Towards Better

27/09/2026

Secondary School Students and Parents…

With term 4 approaching this is a great time to start to think about ‘what’s next’.

Write down your vision for post school life

Year 10/11: Consider School Based Apprenticeships and Traineeships

Year 12: You’ll likely finish halfway through this term. What’s next? You’ll need some purpose to avoid you sitting around at home with nothing going on.

Here are some really helpful resources.

https://studyworkgrow.com/disability-support-and-pathways-for-apprenticeships-and-traineeships/

https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/leaving-secondary-school?context=60077

Need help with a vision or want more resources: https://cru.org.au/resources/whyitmatters-2/

A disability doesn't need to stand in the way of an apprenticeship or traineeship, since several formal supports exist to help you get into a role and through your training. This covers the wage support payment, workplace equipment funding, and other help available, and how each one fits into starti...

25/09/2026

Some people influence your career.

Others influence how you see the world.

Ric Thompson and the team at Inclusion Works did both for me.

I’ve written a little about my first encounter with Inclusion Works in 2015, and the lessons and principles that have stayed with me ever since.

I’m also sharing this video because it captures, in a very practical way, what I learned from that team about seeing people differently, creating opportunities for contribution, and supporting people to find their place in ordinary community life.

LinkedIn Article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/day-i-walked-inclusion-works-lesson-community-timing-go-esterquest-qnmpc?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&utm_campaign=share_via

Podcast Episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ti3LY3OWLSjHOS9RZd3B9?si=8WrGhRkVTH2NZsBHJadsAw&utm_source=copy-link

A story that still reminds me why this work matters.

Vail Ric.

Yours in Community.

Ricky

19/09/2026

"We Know What's Possible. We Just Don't Know How to Make It Happen."

We hear this from NDIS support workers and coordinators all the time.

They see their participants as capable. They know employment, study, volunteering, and real community connection matter. They're frustrated that day programs are the default, that people stay in service-dependent loops, that real weeks never quite materialise.

But here's what holds them back:

Nobody's taught them the actual methodology. How to run Discovery. How to carve real jobs. How to identify study pathways. How to find genuine volunteering opportunities. How to build relationships with employers, training providers, community groups.

So even with the best intentions, they fall back into program management. And participants stay in day programs.

The gap isn't commitment. It's methodology.

Here's what changes when you bring Towards Better in:

Your team learns Social Role Valorisation so they see people through a lens of capacity and valued roles across all life domains (employment, study, volunteering, community).

They learn Customised Employment so they know HOW to discover real jobs and create pathways that stick.

They learn ABCD so they can spot assets in the local community and actually build genuine relationships.

Then support becomes practice transformation. People move from day programs into real weeks: employment, study, volunteering, community, purpose.

Your team's frustration becomes effectiveness. They're not managing decline. They're building lives.

Staff retention improves. Participant outcomes improve. Everything changes.

That's what practice development actually looks like.

Ready to equip your team with the methodology in 2027?

www.towardsbetter.com.au/human-service-training-practice-development/

20/08/2026

A trial. Not a training program. Not a "special" placement. A trial.

That's how Todd Scanlon got his start in scaffolding.

In 2018, Todd approached Martyn Coles, owner of Coles Scaffolding Contractors in Swindon, and asked for a shot. Martyn didn't have a diversity policy for it.

He just said yes.

What Martyn saw wasn't a diagnosis. It was someone who showed up, worked hard, and wanted to learn a real trade in a real workplace, doing real work that mattered to the crew.

That decision paid off. Todd won Apprentice of the Year in a UK-wide public vote; over 4,500 people backed him. And a few years later, he was on track to become the first person with Down's syndrome to be a fully qualified scaffolder in the UK.

This is Customised Employment in the wild, even though nobody called it that. No pre-set "appropriate" job for someone with a disability. No readiness test before he was allowed to try. Just a real employer, a real role, and someone willing to look past assumptions long enough to see what Todd could actually do.

Todd didn't need to be "made ready" for scaffolding. He needed someone to hand him a hi-vis vest and a chance.

That's the whole model. Discovery over readiness. Real roles over segregated ones. And employers, like Martyn, who lead with curiosity instead of caution.

Todd, congratulations. And to every employer sitting on the fence about giving someone a genuine trial: this is what it looks like when you don't.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQmjVkCcVAQ

Article: https://metro.co.uk/2022/02/11/man-set-to-become-first-fully-qualified-scaffolder-with-downs-syndrome-16090099

18/08/2026

a New Repair Café Townsville - Northern Beaches Program

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1EVppxvyYi/

🔧♻️ Introducing Circuit Breakers — turning 300+ retired office phones into hands-on learning for Townsville.

We've taken a mountain of decommissioned office phones that were headed straight for landfill and built a program around them. Real tools. Real teardown. Real circular economy in action — and something genuinely worth making at the end of it.

Circuit Breakers runs as a two-part hands-on workshop, tailored to three groups:

🧒 Years 5 & 6 — students take apart a real phone, learn what's inside, do the maths on what it saves from landfill, then build circuit board art, a keypad mosaic, or a desktop organiser. Strong links to Maths, Science, Design & Technologies and Sustainability.

🎓 Years 7 & 8 — a full independent teardown with real data and percentages, followed by a creative build (painted circuit art, original mosaics, jewellery, or a working desktop organiser) and a direct link to STEM career pathways.

🤝 Community, Disability & NDIS Services — a flexible group session where every role, from unscrewing to sorting to describing to directing, is genuine participation. Sessions flex from 45–90 minutes to suit your group.

Across all three:
✅ We bring everything — zero setup on your end
✅ Fully insured, Blue Card holders
✅ Real, purposeful work — not a worksheet, not a simulation

📅 Booking now for Term 4 2026, the December/January school holidays, and Term 1 2027.

📩 Know a school, OSHC program, community centre, or NDIS provider that would love this? Tag them below, share this post, or send us a message — [email protected]

16/08/2026

Two roads leave school.

One heads toward TAFE or uni, a job, relationships, a home, a family.

The other heads toward a segregated class, a “post school option,” a supported day program, sheltered work, a group home.

Most people never chose that second road. It became the default, one referral at a time, because nobody asked the right questions early enough.

If you’re 17 to 22, or you’re a family member, support coordinator or school staff walking alongside someone who is, here are the questions to ask any School Leaver or NDIS employment provider before you sign up.

Their answers will tell you which road you’re actually on.

1. In the last 12 months, how many people you supported got a real job, at award wages, with a real employer? Not a “placement.” A job.

2. What’s your definition of a good outcome? If it isn’t paid, open employment, ask them to explain why not.

3. Can I meet someone you’ve supported who’s working now, and hear about their path?

4. Will you get to know me as a person before you look at a job list? Ask about Discovery, getting to know someone’s strengths, interests and contribution before matching them to work.

5. Do you build relationships with local employers, or do you wait for vacancies to appear?

6. Will support fade over time as I become more independent, or does the program keep me in it indefinitely?

7. What happens if the first job or placement isn’t right? Do we try again, or does it end there?

8. How is my week structured? Is most of my time in the community and around a real workplace, or mostly inside your building with other clients?

9. What does progress look like on paper? Ask to see how they track and report outcomes, and whether “engagement” counts as success on its own.

10. If I choose to leave your service, what changes for me? A good service should be easy to leave because it’s built you up

11. How do you work with TAFE, uni or VET providers? Ask for a real example of them coordinating a course or qualification alongside other support, not just referring you elsewhere.

12. Do I have to use your support workers, or can I bring my own? Choice and control is meant to be central to the NDIS. If the answer is “you must use ours,” ask why.

13. Does funding have to be locked into a 6 or 12 month agreement, or can we start with something shorter, like a 12 week block, to see if it’s a good fit? A confident provider will happily start small.

None of these questions are unreasonable. A provider that’s genuinely building toward employment will answer them without blinking.

Ask early. Ask directly. The road you end up on usually gets decided in these first conversations, not years later when it’s harder to change course.

Note: This is a personal post and does not represent the views or position of any organisation I work for.

14/08/2026

💡 A gap in removalist services — and an opportunity

Big removalist companies don’t want the small jobs. A desk that needs to move across town. A fridge going to a mate’s place. One item, one pickup, one drop-off — too small for the big trucks, too heavy for a mate with a hatchback.

We think there’s a real micro-enterprise here: a small, reliable one-or-two-item pickup-and-delivery service. Simple, hands-on, physical work — no complex customer negotiations, no juggling multiple jobs at once, just “pick it up, move it, drop it off.”

We’re looking for someone who enjoys hands-on physical work and wants to build something of their own around it. We can help set it up — sorting the ute and trailer, and the support you’ll need to make it happen.

If that’s you (or you know someone it might suit), get in touch and let’s have a conversation.

📩 Get in touch if you’re interested in exploring this further

05/08/2026

It’s hard not to feel continually disappointed by the quality of support work I see.

Not as an isolated bad week. As a pattern I’ve watched play out over 7 to 10 years, across services big and small, solo workers and long-established organisations, brand new providers and ones that have been around since before the NDIS existed.

To be clear, this isn’t about intent. Most people in this sector genuinely want good outcomes for the people they support. That’s not in question.

What is in question is the gap between what services say they do and what actually happens on the ground. Person-centred. Strengths-based. Building community connection. These words are everywhere. The practice behind them, far less so.

Staff turn up but lack direction. Support stays centre-based and repetitive long after it should have moved into the community. Participants get a rostered service, not a pathway anywhere.

And here’s the part I want to be really clear about: this is not a funding problem. It is not a “the system needs an overhaul” problem. It is not solved by more compliance, more paperwork, more audits proving that a plan exists on paper.

Those conversations let the sector off the hook, because they locate the problem outside the actual work. More money into the same practice just buys you more of the same practice, at scale.

What we actually need is to lift the game.
That’s a harder message than “give us more resources,” because it puts the responsibility back on services and workers, including the ones who’d tell you they’re already doing well. But it’s the honest one. The gap isn’t effort.
Nobody in this sector is short on effort. The gap is between effort and skill, between good intentions and the actual craft of doing this work well.

Lifting the game means:
✅Clear expectations for what high quality practice actually looks like, not a values statement, an actual standard people can be measured against.
✅Training that’s practical and embedded into real work, not a one-off session that gets filed and forgotten.
✅Staff development that builds genuine capability and confidence, not just compliance sign-offs.
✅Service design that creates real, meaningful, community-connected pathways, not just fuller rosters.

None of this is theoretical. It’s the difference between a support worker who can competently facilitate Discovery, build community connections, and work toward a valued role for someone, and one who is present, well-meaning, and structurally stuck doing the same thing every service before them did.

I don’t say any of this from the outside. I’ve spent years inside these systems, in schools and in services, watching good people get let down by weak scaffolding, and watching participants pay the real cost of that gap.

If you work in this sector and you’ve felt this same disappointment, I don’t think you’re wrong for feeling it. I think it’s a sign you already know what better looks like. The question is whether we’re willing to build toward it, deliberately, rather than waiting for the system to fix itself.

In an industry built on supporting others, we need to be willing to support each other to actually get better at it.

Image Description: Image of a worker who took a client out for Coffee (again) and the worker is completely ignoring the client and meanwhile they received a text message to their phone it says “hey lift your game”

27/07/2026

The rules are changing. Will your program stand out, or fall behind?

From October 2026, funding for traditional group activities is being cut, and a new Inclusive Communities Fund is rewarding providers who deliver real, outcome-focused participation. 

Craft, Cooking, outings and colouring in won’t cut it.

Real Pathways to volunteering, micro-enterprise, and real employment and non segregated community connection will.

The NDIS providers who come through this well are the ones already redesigning their centre-based programs around genuine outcomes, not just filling a timetable.

If that’s you, or you’re wondering whether your current model still stacks up, let’s talk about what a funding-safe, outcome-rich program actually looks like.

📍 Townsville and North Queensland
🔗 towardsbetter.com.au