Natalie and APM Employment Services transcript

Natalie: My name is Natalie and I live in Bairnsdale. I live here with my mum and my two dogs. I like football, karaoke and drawing. I have epilepsy, I have asthma, sickle cell anaemia trait, which is a blood disorder. The sickle cell anaemia makes me tired which can cause the other condition, the epilepsy, to flare up. Because of my disability, I get tired easily.

Gale: Growing up, Natalie was a beautiful baby. I didn't realise she had epilepsy until she was 4 and it was it was quite mild at the time. She didn't have a grand mal until she was 16. She got teased a lot at school. She was she was often teased. It was not good. She loves art, always has loved art, and she did her HSC which she didn't pass as such, but she achieved her HSC, as they say. Natalie always wanted to work with children. She loves children, and so she went to a TAFE in Grafton and it was supposed to be a year's course. It took her four years, and she achieved that as well. She finds it difficult to get work. Obviously she has found it difficult to get work in some of the towns we've lived in.

Kim: Natalie, when she did walk in here, the biggest challenge that she faced was confidence. She had quite a few knockbacks with trying to get in towards employment, especially as she just completed a certificate in childcare. But trying to get in contact with those industries, once they sort of looked at her, they were a bit hesitant to taking her on board. TheirCare opened up here in Bairnsdale and we decided to get in contact with them, offered the assistance that we can provide for them as the employer, and also for taking on Natalie, the assistance that we can provide to Natalie as well with being employed through them. So, we were able to get an interview set up for Natalie. She was away, so she conducted the interview on the phone and she did really fantastic. We were able to coach her over the phone before the interview, to give her some tips, tricks, on how to conduct herself in an interview.

Teresa: Natalie is one of our childcare casual educators. So, she enables us to engage the children in social activities. We teach them life skills, social skills, conflict resolution, and Natalie is a big part of that. She's very beneficial to our team, and because we can't run a service without educators. So, Natalie loves art and craft, so we have her doing some clinics sometimes where she's actually teaching the children some skills with art, painting, those sorts of things, especially in holiday programme where we can do project based learning. We're responding really well with Kim via email or phone call. It really has been a seamless transition. Ongoing support that they provide not only TheirCare but Natalie as well, is any training that we're wanting to provide to Natalie: first aid, CPR, any additional like diabetes. They actually sit with Natalie and assist her to go through that so we can actually get her trained to look after the children that we have in our care, which I think is extremely important. And it also allows her the confidence to engage with those children whilst they're here as well.

Natalie: APM has probably helped me a lot more than any other service has ever done. I think what I really love about the job is the kids. I enjoy it. They're wonderful. Yeah, they're wonderful kids.

Gale: It's changed her a lot because she's got more confidence in herself, much more confidence. I mean, often she comes home, we debrief when she comes home, we always have about 1/2 an hour conversation just to see what she's done during the day. And you know, she sort of tells me that she's been given more jobs to do and she asks for more jobs to do. Now that's also terrific.

Teresa: Natalie is much more vocal now with what her ideas are, her philosophy of what she wants to bring to a service and what she can provide to the children as well. So, she's becoming more engaged in the actual programming of the service and not just being someone who comes for their shift and then goes home. She really is starting to become more invested. She's going from strength to strength, and I'm a big believer and a big advocate in putting the right people in the right spots, and that's why she's doing as well as she is.

Kim: Everyone that was in the office was just jumping up from her chairs when we found out that she'd actually got the job. The excitement that Natalie had got a position in the role that she really wanted to, and that we knew that she was going to thrive in. So it was across the board that there were celebrations.