Our Peer Support is delivered by both trained staff and volunteers with lived experience of disability. Our team connects with people in rehab and hospital environments, as well as in the community. This includes visiting people with newly acquired injuries or conditions and visiting people during hospital admissions. By sharing information and experience our Peer Mentors help people transition back into community life. Volunteers receive specialised training and are coordinated by our Community Engagement team.
To read a story about the impact Peer Support see: What Peer Support means to me.
If you would like to find out more about Peer Support activities Contact Us or go to our Events Calendar to see what’s on.
Peer Coaching is a separate but related service to Peer Mentoring, coming under our Peer Support banner. Across regular sessions, a Peer Coach will support and guide you to work through challenges and towards goals. Their value lies in combining lived experience with a specific skill set around clarifying and structuring your thinking, and then facilitating the desired actions that follow, however they look. It might be about better managing your health, getting back into work or study, adjusting to life back home after rehab, or any shift in circumstances where you could benefit from the focussed and regular support of a trained peer.
To learn more about our Peer Coaching service, Contact Us
Being a key support for someone living with a complex physical disability can present a unique set of challenges. Recognising this, AQA has paired up with Independence Australia to run a monthly Family and Friends support group. This group offers you a safe and friendly space to learn from others, share your experiences and improve your strategies for self-care. It’s an opportunity to have your questions answered in a confidential and supportive environment.
Check out our Events page to find the date and time of the next meeting. To get the zoom link for the meeting, contact Jenny Koadlow on 0403 046 816 or email [email protected]
Several times a year, we hold community living expos, called WOT (What’s Out There) Days which showcase the possibilities of life with Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) in the community.
We bring in people who have been living for with SCI in the community for some years to share their lived experiences e.g. hobbies, travel, families, leisure options, home modification, transport, tips and tricks and much more, with those more recently injured.
A typical WOT day program would start off with a panel discussion where panel members speak of what their journeys were like when they returned to the community, what they currently do and how they do it. This is followed by a Q&A session from the audience.
This would be followed by a BBQ lunch where panel members and the audience have a chance to mingle and talk informally. Lunch is followed by small group discussions to discuss problem-solving and different scenarios ranging from banking, shopping, transport, clothing, planning modified equipment including vehicles, etc. Nothing is off the table at these discussions with members often discussing bowel, bladder, relationships and sexuality issues.
January 25,2023
AQA acknowledges that we live and work on lands stolen from the oldest continuous culture on earth. While our office is on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, we live and work on First Nations lands across Victoria. We acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded, and that this was, and always will be, Aboriginal land. We pay our deepest respect to Elders past and present, and we thank them for holding wisdom and caring for country. We also acknowledge that AQA’s work of building a more caring and inclusive society - where everyone has the resources they need to live well - follows in the footsteps of a long and ongoing struggle of First Nations peoples across the continent to be afforded the self determination, respect and resources they need to live well.
Disability doesn’t discriminate, so our community is as diverse as the richly diverse culture we exist in. Having the fullest version of ourselves on display, seen and appreciated, is a fundamental aspect of living a full and meaningful life. It is also the foundation from which the full benefit of our capacity building and empowering supports are accessed. Recognising this, we have developed an organisational culture where diversity is not just thoughtfully and respectfully accommodated, but truly celebrated - be it ethnicity, religion, ability, age, gender, sexuality or gender identity.
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