff needs to get in the bin to really, you
• 46:05
  know, have that confidence. It is that, but then there's
• 46:09
  that element of difficult woman. I don't know if you've ever
• 46:12
  heard the term that, you know, I myself have been at times
• 46:17
  labeled difficult when expressing advocating for
• 46:20
  somebody else that, you know, are just being difficult when
• 46:24
  really I'm just, you know, it's black and white.
• 46:26
  This what? This doesn't sit right.
• 46:28
  Yeah, absolutely. I 100%, probably many, many
• 46:32
  times too emotional as a leader show.
• 46:35
  I'll cry in a team meeting if I'm getting emotional about
• 46:39
  something and that's embarrassing sometimes and some
• 46:42
  people can't handle that. But I would say at the same
• 46:46
  time, it's probably one of my better qualities as a leader is
• 46:48
  that I can show those emotions and I can open the door for our
• 46:51
  team. Motion in the moment is probably
• 46:53
  one of my better qualities as a leader.
• 46:55
  And I see a lot of that from, you know, whatever the case is.
• 46:58
  But I think it shouldn't be about the sex or the gender of
• 47:02
  somebody and or it shouldn't just be about let's tick all the
• 47:05
  boxes on quotas and, and things like that.
• 47:08
  I think emotional intelligence and being able to be open with
• 47:11
  that side of yourself and open with your team is what makes a
• 47:14
  great leader. Yes, 100%, because it means that
• 47:17
  you're human. Yeah, exactly.
• 47:20
  Yeah, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
• 47:25
  So now, you know, I'm snoopy. I am.
• 47:29
  I am nosy as fuck. And I will admit that, like I
• 47:32
  think I've said that at every podcast, Sarah is nosy as fuck.
• 47:35
  So I'll continue that and say Sarah is nosy as fuck.
• 47:38
  And I was watching one of the videos of the houses that you
• 47:42
  are about to open and it got me questioning what makes a good
• 47:47
  house so important for the people that we serve?
• 47:49
  Look, I think for us, and it's something that we've kind of
• 47:51
  hung our head on as a team is we know that most people who are
• 47:55
  moving into whether it's specialist disability
• 47:58
  accommodation or straight seal or, you know, other types of
• 48:02
  disability housing, a lot of the time they don't just have 1015
• 48:06
  grand sitting around to spend on fridges and washing machines and
• 48:12
  dryers and microwaves and kettles and toasters and, and
• 48:15
  that sort of thing. Very early on, we, we ensured
• 48:18
  that every one of our houses had all of those white goods put in.
• 48:22
  That's, that's extended now where we furnish all of them,
• 48:25
  you know, all of the main living areas, but it's very participant
• 48:29
  LED as well. Unless we, unless we know no
• 48:31
  one's scheduled to move in yet and we're going to furnish a
• 48:33
  whole house to make it look pretty.
• 48:35
  And you know, there's not a lot of consultation because there's
• 48:37
  no participants necessarily chosen yet.
• 48:41
  If participants are chosen, then we work with them to see what do
• 48:43
  you want to bring of your own stuff?
• 48:45
  Is there any gaps in what you have?
• 48:46
  Are you good with your fan? It just, you know, your bedroom
• 48:48
  because we can add a few little bits and pieces.
• 48:50
  If you don't have things, have you got your recliner that you
• 48:53
  want to put in the lounge? What you know, whatever the case
• 48:55
  is, we kind of work around that. But I think for us, and I was
• 48:59
  literally just saying this the other day, we had a house that I
• 49:02
  just did not care for. There was nothing special about
• 49:04
  it. There was just, it was a very
• 49:06
  bland kind of house. It was in an average area and
• 49:09
  for whatever reason, I just couldn't work out in my head how
• 49:12
  we were going to make this house feel like a home.
• 49:15
  And the amount of and, and a lot of it is generally me kind of
• 49:20
  saying, how would I turn this house into a home?
• 49:23
  What would I be comfortable living in?
• 49:25
  What would my, you know, family be comfortable living in?
• 49:29
  And we've kind of, we've explored over the years and
• 49:31
  we've done it here and there of using other people's furniture
• 49:33
  packs and they just go in and do everything for you.
• 49:36
  But it still feels clinical. It doesn't feel like there's a
• 49:39
  lot of thought behind actually turning a house into a home.
• 49:43
  So I think for us, that is that first step of doing everything
• 49:47
  we can. And literally, you know, this is
• 49:49
  literally last week, our Geelong tenancy manager Tanya was
• 49:53
  literally mowing the front nature strip and waiting because
• 49:56
  she wanted to make sure if anyone looks through the house
• 49:58
  and felt homely straight away, you know, I had my dad with me
• 50:02
  and you know, our maintenance guy Jayden, they were moving
• 50:05
  furniture around for me, you know, putting things up on the
• 50:08
  wall. And like, it's a real community
• 50:12
  around us that wants to get in and make these like, you know,
• 50:14
  my dad's proudest punch that we've done this and that we've
• 50:17
  built empowered. And, you know, he, he puts his
• 50:20
  hand up to go, I'll put furniture together or I'll, you
• 50:22
  know, do this and that or I'll go out and help here and there.
• 50:25
  Like, you know, we've been out and it was literally my mum, dad
• 50:27
  and my husband and I, we had some participants moving in a
• 50:31
  robust house and we went out and double pailed all of the
• 50:34
  fencing, you know, just to make sure that the guys that were
• 50:37
  moving in couldn't jump the fence and, and get out and be
• 50:40
  unsafe because the builders hadn't even thought, like, you
• 50:42
  know, it wasn't even thought of on their end at all are on the
• 50:45
  inside. So I think it's the community
• 50:47
  around us that helps us turn each and every one of our houses
• 50:51
  into a home. And I think from there, the
• 50:53
  extension is then the SEAL team or whoever is going to be
• 50:56
  providing support on that site, which for us, the participants
• 50:59
  always choose, but the first participant always chooses the
• 51:02
  SEAL provider. So yeah, for us it's that
• 51:03
  finishing and just doing everything we can within our
• 51:06
  power to turn that house into a home is probably our motto.
• 51:10
  So when a seal provider enters into someone's home, it really
• 51:15
  is on them as well to work on the house's personality, to make
• 51:20
  it feel like a hoax. Because you can do all that
• 51:22
  stuff perfect, top notch, tick all the boxes.
• 51:25
  But the way that a person opens their front door and how they
• 51:29
  feel when they see their support worker, that really is on that
• 51:32
  seal provider. 100% And you know, something I've been
• 51:36
  talking about for probably at least six months now is that I
• 51:39
  see a lot of the advertising from sale providers where
• 51:42
  they're literally just advertising a house.
• 51:44
  They're showing a floor plan, they're showing the bricks and
• 51:46
  mortar with, you know, whether it's furnished or it's not
• 51:48
  furnished. They're not showing the supports
• 51:51
  that they're actually going to provide in that home.
• 51:54
  And that I think is where participants are being almost, I
• 51:59
  wouldn't say misled. I think that if they're
• 52:01
  undereducated with how Housing Works, they're seeing a care
• 52:06
  provider, advertiser house and just assume everything's going
• 52:09
  through that care provider. They're not seeing technically
• 52:12
  it should be the SDA provider that's doing the advertising of
• 52:14
  the house. And I think it's actually doing
• 52:17
  most of those still providers A disservice to their own, their
• 52:20
  own sort of service delivery because people want to see what
• 52:23
  you're doing. They want to see you cooking
• 52:24
  with participants. They want to see you getting out
• 52:26
  and about. You know, there's some
• 52:28
  incredible providers and they're just not showing or showcasing
• 52:32
  the work that they actually do. They're not showing the the
• 52:35
  staff that are actually going to work in those homes.
• 52:38
  They're not showing, you know, staff out fishing or, you know,
• 52:41
  taking someone out for dinner or whatever the case is.
• 52:44
  Then there isn't a lot of that anymore.
• 52:46
  And that used to very much be what seal providers always
• 52:50
  advertise. It was always about the care
• 52:52
  provision. And I think the one thing that
• 52:54
  they're advertising is the one thing that's almost a dime a
• 52:57
  dozen. Most of the houses are pretty
• 52:58
  similar. There's nothing massively
• 53:00
  special. Sometimes you'll get a random
• 53:02
  incredible house and sometimes you'll get some really average
• 53:05
  crappy little dog boxes, I would call them.
• 53:08
  But the 90% of them are all in that same kind of range of
• 53:12
  similar sizes, similar land, similar locations.
• 53:15
  There's nothing inherently special about them.
• 53:18
  I think that the special part is the inside, whether it's, you
• 53:21
  know, obviously we can do what we can as an SDA and make it
• 53:24
  look as pretty and functional and all that sort of stuff.
• 53:27
  But it's really that care provision that needs to really
• 53:29
  be highlighted and celebrated and, and shown to participants
• 53:35
  because otherwise they're just getting, you know, they're kind
• 53:37
  of getting sucked in by a shiny house that has nothing to do
• 53:40
  with the care that they're actually received once they move
• 53:42
  in. And I think they need to, we
• 53:44
  need to be sharing that and highlighting that so much more.
• 53:46
  Thank you. Whatever point though, I I find
• 53:50
  really wild. I'm in there a couple of times.
• 53:53
  I would go see it a new house you know, about to open and you
• 53:57
  know, you do the welcome day. I found it always really wild
• 54:01
  when it was the provider. I was like, Oh no, no, you don't
• 54:03
  know all the tricks of this house, my friends.
• 54:06
  Yes, you live here, Please tell me.
• 54:08
  And then your tour is completely different.
• 54:11
  Like it is because the tour when it's somebody's home, the way
• 54:14
  that they present their home and we have this and you know, the
• 54:18
  the third drawer, Sarah, it's a little bit dodgy.
• 54:20
  Just be careful if you're trying to get a teeth out.
• 54:23
  Like, you know, they know all these little tricks.
• 54:25
  They know all that stuff the provider doesn't.
• 54:28
  So it's kind of like, well, just stop with your camera, stop with
• 54:32
  your might, hand it over. He's got this.
• 54:34
  If you want to, like, have that extra vacancy filled, this is
• 54:40
  your person. These are your people.
• 54:42
  They should really be the ones at the front of it because
• 54:45
  they're welcoming a person into their home, which is completely
• 54:48
  different. Yeah, exactly.
• 54:50
  I can see marketing like that. I'll find it wild.
• 54:53
  Why hasn't anyone done that like I have you?
• 54:56
  Half the time I feel like we're telling people how great the
• 54:58
  supports are on site and it shouldn't be up to us because we
• 55:01
  shouldn't have a hand in that at all.
• 55:03
  So you know. Have you seen anyone do it like
• 55:06
  anyone where they've got a participant that lives in that
• 55:09
  house and is their home presenting it for somebody to
• 55:12
  want to come live with them? I have not seen it.
• 55:15
  I would love to see that. If there's a person out there
• 55:17
  that's doing that, please tag me because I I would eat that
• 55:21
  content up. I'm sorry.
• 55:22
  I got lost in trying to thinking why haven't I seen this?
• 55:25
  There should be done. What is the hardest part about
• 55:28
  running a business like yours? I think just.
• 55:31
  Trying to be everything to everyone all of the time.
• 55:34
  I think especially when you're a very self starter, you know,
• 55:38
  bootstrapping your business, you are literally the cleaner,
• 55:41
  you're the marketing you're, you know absolutely everything
• 55:44
  you're doing the insurance you're doing the work cover,
• 55:46
  you're doing super payroll invoicing, you know, absolutely
• 55:49
  everything. I think that's probably you get
• 55:53
  very, very burnt out very quickly.
• 55:55
  And unless you can really get it off the ground and start sort
• 55:58
  of, you know, the first resources that you start putting
• 56:02
  into is good staffing to take on a lot of those those jobs.
• 56:05
  And then the second hardest part is letting go of those jobs and
• 56:08
  knowing that someone else is going to be able to do it as
• 56:10
  good as you can do. I think that's definitely,
• 56:13
  definitely hard. But yeah, I think just not being
• 56:15
  burnt out, still trying to show up as good as you can, but
• 56:19
  making sure you're putting your resources into the right area,
• 56:21
  which is generally staffing to be able to take on a lot of
• 56:23
  those jobs. So you can do and I guess become
• 56:26
  more of a visionary rather than someone who's stuck working in
• 56:29
  the business all of the time. Yeah.
• 56:31
  Like that, that's really difficult to pull you.
• 56:34
  I don't know you, but I found that at points when it came to
• 56:37
  my business, stepping away from elements because like, you know,
• 56:40
  but no one's going to love it like Sarah loves it like I can
• 56:43
  and I do enjoy a lot of elements of it and that letting go part.
• 56:47
  And then who do I let it go to? And it's like, this is, it's
• 56:51
  more stressful trying to figure out who to hire exactly, just
• 56:54
  yourself. Because I, I know you, but I, I
• 56:57
  love what I do. So it's really hard to find
• 56:59
  somebody that I know is going to love it as much as me.
• 57:03
  Exactly 100%. So you've been, this is not your
• 57:08
  first rodeo in the NDIS and in the care sector.
• 57:11
  What do you think the disability sector has changed since you
• 57:15
  started? What do you have you seen any
• 57:17
  changes? What is the big ones?
• 57:20
  I think pre NDIS, you know, there was a lot of stuff that
• 57:23
  was done well and a lot of stuff that wasn't done well.
• 57:25
  And I think then post NDIS it's exactly the same.
• 57:28
  So I think we're still running those same patterns of not
• 57:32
  being, you know, only bound to do some things well and only
• 57:35
  able to do some things badly. I think more choice and control
• 57:39
  has been obviously amazing for participants and, and for me in
• 57:42
  housing to see people be able to build those scaffolds and be
• 57:47
  able to then potentially move out into even more independence
• 57:50
  is amazing. And I think that's something we
• 57:51
  need to be focusing a lot more on.
• 57:53
  And I think that the funding models aren't supporting that at
• 57:56
  the moment. But yeah, there's just, there's
• 57:58
  probably a million changes and I'll probably forgot more of
• 58:01
  them that I would even remember. But I think, yeah, there's,
• 58:04
  there's some things that were done very early on that were
• 58:06
  done well and some things now that I'm hoping are going to
• 58:09
  start changing, which will again, we should be just always
• 58:12
  learning from the past and, and trying to strive to do better.
• 58:15
  And I think that is something that, you know, most people
• 58:18
  would want for the NDIS. You were able to pick out very
• 58:23
  quickly the vision the NDIS was going down, jump on an
• 58:27
  opportunity and voila, you had 25 houses if you got more than
• 58:32
  25. We've got I think close to 150
• 58:34
  now right across Australia. So yeah, so mostly, mostly in
• 58:38
  Victoria. So yeah, we definitely ran
• 58:40
  quickly. But in saying that, you know, we
• 58:42
  have, we have started off boarding some of those houses
• 58:45
  too and starting to be a lot more particular with who we who
• 58:50
  we partner with, even from an investment point of view.
• 58:53
  And our focus is very much where it started.
• 58:56
  So we very much really started on wanting people with
• 58:59
  disabilities to own their own home.
• 59:01
  And the banks just were not on board with that.
• 59:03
  Luckily over the last, you know, 5-6 years, that's that's changed
• 59:06
  and we've been able to help people with disabilities own
• 59:08
  their own home and in some cases even then purchase an investment
• 59:12
  property so they have a passive income if they're not able to
• 59:15
  work. So I think, yeah, it's pretty
• 59:18
  much being able to pivot where you can.
• 59:20
  And I guess really if you really believe in something, you will
• 59:24
  100% make it work and you'll keep changing it or not
• 59:28
  changing. If you really believe in
• 59:30
  something, you won't change. In some cases you'll just be
• 59:32
  this is the right path and that's it.
• 59:33
  That's what we're following. And in other cases, you'll keep
• 59:36
  pivoting until you keep getting it right or keep improving,
• 59:39
  which has always been our our thing is that we can change and
• 59:42
  we can do things differently as long as we're improving every
• 59:45
  time we do that. So you've been able to predict
• 59:49
  that. What do you predict for the
• 59:51
  future? So everyone's listening right
• 59:53
  now. Get a pen and paper.
• 59:58
  Some of my predictions are more wishes than predictions.
• 1:00:03
  I'm, I've always been really passionate about that separation
• 1:00:07
  of seal or care provision and housing.
• 1:00:10
  And one of the main reasons why I didn't just do this as
• 1:00:12
  Wingate, which is what I could have done was because I didn't.
• 1:00:15
  Once I sort of went down that rabbit hole, I really believed
• 1:00:17
  that we shouldn't be doing the care provision and the housing.
• 1:00:20
  So that's something that I've always been really, really
• 1:00:22
  passionate about. And I think as we see lots of
• 1:00:26
  areas in housing is over saturated and you know, lots of
• 1:00:30
  different pockets of Australia and we're seeing care providers
• 1:00:33
  just taking on head leases with owners who are desperate and
• 1:00:36
  will take, you know, 500 to 600 bucks a week for a care provider
• 1:00:40
  to rent a house. Which in some cases I, I
• 1:00:44
  understand it and it's admirable if that's going to help people
• 1:00:47
  get housing. But I think it's very short
• 1:00:49
  sighted and it's actually taking away choice and control from
• 1:00:53
  participants who essentially, if they no longer like that care
• 1:00:56
  provider, they are homeless and need to find somewhere else to
• 1:00:59
  live. So I would really love to see
• 1:01:02
  all housing be split into housing and supports, whether
• 1:01:06
  it's Straight seal or ILO Appendix H, whatever it is, I
• 1:01:10
  think it all should come under that specialist disability
• 1:01:13
  banner because I think that care providers should not be, whether
• 1:01:18
  they're renting directly or, you know, head leasing, I don't
• 1:01:21
  think they should be because it is taking away that choice and
• 1:01:24
  control and it is hamstring people in the long run.
• 1:01:27
  So to me, that's probably one of the biggest things I would love
• 1:01:29
  to see. So that's more of a wish.
• 1:01:31
  I feel like it's it's NDIS has been saying it for 910 years
• 1:01:34
  now. So I'm hoping that it's
• 1:01:35
  somewhere on the horizon that they'll actually legislate it.
• 1:01:38
  But yeah, and I would love to see one resident houses, I think
• 1:01:43
  is we have a lot of requests for people to live on their own,
• 1:01:45
  which is fantastic. And that should be their choice,
• 1:01:49
  but there is no line in the SGA calculator for one resident
• 1:01:52
  housing. It's two resident plus.
• 1:01:55
  And I would love to see because not everyone wants to live with
• 1:01:58
  other people, but not everyone wants to live by themselves in a
• 1:02:01
  villa apartment. Some people want to live in a
• 1:02:03
  house and they want a couple of bedrooms for family to come and
• 1:02:06
  stay or to work from home or to have a backyard to have a pet.
• 1:02:09
  So I'd love to see that change as well.
• 1:02:11
  That would be awesome. I get to have a pet and to be
• 1:02:14
  able to have new your own. Like there's there's been a
• 1:02:18
  couple of people that have that are coming to mind that, you
• 1:02:21
  know, Hooray, I've got still funding.
• 1:02:22
  This is fantastic. Now I'm going to share a house
• 1:02:24
  with another two people. What the.
• 1:02:27
  Yeah, But yeah, things that like, you know, it's not where I
• 1:02:30
  feel comfortable. I don't like the idea of moving
• 1:02:33
  into a House of two people. I don't know, like it is that
• 1:02:36
  element as well. And if I'm not well protected by
• 1:02:40
  my family or, you know, my guardian, God knows where I'll
• 1:02:43
  end up. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:02:46
  And I think that the more choices we have for people, the
• 1:02:49
  better we are. So I think all of those, all of
• 1:02:51
  those options are in some cases completely perfect for some
• 1:02:58
  people. So we need all as many different
• 1:03:00
  options as we can, but I think we need to make sure that the
• 1:03:02
  funding matches those choices because really if they're only
• 1:03:07
  given one to three funding, whether it's SEAL or SDA,
• 1:03:10
  there's no real choice for them. Like in reality, yes, really an
• 1:03:14
  SDA provider can take that hit of saying, yes, you can live by
• 1:03:17
  yourself, but a SEAL provider actually loses money.
• 1:03:20
  So it's not that they're not making enough.
• 1:03:22
  They've got to pay someone to do the supports and pay them a full
• 1:03:27
  hourly rate while they're only able to actually then claim 1/3
• 1:03:32
  of an hourly rate. So they're literally
• 1:03:34
  hemorrhaging money out the back door.
• 1:03:35
  It's not going to work for people.
• 1:03:37
  And I think that's probably one of the things that we have been
• 1:03:40
  trying to change is for sale providers to not go into housing
• 1:03:44
  with one participant and no plan for marketing to get more
• 1:03:47
  participants unless that person legitimately is going to live by
• 1:03:50
  themselves and they're one to one funded.
• 1:03:52
  Because again, when people start hemorrhaging money, they start
• 1:03:55
  cutting costs. They, you know, take every
• 1:03:58
  shortcut. They don't spend money on
• 1:04:00
  training staff. There's all these things that
• 1:04:02
  start, I guess for them. They they start really
• 1:04:06
  compromising good supports because they can't afford to
• 1:04:09
  provide good supports. And I think that that's probably
• 1:04:12
  one of the biggest things. So I think the NDIS has to look
• 1:04:15
  at where they're hamstringing people and where just changing
• 1:04:20
  some of those options for people to have more choice will
• 1:04:24
  actually have way better outcomes, which is all that most
• 1:04:26
  people want. That's all.
• 1:04:27
  Whether a support worker, support coordinator, OT, you
• 1:04:30
  know, Physiospechi seal provider, SDA provider, everyone
• 1:04:35
  just wants good supports for people and good outcomes for
• 1:04:38
  people. So if we can get the NDIS on the
• 1:04:40
  same wavelength as the rest of us, I think we'll be okay.
• 1:04:43
  You brought up a topic that was actually quite interesting
• 1:04:45
  because I remember probably last year I went to one of the big
• 1:04:50
  Expos in Melbourne and you walk around and you talk about this
• 1:04:54
  and then you see all the amount of vacancies certain providers
• 1:04:58
  had. You're like, go on how, how's
• 1:05:00
  the light still being turned on? Because it doesn't.
• 1:05:02
  And then like knowing ratios, knowing rocks myself.
• 1:05:06
  And I'll be like, that's not viable.
• 1:05:08
  You're not on fire or not. Oh God, like, and you start to
• 1:05:11
  do that. And I worry that there will be
• 1:05:13
  like a mass exit in the market because we've got 1/2 empty.
• 1:05:18
  Like we got houses that are are vacant and we got half emptied
• 1:05:22
  in the fact that they can't get another two or three like, you
• 1:05:25
  know, two or one extra person that wants to live in that area
• 1:05:30
  with in that house. Like it's, I don't know, like
• 1:05:33
  it's I'm a bit iffy about how it's all going to look in a
• 1:05:36
  year's. Time, yeah.
• 1:05:38
  And I think, you know, that kind of introduction of that real KPI
• 1:05:41
  centered workload for a lot of like business development
• 1:05:45
  managers and like we back in the day before NDIS, we barely had a
• 1:05:48
  business development manager. Like that was not something that
• 1:05:51
  was a role. It was care managers, you know,
• 1:05:53
  to go out and obviously get referrals from, you know,
• 1:05:56
  support coordinators or case managers or from, you know, DHS
• 1:05:59
  or wherever they were coming from.
• 1:06:01
  And I think that really turning NDIS into that real market and a
• 1:06:05
  very, very competitive market has changed a lot of the views
• 1:06:10
  of people and we're getting sales people coming into those
• 1:06:12
  roles, not people who have come from air provision.
• 1:06:15
  And I think, you know, one thing our team started doing sort of
• 1:06:18
  towards the end of last year and the start of this year was to
• 1:06:21
  try and get as many of our sale providers who are working in our
• 1:06:23
  houses together to work together to fill some of those vacancies.
• 1:06:27
  But not just not just filling vacancies for, for vacancies
• 1:06:31
  sake, but more working together to say this, we're not just
• 1:06:35
  losing money on this house. It's not working for us.
• 1:06:39
  Is there other participants that potentially we could work
• 1:06:41
  together and you know, move, move two people in together so
• 1:06:45
  it's a little bit more viable. And one of us do the seal and
• 1:06:48
  the other one do community access.
• 1:06:50
  And having those conversations with participants because I
• 1:06:53
  think choice and control has been amazing.
• 1:06:55
  But in some cases that has meant that people who have had no
• 1:06:59
  choice and no control have gone in the other direction where
• 1:07:03
  they've got so much choice and so much say, which is
• 1:07:07
  incredible. But in some cases, they're
• 1:07:09
  taking, you know, why would they move in with these two people
• 1:07:12
  when they could live down here with them by themselves, you
• 1:07:16
  know, with the same care provider that they want, but not
• 1:07:18
  realizing that that's putting themselves at risk in a couple
• 1:07:20
  of months time when they dropped to the hospital because their
• 1:07:22
  funding has been exhausted or, you know, the care provider
• 1:07:25
  can't make it viable. So it's almost giving people
• 1:07:29
  false hope sometimes. And I think those conversation,
• 1:07:33
  you know, we have to have those conversations with participants
• 1:07:35
  to say that we understand this is your choice and 100% we
• 1:07:38
  support that. But here's the actual
• 1:07:40
  accountability and the consequences sometimes of those
• 1:07:43
  choices because we're not. That's the conversations we're
• 1:07:46
  not having. They can be had.
• 1:07:47
  They're not hard like they're hard, but they're not hard to
• 1:07:50
  have, if that makes any sense Like that.
• 1:07:51
  It's just communicate it really. It's not a nice feeling to have
• 1:07:56
  them, but if you don't have them, like you said, the
• 1:07:58
  consequences are quite tire. It could be moving back in
• 1:08:01
  hospital and that's not what we want.
• 1:08:04
  Exactly. And it's much easier to have
• 1:08:05
  that upfront than it is 6 months in to say we've exhausted all
• 1:08:08
  your funding, we can't find another participant, sorry.
• 1:08:10
  You're going to have to move or you're going to have to, you
• 1:08:13
  know, go into hospital or whatever the case is like that's
• 1:08:16
  devastating to people. But if they're told, look, if
• 1:08:18
  you go ahead with this, this is what could happen, it's still
• 1:08:22
  your choice. You know, we can try and find a
• 1:08:25
  housemate that suits you. But if that doesn't happen, then
• 1:08:28
  this is what we're going to have to do, you know, in that case,
• 1:08:30
  because your funding, yeah, the reality is your funding is this.
• 1:08:34
  And then this will only go so far.
• 1:08:36
  So you need to obviously have those conversations upfront to
• 1:08:39
  say, yes, we want to support you and want you to have those
• 1:08:42
  choices and, you know, make those decisions for yourself.
• 1:08:45
  But you have to know that when you make decisions, there is
• 1:08:47
  also consequences for decisions, good and bad.
• 1:08:50
  Some consequences are that this has been amazing and it's worked
• 1:08:52
  really well and everything's great.
• 1:08:54
  And there's rainbows and unicorns and, you know,
• 1:08:56
  everything's dandy. And in some cases it's absolute
• 1:08:59
  pandemonium and devastation and people being dropped at
• 1:09:02
  hospitals because there's no funds left, which nobody wants,
• 1:09:06
  no wants. No, but you're right.
• 1:09:08
  Nobody wants that. No, I'm sorry.
• 1:09:11
  I'm a little bit of topic, but I realize there's a question that
• 1:09:14
  I haven't asked you, and I feel like it's very important to ask
• 1:09:18
  you. You you're a part of the Chamber
• 1:09:20
  of Commerce. Like, I mean, we've got
• 1:09:22
  disability and then you've got the Chamber of Commerce.
• 1:09:24
  How did this line up? Like how did you connect the two
• 1:09:27
  and why? So when I first moved back to my
• 1:09:32
  hometown that has a small Chamber of Commerce that's been
• 1:09:35
  going for, you know, 4550 years and as a small business owner, I
• 1:09:39
  was kind of asked to come along. I really liked what they were
• 1:09:42
  about and how they were supporting, you know, obviously
• 1:09:45
  small business owners. From there, I ended up, I think
• 1:09:48
  a year or so and I ended up on the committee and then
• 1:09:50
  eventually kind of up to vice president and then president.
• 1:09:55
  And I think what I found was during COVID, it very much just
• 1:10:01
  like everything else fell, fell away at the momentum that we'd
• 1:10:04
  had in that group of, you know, business owners who are
• 1:10:07
  supporting each other and promoting each other and
• 1:10:09
  referring people to each other just kind of disappeared.
• 1:10:12
  A lot of businesses went under over that period.
• 1:10:15
  And it's been unfortunate that those smaller small town Chamber
• 1:10:18
  of commerce's have started to kind of go under or not be as
• 1:10:21
  successful. And something that I have
• 1:10:24
  actually been thinking of probably over the last, I'd say
• 1:10:27
  probably a year and a half. And I've had some conversations
• 1:10:30
  with, you know, like James Lovedays and your Belinda Tuis
• 1:10:33
  and Andrew from Raya around could we start a Chamber of
• 1:10:37
  Commerce that is actually community service?
• 1:10:40
  So it's supporting businesses. It's a very different, I guess
• 1:10:43
  not coming from a provider running, running and networking
• 1:10:46
  or it's very separate. And it would have almost, you
• 1:10:50
  know, people on a committee that are from different providers
• 1:10:53
  with different views and different kind of network.
• 1:10:56
  So I think that's something that I was quite passionate about
• 1:11:00
  probably pre COVID, I would say. And then it sort of has ever,
• 1:11:03
  you know, a lot of things changed over that period of time
• 1:11:05
  for many, many businesses. But I think for me I'm very
• 1:11:08
  passionate about the community service sector and the
• 1:11:11
  businesses within that rather than just passionate about
• 1:11:14
  business in general because I think our sector is quite unique
• 1:11:18
  because we are very human focused and there is a lot of
• 1:11:23
  you know there is a lot of charitable people, volunteers,
• 1:11:27
  it's not just about money for 99% of us.
• 1:11:31
  And I think that that support and mentorship could come from
• 1:11:36
  that Chamber of Commerce. And I think that's something I
• 1:11:38
  would probably like to look, you know, spend a bit more time over
• 1:11:40
  the next couple of years seeing how we could make that work.
• 1:11:43
  Yeah. Sorry, you've just, there's a
• 1:11:46
  lot there because I know I don't follow the question, but I, I
• 1:11:48
  couldn't help myself as you were discussing that.
• 1:11:51
  Is there a female leader in this sector that you look up?
• 1:11:54
  To I think there's lots of them, but I think I think Belinda
• 1:11:58
  would definitely would be one of them She's.
• 1:12:01
  Annoyingly fantastic, isn't she? She's.
• 1:12:04
  Unbelievable. Yeah.
• 1:12:06
  Just an absolute wealth of knowledge.
• 1:12:07
  I can't even think of many others off the top of my head.
• 1:12:10
  Probably, as I said, more ones from from my past, a lot of the
• 1:12:14
  old kind of Anecdo and Melbourne City Mission team leaders that
• 1:12:18
  I'd worked with when I was really young.
• 1:12:20
  So one I've actually just hired for us, which is Pam Hill, Who
• 1:12:24
  at the time Anox manager at Anecdo.
• 1:12:28
  And we've always sort of kept in touch and we're really, really
• 1:12:31
  lucky to be able to secure Pam to come onto our team earlier
• 1:12:35
  this year. So, but yeah, there's, there's
• 1:12:36
  been so many over the years and so many.
• 1:12:40
  Yeah, business leaders, business coaches, you know, people who
• 1:12:45
  have supported me and pushed me forward, giving me a bit of a
• 1:12:48
  slap or a kick up the bum when I've been too much of A SOOK and
• 1:12:51
  needed to harden off. And then others who have been
• 1:12:53
  like, OK, you'd actually need to stop hardening up now.
• 1:12:56
  You need to settle yourself down and look after yourself.
• 1:12:58
  So yeah, it's just so many. But I'd say in the sector,
• 1:13:01
  Linda's definitely one that always has stood out to me for
• 1:13:03
  the last couple of years, so she's incredible.
• 1:13:06
  So a lot of people would look at your business story and be in
• 1:13:10
  awe because you've started from one house and you've got 150
• 1:13:14
  now. What advice would you give to
• 1:13:17
  any new providers getting into the sector?
• 1:13:19
  I'll just say be passionate, don't do not get into it for
• 1:13:22
  money because you will absolutely drown yourself in
• 1:13:26
  self pity. I think if you actually looked
• 1:13:28
  at the bottom line most of the time, be passionate, care about
• 1:13:33
  your participants, and always have that disability lens over
• 1:13:36
  whatever you're doing if that's the space you're going to be in.
• 1:13:41
  Experience is obviously something that I always value
• 1:13:43
  very, very highly, but at the same time, you don't know what
• 1:13:47
  you don't know. So lived experience combined
• 1:13:49
  with education and training and qualifications is something I'm
• 1:13:52
  quite passionate about because, well, people without lived
• 1:13:57
  experience can learn things out of a book and, and, and pick it
• 1:14:00
  up and, and learn on the job. The flip side is you might have
• 1:14:04
  lived something, but everyone's experience is different and you
• 1:14:07
  need to still learn the legal and ethical frameworks and, you
• 1:14:11
  know, unconditional positive regard and, and all of those
• 1:14:14
  kind of things. You need to to be a really,
• 1:14:16
  really good leader in this sector.
• 1:14:19
  And I think just love what you do because I think if you don't,
• 1:14:22
  you burn out very, very quickly. And I'm already seeing that with
• 1:14:25
  providers that have only been in the space for a year or two.
• 1:14:28
  There's no longevity in them because they didn't get into the
• 1:14:30
  space for the right reasons. So just always, yet for the
• 1:14:33
  right reasons. What do you wish you knew from
• 1:14:36
  the beginning when you opened up your business?
• 1:14:38
  Probably that a business is a giant sieve that money just
• 1:14:42
  flows out of all of the time. Yeah, yeah, if you're if you're
• 1:14:51
  doing it for money, it's definitely not the smartest
• 1:14:53
  thing to do it for. But also that if you again, if
• 1:14:57
  you love what you do and you wear your heart on your sleeve,
• 1:14:59
  people will see that and people will follow you and you will get
• 1:15:04
  a, you know, a weird almost cult like following of of staff
• 1:15:09
  members who just love what you do.
• 1:15:11
  And I think that's if I knew that 20 odd years ago when I was
• 1:15:15
  starting out in business, I would have spent way more time
• 1:15:19
  trying to build that culture in my first business that now
• 1:15:23
  really I've been able to in this in this business.
• 1:15:25
  Because I think that culture is what every participant, every
• 1:15:29
  family member, every other service provider follows that
• 1:15:32
  culture. And I think if they say you are
• 1:15:34
  genuine, that you are honest, that you wear your heart on your
• 1:15:37
  sleeve, then they will naturally just have pretty much the vibe
• 1:15:43
  that you're going for. So I think that vibe attracts
• 1:15:45
  your tribe is, is 100% true. But yeah, that's pretty much
• 1:15:49
  yeah. That, you know, you will be on
• 1:15:51
  the brink of bankruptcy every couple of years and you'll
• 1:15:54
  somehow fight your way out of it again.
• 1:15:56
  And you know, you'll spend your resources on people that you
• 1:15:59
  hopefully love and appreciate and support and that will do the
• 1:16:03
  most amazing job for your participants and to very, very
• 1:16:06
  much focus on them and nurture them, depreciate them.
• 1:16:09
  I think that's probably the biggest, biggest thing for me.
• 1:16:13
  What's 1 message you want support workers and providers to
• 1:16:16
  get from you today? I'm going to go from a housing
• 1:16:19
  perspective, the houses that you, the houses you are working
• 1:16:24
  in, yes, they are workplaces and they need to be safe and they
• 1:16:28
  need to to very much accommodate you.
• 1:16:32
  But they are a participant's home.
• 1:16:35
  And I think taking some of the old school approach of home care
• 1:16:38
  when people literally used to just go in and work in people's
• 1:16:41
  homes and didn't worry about every sign up on the wall and
• 1:16:46
  you know, what people had in their home was almost none of
• 1:16:48
  your business. I think that needs to come back
• 1:16:51
  a little bit. I see some providers telling
• 1:16:53
  participants they can't put pictures up in their room and,
• 1:16:56
  you know, trying to dictate how the house is and how people
• 1:16:59
  live. And I think that there needs to
• 1:17:01
  be more compassion and empathy when you're walking into
• 1:17:06
  people's homes and to remember that and to not.
• 1:17:09
  And again, this is from the old support worker days, not
• 1:17:12
  standing around bagging your participants right in front of
• 1:17:15
  them, thinking that they can't understand what you're saying.
• 1:17:17
  I think just just be a human. Just be a human.
• 1:17:22
  Like I think that's the problem. Be a human.
• 1:17:25
  Remember why you're there and. I do mind that insane, to be
• 1:17:29
  honest with you, not to You have you as an individual.
• 1:17:32
  You live in this house, which is we talk about it.
• 1:17:35
  We deem it as your home. You go into your bedroom and you
• 1:17:37
  can't have a picture up. Well, fuck me.
• 1:17:39
  OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I yeah.
• 1:17:43
  It's sometimes it feels like it's like a backward step.
• 1:17:47
  I'm like, is this, is this like a institute, like a mini
• 1:17:50
  institution or am I getting to live in a house that I can deem
• 1:17:53
  as my home and be comfortable? I should have this.
• 1:17:58
  Yeah. And I, yeah, exactly.
• 1:18:01
  And I get it from, you know, most providers that I work with,
• 1:18:05
  I deal with the middle managers or the, you know, the, the
• 1:18:09
  higher up managers and they talk, they talk a great talk
• 1:18:13
  like they, they believe, I think a lot of the time that they're
• 1:18:15
  providing the supports that they truly want to provide, but they
• 1:18:19
  don't see, and I know this from personal experience, they don't
• 1:18:22
  see the support staff very often.
• 1:18:23
  They don't actually, they're not in there working with them.
• 1:18:25
  So they can't, they can't build that culture in each house.
• 1:18:29
  It's a huge job and I 100% get it.
• 1:18:31
  So I'm not blaming organizations.
• 1:18:34
  I think individuals really need to take accountability for
• 1:18:36
  themselves. And again, be a human.
• 1:18:39
  Don't be a Dick head if you're working in people's houses.
• 1:18:41
  That's just my 100%. Just don't be a Dick.
• 1:18:47
  Head it's exploded the NDIS when it when it got rolled out and
• 1:18:53
  then the workforce, it felt like it didn't come with the
• 1:18:56
  workforce. So it's like, right, we've got
• 1:18:58
  all these career opportunities. This is fantastic.
• 1:19:01
  But all the people that had started pre NDIS role in
• 1:19:05
  management roles, now they are managing services.
• 1:19:09
  So they're not on the ground getting their hands dirty like
• 1:19:12
  we used to because we're in positions now that we we've had
• 1:19:16
  to take that step up because we just exploded.
• 1:19:18
  Exactly. And there's been such because
• 1:19:20
  there has been such a shortfall in direct care workers.
• 1:19:24
  The government's response to that is to give people free
• 1:19:26
  courses to get them into the sector.
• 1:19:29
  And there are the people who have been in other, I guess,
• 1:19:33
  sectors that have gone under over COVID or they've been
• 1:19:36
  people newly arriving to the country and they're going into
• 1:19:40
  this sector because there's nowhere else for them to go.
• 1:19:42
  So there's no passion. There used to be as much as I
• 1:19:45
  would say a lot of the not for profits and the charitable and
• 1:19:49
  the religious providers, you know, I've never been a massive
• 1:19:53
  fan of. But I think the one thing that
• 1:19:55
  they did bring is that most people working for them
• 1:19:58
  genuinely loved the people that they were working with.
• 1:20:01
  And there was that charitable mindset of they would do this if
• 1:20:05
  they weren't getting paid. And let's be honest, they were
• 1:20:07
  getting paid pittance back in the day.
• 1:20:09
  So because the pay rates, you know, it's amazing now some of
• 1:20:12
  the wages for support workers. So people are coming, the SEC,
• 1:20:17
  they literally support work. And I never thought I'd say
• 1:20:19
  this, support workers are coming into the sector for money.
• 1:20:22
  And they've not got the mentality, the just inherent
• 1:20:27
  care factor. They don't have the right, just,
• 1:20:30
  they don't have the right stuff to be working in this sector.
• 1:20:33
  And I think they're treating people like they're working at
• 1:20:36
  Woolies or Coles or, you know, in a factory and it's not going
• 1:20:40
  to work and we need to weed those people out.
• 1:20:42
  I know that there's a shortage in the sector, but I think if
• 1:20:45
  you're going to take people from a sector into ours, they need to
• 1:20:49
  come from hospitality and places where they used to being bubbly,
• 1:20:53
  friendly, talking to people, not just grumbling along.
• 1:20:57
  Willing to serve, willing to serve and wanting to serve.
• 1:21:02
  And that is the one desire and to be able to still build
• 1:21:05
  somebody with A to have more opportunity.
• 1:21:09
  And so why would you say that? Because I was, I was actually
• 1:21:12
  talking to this about this topic the other day going, is this
• 1:21:15
  just a good support worker or are you an advocate?
• 1:21:18
  Because back in the I'll give you, we'll go into a story.
• 1:21:22
  Why not Back in the day, I was providing care to a person that
• 1:21:28
  had a visual impairment and we turned up to the pub that this
• 1:21:32
  person absolutely loved. It was time to go to the
• 1:21:34
  bathroom and I needed to make sure that I placed this person
• 1:21:37
  to assist them to disability bathroom.
• 1:21:40
  I opened up the door and this cleaning products and shit
• 1:21:43
  everywhere and I'm like, Oh yeah, what's what do I, what do
• 1:21:48
  I do? So then like, you know, because
• 1:21:49
  this person can independently go to the bathroom, so you align
• 1:21:53
  this person up to a system because there's all shit
• 1:21:56
  everywhere to go to the bathroom.
• 1:21:58
  But then that was that icky feeling because like, Oh my God,
• 1:22:01
  I am in the bathroom and I don't need to be in this bathroom
• 1:22:03
  right now. I don't need to witness what is
• 1:22:06
  happening in this bathroom. This because of what's happening
• 1:22:10
  in the bathroom right now. It means that, you know, we're
• 1:22:13
  denying this person an opportunity to be independent as
• 1:22:15
  possible because they can do everything.
• 1:22:17
  It's just that there's this bathroom is not safe.
• 1:22:21
  So then, you know, once that person's their business, but you
• 1:22:24
  know, out we go. That day I went home and sent
• 1:22:28
  that pub an e-mail saying, right, you know, like you denied
• 1:22:32
  this person an opportunity to go to the bathroom in peace and be
• 1:22:36
  respectful, blah, blah, blah. And then the next week when we
• 1:22:40
  went back to that pub, it had changed.
• 1:22:42
  I was saying to a, well, I was saying to a friend of like,
• 1:22:45
  well, no, I just thought I'd never put that as an advocacy
• 1:22:49
  thing. I thought that was just a
• 1:22:50
  support worker thing because this wasn't right and this
• 1:22:52
  didn't feel right. I didn't feel right about it.
• 1:22:55
  It's a barrier. It's a barrier because this
• 1:22:58
  person loves this pub and we would like to continue to go to
• 1:23:00
  the pub. My job now is to educate the
• 1:23:03
  community that, you know, we all have a right to go to the pub in
• 1:23:06
  the best way possible. So there is that shift in the
• 1:23:09
  dynamic of what a support worker looks like and how do you label
• 1:23:13
  it? And I don't, I don't see myself
• 1:23:15
  as an advocate. Yeah, I see myself as a support
• 1:23:18
  worker just doing their fucking job.
• 1:23:20
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that right there is also I
• 1:23:26
  think why I went into housing as well, because I think sometimes
• 1:23:29
  the actual physical environment, as you just said, can help
• 1:23:33
  someone be more independent and need less support.
• 1:23:35
  And that's not about funding. Like I couldn't give a shit
• 1:23:37
  about the funding side of it. I give a shit about the person
• 1:23:41
  being able to build that scaffold and be more independent
• 1:23:44
  and being able to do more things for themselves because the
• 1:23:48
  physical environment around them supports that.
• 1:23:51
  And that we should be continuing to keep improving on those
• 1:23:55
  environments to make sure that people keep being able to
• 1:23:58
  support themselves in that way and be able to move environments
• 1:24:02
  as they get more independent. I think that's kind of something
• 1:24:05
  that we're not focusing enough on in that.
• 1:24:08
  Skill building to be to be at home is a skill build that is
• 1:24:12
  like those activities of daily living at home.
• 1:24:15
  We don't need exactly as much as.
• 1:24:17
  I can sound silly, but you don't.
• 1:24:18
  You do, but you don't do as much because the aim is to report
• 1:24:22
  somebody to do it as independent as possible.
• 1:24:25
  You're. Yeah, I do inform, but you don't
• 1:24:28
  do it for them. Because there was this element
• 1:24:30
  somewhere in the line of the NDIS.
• 1:24:32
  It got lost. Apparently I was meant to do
• 1:24:34
  everything. Like when I say apparently I
• 1:24:36
  meant to do everything, That element of supporting somebody
• 1:24:39
  and teaching them to be as independent as possible, that
• 1:24:41
  lost its notion somewhere and I. Yeah, it's like I'm still trying
• 1:24:45
  to gain that traction to bring it back up again.
• 1:24:47
  Hold on one moment. It's to be as independent as
• 1:24:49
  possible. Very difficult to.
• 1:24:51
  Do now. Find you to to be in your like
• 1:24:56
  around the surround. If I wanted to say anyone
• 1:25:00
  watching this wanted to be employed by you or anybody
• 1:25:04
  looking to have housing options through you, what is the best
• 1:25:07
  way to get in contact with the company?
• 1:25:11
  So website is obviously one way. So our empowered theability.com
• 1:25:16
  dot AU website phone number 1300 nine 74912.
• 1:25:23
  But most of our team if you just type in empowered the ability on
• 1:25:26
  LinkedIn or Facebook or any of you know, social media, they're
• 1:25:30
  pretty, you know, our presence is pretty, pretty high up there.
• 1:25:34
  Most of the NDIS groups we're we're in and most of us are kind
• 1:25:38
  of mentors in those groups and answering questions, you know,
• 1:25:41
  people who need support. And we try and run, you know,
• 1:25:44
  webinars and, and lunch and lands for support coordinators
• 1:25:47
  as well. And training, especially on some
• 1:25:49
  of the, you know, the areas that are a bit newer and a little bit
• 1:25:53
  more nuanced, like Appendix H for families to be able to live
• 1:25:56
  together and, and things like that.
• 1:25:57
  So, yeah, otherwise, you know, on LinkedIn, people can add me,
• 1:26:00
  Nicole Macon Doherty. Anyway, Google wherever you'll
• 1:26:03
  find us. Besides all that, you are
• 1:26:07
  actually being a sponsor at a upcoming event in our sector.
• 1:26:13
  Yes, yes, the disability awards which are coming up in November.
• 1:26:17
  We've tried, I guess we've won quite a few of awards over the
• 1:26:21
  last few years and we've tried I guess since then to not so much
• 1:26:24
  nominate ourselves, but to become sponsors and, and make
• 1:26:27
  sure that those awards are highlighting really good
• 1:26:29
  services and and good people within the sector.
• 1:26:31
  And so we're sponsoring the support coordination award.
• 1:26:35
  So there's some amazing support coordinators in that and support
• 1:26:38
  coordination companies. But I think it's important, you
• 1:26:41
  know, once you've kind of, I feel like once you've won
• 1:26:44
  something or you've been nominated for something that,
• 1:26:46
  you know, you should sort of look at nominating other people
• 1:26:49
  or, you know, sponsoring awards and things like that.
• 1:26:51
  So we've tried to do that over the last few years.
• 1:26:54
  So that you get to do that now. Exactly.
• 1:26:57
  It's amazing. Thank you so much for joining me
• 1:27:02
  on this podcast and you know, taking the time to answer quite
• 1:27:06
  a lot of questions because I really did.
• 1:27:09
  I have my entire brand new too much.
• 1:27:11
  Thank you so much for tonight. Thank you so much for having me,
• 1:27:15
  I really appreciate it. All right, too easy.
• 1:27:18
  Bye for now.