Welcome to my new blog. Disability Solutions on a Budget started as a Facebook Group in July 20014, which has over 1200 members at this point.
The group grew from one of my other groups SPECIAL KIDS AUSTRALIA Buy, Sell, Swap and Giveaway as more and more people were looking ways to afford their kids’ equipment needs. They say necessity is the mother of invention, and that is certainly the case in the Special Needs world.
As for me, I am Carolyn, and I a
m married to Michael. We have seven daughters Alicia 27, Sara 24, Renata 23, Christiana 21, Bryanna 19, Mahalia 17 and Samara 7, and 2 grandchildren Ashley 3, and Audrey 1. We are from New Zealand, and moved to Australia in July of 2007.
In September 2008, our youngest daughter, Samara, was born in Brisbane, at 31 weeks gestation. At 4 weeks old, she was diagnosed with Down Syndrome. This was a huge blow, because it is nearly impossible to get Permanent Residency here if you have a disability, and being born here doesn’t make you a citizen unless you are still living here on your 10th birthday. Without Permanent Residency, we were not entitled to any disability services such as therapies, or to any funding for equipment. We were lucky in that we managed to get some therapy for Sa
mara due to a loophole in the system, but our fight for Permanent Residency was a long and expensive one, that we finally won in June of 2013.
I am a great believer in giving and sharing. And we have been blessed to be able to be on both ends of this, and have met some truly beautiful people along the way. When we got our residency, I knew that I wanted to give to those who were not so lucky in their fight. This lead to the beginnings of my charity, Aroha Angels. Over the 3 years that we have been running, we have given and loaned out equipment, that at new prices, would be valued at over $600,000. Our budget to date has been under $6000. We have now expanded and have branches in Western Australia, New South Wales, and Victoria. Along the way, we have learned a few tricks, and have played with a lot of ideas for making, adapting and refurbishing equipment, and now, with the help of social media, and other parents and therapists who have come up with some amazing ideas, I am hoping to share them with you.
My plan is to post on the various ways people have found to afford equipment. These posts will be categorised to help you find them, into areas such as Second Hand, Repairs, Upcycling and Bling, Building, Sewing, products that can be adapted, etc. I have yet to come up with some titles, and these will probably evolve as various ideas are shared.
I will always be looking for new ideas, so if you have any ideas you would like to share, please use the contact me form to share your thoughts, or send an email at admin@justjuniorsdisability if you want to include images.