MONDAY 26 NOVEMBER
3.00 – 5.30 PM
Womens Space
11 Second Ave, Sandgate
$45.00
Book at Eventbrite
FOR
Carers in preparation for their role
Carers already engaged
Primary carers
Support Circle members
Siblings and other family members
What Next?! is a workshop experience which offers just-in-time strategies and skills to make the most of well-being and capacity.
Unlike what often happens in larger agencies, our offering is experiential, highly flexible and practical.
What you will take away from the workshop are tools to help with:
Actively listening to the members of the circle
Responding appropriately
Creating and practising new, effective ways to communicate
Listing step by step actions
3.00 – 5.30 PM
Womens Space
11 Second Ave, Sandgate
$45.00
Book at Eventbrite
FOR
Carers in preparation for their role
Carers already engaged
Primary carers
Support Circle members
Siblings and other family members
What Next?! is a workshop experience which offers just-in-time strategies and skills to make the most of well-being and capacity.
Unlike what often happens in larger agencies, our offering is experiential, highly flexible and practical.
What you will take away from the workshop are tools to help with:
Actively listening to the members of the circle
Responding appropriately
Creating and practising new, effective ways to communicate
Listing step by step actions
the team
As a mother and daughter - we walk the talk.
Ludmila remembers how in her youth, disability was hidden. “We didn’t understand it and therefore were fearful. Whenever I saw a person with disability approaching in my direction I would cross the road – I didn’t know how to act, what to do if we were passing each other…”
Baby Ella was 7 weeks premature and Ludmila felt something was not quite right… ”No medical practitioner took me seriously – ‘give your baby time to catch-up those 7 weeks, relax a bit” (I was 36 when Ella was born, a bit old for a first time Mum back in the early 1980s…)
“Finally they administered a CAT scan … We are waiting in a hospital room with 6 cots and 6 armchairs. My baby looks ‘perfect’ – the others don’t, but there is no road to cross and avoid this…I see so much love between mothers, babies and other siblings! And I see those exchanges and embraces, I feel that love and I lose my fear…even though, yes, I am concerned about how are we are going to cope with a diagnosis of ‘cerebral palsy - left sided hemiparesis.”
“We move from the city to the country, one of us stays at home with the baby – she is beautiful, with a spark in her eyes. Then comes asthma and later epilepsy – Absent Seizures (called ‘petit mal seizures’ in those days). Our concerns grow but we are living a good life, embracing the exercise and physio regimes, treatments to take home after hours of sitting in the waiting rooms of specialists with much more seriously affected children and their heroic parents, Mums and Dads who we know will not have a holiday for many years (or ever). Ella has a sparkle, loves her food; she is a child of cheerful disposition who shuffles on her bottom really fast and doesn’t like to crawl…until,102 days after her 2nd birthday, our baby walks!”
“At six years old she starts her schooling in the Montessori system, has an operation followed by weeks in a wheelchair and learns to walk again, learns to skip (!), has accidents and grows stronger.”
“After a year of growing her social skills, Ella enters Hillbrook Anglican School. In the school band she chooses to play euphonium. All euphonium players play sitting and the left hand needs to stretch to embrace the instrument, no need for fine motor control there…She hides her condition well. At the school’s Enrichment Centre she meets a teacher who becomes her role model (and life-long friend) – she is determined by now to give to kids with disabilities the options and opportunities revealed and nurtured by her teacher.
After six years of university study Ella graduates with a Bachelor of Education in Special Education and enters the Education Queensland system. The first five years are great - the students, the families (mainly Mums, often single Mums), the teachers and teachers’ aids. The second five years are less fulfilling, with burn-out and the difficult decision to leave and start her own business.
Ella believes the young people leaving school and entering life need:
To achieve that Ella believes in inclusion of the family/carers/supporters in this process. She herself is involving her mother as a collaborator in the ‘What Next?!’ project, making use of Mum’s experiences as a migrant/refugee, community cultural developer/practitioner, cook and educator. They both like to sing, sometimes together.
Ludmila remembers how in her youth, disability was hidden. “We didn’t understand it and therefore were fearful. Whenever I saw a person with disability approaching in my direction I would cross the road – I didn’t know how to act, what to do if we were passing each other…”
Baby Ella was 7 weeks premature and Ludmila felt something was not quite right… ”No medical practitioner took me seriously – ‘give your baby time to catch-up those 7 weeks, relax a bit” (I was 36 when Ella was born, a bit old for a first time Mum back in the early 1980s…)
“Finally they administered a CAT scan … We are waiting in a hospital room with 6 cots and 6 armchairs. My baby looks ‘perfect’ – the others don’t, but there is no road to cross and avoid this…I see so much love between mothers, babies and other siblings! And I see those exchanges and embraces, I feel that love and I lose my fear…even though, yes, I am concerned about how are we are going to cope with a diagnosis of ‘cerebral palsy - left sided hemiparesis.”
“We move from the city to the country, one of us stays at home with the baby – she is beautiful, with a spark in her eyes. Then comes asthma and later epilepsy – Absent Seizures (called ‘petit mal seizures’ in those days). Our concerns grow but we are living a good life, embracing the exercise and physio regimes, treatments to take home after hours of sitting in the waiting rooms of specialists with much more seriously affected children and their heroic parents, Mums and Dads who we know will not have a holiday for many years (or ever). Ella has a sparkle, loves her food; she is a child of cheerful disposition who shuffles on her bottom really fast and doesn’t like to crawl…until,102 days after her 2nd birthday, our baby walks!”
“At six years old she starts her schooling in the Montessori system, has an operation followed by weeks in a wheelchair and learns to walk again, learns to skip (!), has accidents and grows stronger.”
“After a year of growing her social skills, Ella enters Hillbrook Anglican School. In the school band she chooses to play euphonium. All euphonium players play sitting and the left hand needs to stretch to embrace the instrument, no need for fine motor control there…She hides her condition well. At the school’s Enrichment Centre she meets a teacher who becomes her role model (and life-long friend) – she is determined by now to give to kids with disabilities the options and opportunities revealed and nurtured by her teacher.
After six years of university study Ella graduates with a Bachelor of Education in Special Education and enters the Education Queensland system. The first five years are great - the students, the families (mainly Mums, often single Mums), the teachers and teachers’ aids. The second five years are less fulfilling, with burn-out and the difficult decision to leave and start her own business.
Ella believes the young people leaving school and entering life need:
- living skills to become more independent
- the satisfaction of contributing to their family/community life
- to be valued for their abilities and assets instead of blamed for their limitations
To achieve that Ella believes in inclusion of the family/carers/supporters in this process. She herself is involving her mother as a collaborator in the ‘What Next?!’ project, making use of Mum’s experiences as a migrant/refugee, community cultural developer/practitioner, cook and educator. They both like to sing, sometimes together.