Our UpSkill program is being rolled out across regional and rural Victoria. We want to increase the number of skilled support coordinators and help them respond well to the diverse needs of people with disability.
Upskilling regional Victoria
Welcome to our spring update. It has been an exciting time for us with the Aged Care Royal Commission hearings in Melbourne focused on young people in aged care.
You’re invited to the Summer Foundation’s Annual Public Forum
This year’s Summer Foundation Annual Public Forum comes at an important time. Systems must change to keep young people out of aged care. And these systems are being influenced and are changing in ways we’ve never seen before.
More than 800 people visited our Rapid Interim Housing prototype when it was displayed in Melbourne and Geelong in July and August.
Our UpSkill program to build the capacity of the support coordination workforce and allied health professionals is going from strength to strength.
The Summer Foundation is pleased to announce that applications are now open for the Allen Martin Research Scholarship 2019, sponsored by The Rotary Club of Kew and Robinson Gill Lawyers.
The Summer Foundation’s interaction with the Aged Care Royal Commission ramped up in September when we lodged our submission and CEO Luke Bo’sher appeared at the commission’s Melbourne hearings.
The publication earlier this year of Kim MacIntosh’s book “Full Circle – Overcoming Disability through Faith” is just the latest in an impressive list of life goals achieved by the Summer Foundation storyteller.
The Summer Foundation has been funded to deliver a national Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) Quality and Safeguards Education Project.
Welcome to our winter update. The start of the new financial year sees a refocusing of the work the Summer Foundation is doing to keep young people out of aged care.
At the end of March, in partnership with Youngcare, we hosted the inaugural Get Building SDA National Conference in Melbourne. The lineup of impressive speakers and storytellers generously shared their knowledge and expertise, which provided a rich and informative day for more than 400 attendees.
The Summer Foundation has worked with Oscar Building and Stretchy Tech to develop a self-contained, relocatable unit that can be rapidly installed and moved from location to location to provide housing for people who require short-term accessible housing.
During February, March, April and May, staff at the Summer Foundation have been supporting people to tell their stories to the Aged Care Royal Commission.
More than 300 people attended our Connecting NSW events in Sydney, Dubbo, Wagga, Penrith and Tweed Heads during April.
In a ground-breaking initiative, we are launching a program in July to train people working in the disability sector in how to support people with cognitive and communication impairments to create training videos for their support workers.
A new Summer Foundation initiative will help Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) providers understand their obligations in delivering high quality services to NDIS participants.
The Summer Foundation continues to be concerned about the high numbers of people with disability who remain in hospital long after their medical or clinical needs have been addressed.
With our continued strategic focus on the health sector, we are pleased to announce that Adam Horsburgh and Professor Andrew Way have joined the Summer Foundation Board.
Early last month The Hon Paul Fletcher, Minister for Families and Social Services, and The Hon Sarah Henderson, Assistant Minister for Social Services, Housing and Disability Services announced immediate reforms to SDA.
As part of the Summer Foundation’s Hospital Discharge Flagship project, we have piloted new collaborative working arrangements between hospitals and the NDIS, using funding provided through the William Buckland Foundation.
The Summer Foundation welcomes immediate changes to Specialist Disability Accommodation that have been announced by the Minister for Families and Social Services, Paul Fletcher, and Sarah Henderson, Assistant Minister for Social Services, Housing and Disability Services.
On 8 February, we launched UpSkill, our Support Coordination Flagship Program.
Have you seen The Housing Hub? It is a website where people with disability, family members, support workers and health professionals can search for a home that is suitable for people with disability to live independently.
A lack of accessible housing available at the right time and in the right area can leave people with a newly acquired disability stuck in hospital, rehabilitation settings or being admitted to aged care.’
With the Aged Care Royal Commission now under way, we are encouraging anyone with a story to tell around being a young person in aged care, or at risk of going into aged care, to make a submission.