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Summer 2016/17 hwns.com.au OUR PLAN FOR IMPACT SPECIAL EDITION Plus WE LOVE VOLUNTEERS KEEPING YOUR SPIRIT STRONG SUPPORTING RURAL FAMILIES 2 ONE HOUSE Welcome to the Summer Feature 13 2016/17 edition of One House. Keeping Your Feature This is an exciting time to be Spirit Strong serving and supporting people Supporting Rural with a disability! KAEDON SHARES HIS STORY Families The National Disability Insurance ABOUT GETTING IN TOUCH Scheme (NDIS) is creating a better WITH HIS ABORIGINAL ROOTS. OUR CHRISTMAS APPEAL TELLS THE STORY OF and more flexible national disability Page 4 PADDY AND HIS FAMILY STRUGGLING TO GET THE support system. By 2020, twice as SUPPORT THEY NEED IN RURAL AUSTRALIA many Australians will access the Page 13 funding they need to participate in community life and employment. This is a great step forward for the Feature human rights, wellbeing and dignity of people with a disability. We Love Under our new IMPACT plan, we Volunteers! are investing to improve how House OUR VOLUNTEERS ARE VITAL TO with No Steps (HWNS) operates OUR ORGANISATION. READ SOME so we can thrive under the NDIS and support more people in more OF THE RECENT HIGHLIGHTS. places. You can read about our first Page 10 steps into Victoria and Tasmania inside. HWNS has supported people with a disability in regional and rural Five of the communities for over 50 years, so Best it was great to focus our Christmas WE’VE SHINED THE 2016 appeal on the support needs of children with a disability in rural SPOTLIGHT ONTO GREAT TV Australia, where distance is just one ACTORS WITH A DISABILITY. obstacle to overcome. It’s not too Page 15 late to contribute! My very best wishes to every HWNS customer, employee and supporter for a truly wonderful Christmas season and a fulfilling and One House is the official housewithnosteps rewarding 2017. House with No Steps magazine full of inspiring @HWNS news and stories. @HWNSAU Andrew Richardson Managing Director Subscribe at hwns.com.au/onehouse ONE HOUSE 3 NDIS roll out Continued roll out in: Continued roll out in: Central Coast Townsville Hunter New England Mackay QLD in 2017 Nepean Blue Mountains Toowoomba Northern Sydney South Western Sydney From 1 July 2017: Southern NSW Ipswich After a busy year with the official start Western Sydney Bundaberg of the NDIS roll out, the scheme will NSW Rockhampton continue rolling out across the country in 2017. From 1 July 2017: The NDIS will be operating More than 40,000 Australians now have Illawarra Shoalhaven state-wide by July 2019. an NDIS plan, and 85 per cent of people Mid North Coast have rated their experience with the Murrumbidgee NDIS as either good or very good in the Northern NSW September quarterly report. South Eastern Sydney Sydney Western NSW Far West The NDIS will be operating state-wide by July 2018. We won! We are thrilled and honoured to have been named the NSW 2016 Large Employer of the Year. We’ve worked hard to increase staff training delivered by our Education and Training Team over the past year to all our employees, including those with a disability. This includes accredited training, leadership development and customer service training. Great programs such as Workplace English Language Literacy (WELL) and Lean training have assisted staff across our organisation and ensures our employees have well-developed skills heading into the new NDIS environment. Congratulations and well done to our entire Education and Training Team for their continued hard work and commitment to quality training. ONE HOUSE 4 Keeping your spirit strong KAEDON’S STORY Kaedon, 20, is a budding artist and after reconnecting with his Aboriginal roots has gone from spraying graffiti tags to selling his own deadly paintings in a gallery. 5 ONE HOUSE When I was a kid I didn’t know much about I failed Japanese at school so I thought, well, I might Aboriginality and all that, not until later in life. I’m from as well master my own language. I was amazed to find the Kamilaroi clan, I was born and raised in Newcastle out that there were over 700 Aboriginal languages and I live with my Mum. I have nine brothers and nine spoken before European settlers came. I wonder sisters but they now all live on their own. why we should learn French and Japanese in high I didn’t like school at first because I was one of the school when we’re not going to use that later in life, only Indigenous people around. There were a couple why can’t we learn Aboriginal? Because the Maoris of us, about four or five kids who were Aboriginal and at school in New Zealand, they get to learn their I hated it. I got suspended for punching a guy because language, so how come we don’t have that? I think he called me a “filthy abo”. that’s really important to connect to our culture and our land. It’s just sad that in history we’re only taught When I came to HWNS they found out a bit more a small section of Aboriginal culture and the rest of it about my Aboriginality. I got to make my first is about King Henry or Hitler. boomerang and didgeridoo, and I can now actually speak the Aboriginal language and do Aboriginal painting. BUT IF IT WASN’T FOR HWNS I’D HAVE NONE OF THIS, Before then, I never thought I could be an artist, I couldn’t do anything except for graffiti tags and I NONE OF THIS ABORIGINAL CULTURE STUFF. I WOULDN’T didn’t really know how to paint. Now I can paint, make didgeridoos, make boomerangs, spears, speak my HAVE HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO PAINT AND SELL language, and actually tell people what my culture is PAINTING OR MAKE MY OWN DIDGES. all about. Pete from HWNS took me to all these mad Aboriginal I’m slowly learning more dreamtime stories. There’s places. I made my first didge with him, he took me this mountain that’s really cool, it’s called Mount out bush and also taught me how to say good bye Yengo and you know how most mountains are pointy, and hello in my language. I got to chop down my own well this one’s straight flat. It’s where our ancestor spear in the bush, I get to talk about songlines. It’s Biami, the sky father stepped back up into the sky. At just awesome, I love going out bush and seeing rock night time you can point out where he is, and it also carvings and sacred sites. tells you the seasons and when it’s time to go emu And some of these rock carvings, if you follow a line egg hunting because you can see an emu in the sky. it will point you to another carving, then that carving But if it wasn’t for HWNS I’d have none of this, none will point you to another carving and then so on. One of this Aboriginal culture stuff. I wouldn’t have had of my elders told me if you go out to the site at night the opportunity to paint and sell painting or make my time you can get some fire and hold it under a carving own didges. It’s so cool that I can go to caves and see rock and it dances and actually moves. I’m going to where my ancestors told stories and it’s cool getting try it one time. It’s awesome! told these things by my elders. I’ve got a job at Aunty Elsie’s Gallery in Newcastle. I help with maintenance and I’m also an artist there and sell my own artwork. I sold my first painting ever the other day which was sick! In Aboriginal culture, each state has their different style of painting. The dotting comes from the outback and in NSW we have spirals. At the moment I’m trying to blend in graffiti with Aboriginal and I’m also starting to learn more about Polynesian work so I want to blend some of that into my artwork as well. I paint when I can and sometimes I get so focused on a painting that I forget when I’m supposed to be going into the gallery for work. I’m proud to be Aboriginal, proud to be Samoan, proud to be French Polynesian, and proud to be Vanuatuan and African American. I love my culture and I think we should all try and connect to our cultures no matter what. ONE HOUSE 6 AROUND Did you know HWNS has more than 200 sites across NSW, Qld and the ACT? Here are some of our exciting regional highlights. caloundra townsville Port Macquarie Sausages were sizzling, balloons were Our Townsville team hosted the first Recently, Riley a customer from Port twisted and faces were painted at the ever disability conference in the North Macquarie was appointed a guest Caloundra Community Choice Open Queensland region in December. journalist for Port Macquarie news! His Day in October. Students from the More than 200 people attended to first gig was to interview Paralympian local Currimundi Special School came learn more about the NDIS, assistive and Australian Steelers wheelchair along with our customers to enjoy the technologies, community issues, rugby powerhouse Ryley Batt. sun, music and festivities. inclusive education and more. Riley joined Ryley for a pre-Rio The crowd also had the chance to Guest speakers included Mayor of training session in his hometown of decorate the new woodwork and Townsville Cr Jenny Hill, the Hon Port Macquarie and got a taste of craft annex which needed a bit of a Coralee O’Rourke, Dr Abraham Francis what it takes to be an elite athlete.

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