What are individualised services?
The focus of our individualised services is to support people who are socially isolated and assist them to build meaningful lifestyles and relationships within their community. The basis of our individualised services comes from the understanding that no two people are in the same life stages. We work with you to plan support around your life when it is convenient and most effective for you. Individualised services can be working with you to build capacity in independent living such as cooking, cleaning, shopping, and transport training. It could be providing opportunities and guidance for people to become valued community members through their involvement in leisure, recreation, sport, education, volunteering, and employment. Our individualised services are flexible, and the possibilities are endless!
What is a support coordinator?
Our support coordinators work behind the scenes to ensure you get the most out of your support plan. They are the person that will work with you to find a suitable Mentor and any other external networks you may need to deliver your support. They will work with you to build strategies towards achieving your goals for each funding period and report on all the positive progress you have made to the NDA. Coordinators are always one phone call away so feel free to contact them with any quires or concerns you may have with your support.
What are Mentors?
A Mentor is the person that you choose to deliver your support. It is someone we want you to build a healthy working relationship with. This means equal contribution and dedication when working towards your goals. Mentors are there to work with you, not for you. This means lending a helping hand until you can build independence, whether it’s in your daily life, employment, or community. The goal for our Mentors is to work themselves out of a job and leave you with the tools to lead a meaningful and fulfilling life.
Are you an employment agency? What is employment discovery?
These are two very common questions that follow one another when people enquire about our services. The short answer is no, we are not an employment agency. Employment agencies do much more chargeable work behind the scenes and will often have a scheduled meeting time. Additionally, employment agencies like to develop relationships with large organisations that are always looking for employees and can benefit from their supply of clients. We prefer to work 1:1 with our clients at their own pace so we can truly get to know what their goals and aspirations are. We only develop relationships with employers for the benefit of our clients because we want to ensure they are getting the most out of the opportunity.
Employment discovery is one of our services and an NDIS funding category that offers a financial resource to help you work towards employment outcomes. In other words, it is the funding that we will utilise when working towards your employment goals across the entire employment process.
We further differentiate ourselves from employment agencies because we take a holistic approach to employment discovery and aim to support you every step of the way. The very first steps to employment can include support related to exploring your interests and passions. We can then move on to gaining qualifications, writing resumes, submitting job applications, attending interviews and finding employment.
A holistic approach means we look past the first stages of employment and provide support centred around helping you maintain a job. This can be supporting you at work with your roles and responsibilities, up-skilling, scheduling your working week, and maintaining positive employer relationships. This holistic approach aims to ensure you feel valued and fulfilled in your chosen role.
What does good support look like?
We understand there is no black and white answer to this question because good support can be different for everyone. For this reason, we recently asked patrons at the Brisbane Disability Expo to write down what they thought good support was on a post-it note and stick.
Some of the common discussion points were:
- Management of your own supports
- Choice of who you are supported by
- Choice of when you are supported
- Working towards achieving goals
- Acknowledgement of who you are as a person
It’s refreshing to see what people in Brisbane viewed as good support. It’s discussion points like this that inspired the idea behind AIN’s individualised services. This is because we firmly believe the key to good and sustainable support is making sure each person’s support is individualised. This means:
- You choose who you want to be supported by
- You are the main voice in the planning of your goals
- Only Mentors that you have chosen to work with will provide support to you
- We work around your schedule when providing support
- We work alongside you, not for you when exploring your interests and achieving your goals
What do you expect from me?
We hold ourselves to a high standard and expect the same from you. It is important to remember that we can only provide good support if we receive equal contribution and effort when working towards your goals. This is why we have developed the three pillars of successful support which we encourage all our clients to uphold.
Individualised Support
Looking for Mentor support in building relationships and becoming more involved in the community?