Read the latest stories from the community
AQA has established a COVID-19 Task Group that is responsible for monitoring official responses to the coronavirus crisis as it unfolds, and for taking appropriate action. Our role as an employer and service provider is to follow authoritative recommendations on minimising the spread of the new coronavirus and its associated illness, COVID-19, among our staff and the people they […]
Rita Figueiredo began to work with AQA more than 20 years ago, at a critical time in her life. A tram had collided with her car, while she was driving. It had overturned her and pushed her 60 metres down the road. “I always had very low self-esteem,” she reveals. “The accident was not my […]
Shyama Dookun-Ramburn thought she wanted to be an accountant. She had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure she became one. But at the very moment when 12 years of scheming, working, saving, migrating, studying, and gaining experience had set her up for success, she understood that her heart had strayed and was elsewhere.
Chante Masset is looking forward to the year ahead. The 20-year-old, who sustained an incomplete C5 spinal cord injury in a pool accident when she was 11, is hoping she might begin learning to drive. “Just being able to have the opportunity to have an occupational therapist (OT) teach me how to drive would have […]
Nobody thought Fernanda would get multiple sclerosis. Her friends didn’t. Her children didn’t. And certainly, Fernanda didn’t. Even her oncologist, whom she had consulted about a tumour, and who was the first to notice something odd in her movement, thought she might have been drinking. She was 39 when the diagnosis was confirmed, 15 years […]
James has been living with an SCI for many years. He has an independent outlook, and he retired recently from running his own business. Among the recreations he wants to pursue in retirement are cycling, scuba diving and travelling. Not long ago, James received his first NDIS plan, under which he engaged support coordination from […]
A while ago, I received an invitation from the Bali Sports Foundation to coach some up-and-coming teams in Asia that have taken up wheelchair rugby. Rugby has been a relatively new phenomenon in various South Asian countries. Consequently the players do not have many opportunities to develop and better their game as individuals or as […]
Everyone needs a break from the everyday routine of living with a spinal injury. That is as true for the injured person as it is for their loved ones. The therapeutic term for such a break is respite. And the concept of respite, traditionally, has been fairly narrow. Typically, when someone with a spinal injury […]
I recently ventured overseas for a family wedding to Vanuatu, where you could say, I encountered some logistical hurdles. I’ll start from the beginning… I had a 7am flight to Vanuatu with a connecting flight through to Sydney, with an expected layover of just under 2 hours. Being the intelligent readers you all are, you may […]
“Angelo sometimes says, and I agree, that we are like a married couple,” disability support worker Lisa Jamieson says of her favourite client. “Because we finish each other’s sentences. And we argue with the same sort of passion as a married couple. But then as soon as the argument is over, it is as if […]
