Chief Executive Officer Update - May

Hi there, 

Welcome to this month’s edition of News@Yooralla.

It’s been a really busy fortnight with our new CEO intern, Megan Spindler-Smith beginning their time working at Yooralla. We spoke to Megan about their first impressions of Yooralla and what they’re looking forward to in this exciting new role. Watch the interview.

We’ve also had the pleasure of welcoming Sara Murphy, international expert on employment for people with disability to Australia, and to hear the reports from the series of employment focused workshops we held in partnership with IDV, MiLife, Brotherhood of St. Laurence, Swinburne University and Koomarri.

These workshops tailored to job seekers and their families empowered attendees with new ideas for advocating for themselves and their loved ones and provided them with easy-to-use tools for finding not just a job, but the right job.

You can hear more from Sara on the importance of creating employment possibilities for people with disability on our YouTube channel. 

As we continue our focus on the critical issue of improving employment outcomes for clients, I am very pleased to announce our upcoming Giving Day on 1 June. This is the first time we have held a fundraising event of this nature, where each donation given on the day will be matched by a pool of donors. The donations received on this day will be used to establish a customised employment program, through which we can support our clients to achieve their employment goals.

Read more about the Giving Day. 

As I’m sure you’re aware, the 2023-24 Federal budget was delivered last week, with significant focus on the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). I found this summary from Sara Gingold from DSC particularly helpful in summarising what the $910 million over five years pledged to improving the NDIS will mean for the disability community. Read it online.

We were thrilled to welcome Ian Hamm, a Yorta Yorta man and the Chair of Connecting Home to our client and family forum on Wednesday 26 April. Yooralla has a partnership with Connecting Home, a registered NDIS provider working with members of the stolen generations. At our forum, Ian discussed the upcoming referendum on a Voice to Parliament. Yooralla has adopted a position of support for the Voice - you can read why, and our full statement on this issue on our website.

Stay safe and well.

Terry Symonds
Chief Executive Officer