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Meet the team - Shae
We would love to introduce to you our Care Coordinator for Sydney, South Brisbane and Wollongong area, Shae.
Shae recently joined us and supports our NDIS participants with any queries. She also ensures all programs are running smoothly and documents, such as Service Agreements, are up to date and are in line with NDIS quality and safety standards.
Shae has 13 years of industry experience, and we are very excited to have her on the team. Get to know Shae from our Q&A with her below.
What do you see as the biggest opportunity for disability support providers?
Being able to assist NDIS participants to live their best life.
What do you enjoy most about working in the disability sector?
Interacting with participants and supporting them to live their life more independently.
What do you enjoy most about working in the disability sector?
I think there are a few challenges, but what makes it most difficult are the continual guideline changes as well as the increasing need for high quality staff.
Know any fun facts?
Australia has over 60 separate wine regions… you’re welcome.
What are you most excited about for in 2023?
Professionally, learning all there is to know about Specialist Disability Accommodation.
Personally, my eldest daughter graduating from university and establishing her career.
If you are needing to speak to Shae, send her an email below!
shaeleigh@nnadirectsupport.com.au
Introducing our Manager of Nursing Services, Kelly!
Introducing our Business Development Consultant, Fiona!
Learn about the Importance of Incident Reporting
Introducing our Service Coordinator, Teressa! Teressa is located in Shellharbour and joined us at the end of 2022 in November. She brings with her 20 years of customer service experience. Get to know a bit more about her below! What do you see as the biggest opportunity for disability support providers? The biggest opportunity for our NDIS participants is that they now have more choice and control over how their support are delivered so they can achieve their goals. Fun facts about you: Love to spend time with the Grandkids Travelling and meeting new people/cultures Great listener I have 4 boys and 2 grandsons that still are all at home, so need my girl time with friends What are you most excited about for in 2023? I love meeting new people, so starting at NNA has given me the opportunity to do just that. In 2023, I am hoping that I can get more involved with our participants.
Recently, we caught up with Joseph Semaan who we previously introduced to you as our Customer Engagement Manager. But we wanted to reintroduce you to him and his new role at NNA Direct Support Service. Joseph is now our Business Development Consultant based in Western Sydney and has been with us since November 2021. He has over 5 years of experience in the disability sector and has been great to have on the team. What do you see as the biggest opportunity for disability support providers? To reach more participants and assist them to live more independently and improve their well-being and quality of life. Biggest challenge for the disability support sector? Firstly, the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) not responding quick enough to plan reviews, impacting participants care. Also, the risk of organisations not meeting professional standards to provide model care to participants. What are some fun facts about you? I have a Diploma in Remedial Massage and ran a business for over 12 years. What are you most excited about for in 2023? Professionally, I am excited to continue to expand the business and help as many people as possible. Personally, watching my daughter grow and celebrate her 1 st birthday. If you or someone you know is looking for support in Sydney, please get in touch with Joseph on LinkedIn here .
Building strong patient relationships as a Community Nurse with NNA Direct Support Service
Accessible Activities in Sydney
Disability Care Plans. What are they and why are they so important
Getting the right match between a support worker and a participant can be tricky. Perhaps this is the reason why many disability support providers don’t give their customers much of a choice (or a very limited one at best) when it comes to their support workers. Here at NNA Direct Support Service, we see the positive impact well-matched support makes in the quality of care. That’s why we go the extra mile when it comes to finding the right person, not only for the job, but so they really “get” our individual customers. How we make the right match When we have a new participant in need of support, our engagement team will go and meet with them. This is not only to learn about the participant’s individual support requirements but also to understand them as a person. We go through their interests, hobbies, and cultural background with the aim of finding d a best-fit support worker with similar interests and the skills required. Taking the time to really get to know the people we hire in the onboarding process means rapport is built much easier between the participant and the support worker. In cases where we have unique customer requests, the team will try to think outside the box to find the right match. An example of a successful match “A while back, we had a new participant with down syndrome come onboard with NNA Direct Support Service. She absolutely loves horses. In the hope we could find a support person who shared her interest, we reached out to the local equestrian club in her area. We were able to find a great candidate who had pet horses. At the meet and greet, as soon as the participant heard about the applicant’s common interest and love for horses an instant connection was made. They have been working together for now 12 months.” Dyllan, Workforce Manager at NNA Direct Support Service Maintaining professional standards While finding the right fit between support worker and participant is something we try our best to do, it's important to note this doesn't mean compromising on professional standards. Thanks to our education partner, Australian Health Academy, NNA Direct Support workers are taken through a one-day training session focused on support worker fundamentals, such as: Manual handling Effective communication Meal-time assistance How to deliver personal care Provide participant reports (This depends on where the candidate is at with their skillset) Ensuring support workers are both a great fit, but also have the skills and experience required to deliver professional support provides benefits on both sides; our frontline workers feel confident and supported in the work they do, and our customers receive professional service from people they enjoy working with. A win-win arrangement Getting a good match is a win-win. It creates a better support environment for the participant and makes work more enjoyable and rewarding for support workers. Continuity of care is something we strive for here at NNA Direct Support Service and we know high staff turnover can leave participants feeling uneasy and unsettled. By getting the match right from the start, the participants and their trusted support worker work together to complete daily tasks, embrace common interests, accomplish goals, and importantly, have fun along the way. One of the most rewarding aspects of being a support worker is seeing the positive impact and difference good support can make in another person’s life. Once compatibility is achieved, we do our best here at NNA Direct Support Service to ensure our support workers work the same shifts with the same people each week. Keen to learn more about what life is like as an NNA Direct Support Worker? Take a read of our interview with Clair.
We recently sat down with Clair who is one of our support workers at NNA Direct Support Service and our Employee of the month for August! Clair shares how her career into disability support came about, how much she loves her job, gives her words of wisdom to others thinking about joining the community service workforce. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how have you come to be a Support Worker? I came to Australia probably 26 years ago now and travelled around. I then got married and had kids so was a stay-at-home mum for around 10 years. But I decided I wanted to work in aged care and complete all my studies I don’t know how I became a disability support worker, it just happened! I started in a nursing home and then went out to do some home and community work. What I found in disability support work was that customers need someone to talk to all the time. So, I chose to carry on because of that - so I could help people get out into the community and be a bit more independent. But I never take over; I just help people to do the things they want to do themselves. What does a typical day look like for you at work? It all depends on the person, everyone is different. Some people need help with personal care, so normally I would help them get ready for the day. You’re taking care of their dignity and checking that their hair is neat and that they're ready to go out. I’ll normally take customers shopping or we will go and have a coffee or lunch, if that’s what they want to do. I talk one customer to the movies, but whatever it is we do together, I’m just there to ‘help’ not ‘do’. It’s really nice to see the positive change in customers from when I started working with them to now. For example, before I met some of the women I now support, not one of them had had a breast screen, so I helped organise that. I had another customer who hadn’t been to the dentist in 15 years, so I’ve helped them get to appointments. Have you had a rewarding experience with a client at NNA Direct Support? The biggest one would probably be a dentist trip. One of the ladies I work with didn’t smile because she had a black mark on her front tooth she’d had it maybe 20 years. She didn’t really like to talk to anyone or even smile for a photo as she was embarrassed. So I organised a dentist appointment and it was just a hole. They put a filling in and now she will smile at people and talk to people at the supermarket. Before, she didn’t even want to go out. While it is a really simple fix, it made such a big change in her lift. It’s great to see her smiling. What do you like most about working with NNA Direct Support? Whenever I ring up, the team are great. The guys make me giggle and they have a sense of humour; they are very bright and bubbly. They are always there to answer my questions. They are also very understanding and have been so lovely to work with. Do you have tips for someone that is thinking about getting into Support Work? I would first say, you must love it to do it. People can sense if you don’t, so that would be my main piece of advice. I would also say, don’t take over. It’s their house, you’re doing things they want to do, and your job is to help them. It’s not about if you want to go to Big W and shop, it’s about if they want to go and shop. You’re there to support them. For example, you can’t sit there and read a magazine if they want to chat to you. It’s not a babysitting job, you are there to support people at home and in the community, and help with whatever they need. It is a really rewarding job if you do it properly, so that is my advice. A big thank you to Clair for taking the time to sit and chat with us. We are so glad to have you as part of the team at NNA Direct Support Service. Thanks for giving our customers a reason to smile 😊