GERALDINE FOWLER:
Thank you very much for the opportunity for presenting the KeyRing model today. My thanks to all the support services. We are very excited about the program and it has really grown and expanded over seven or eight years now.
Just to mention that certainly KeyRing is all about supporting people with disability living independently in the community.
It supports people, the model itself supports people to maintain their own tenancy. It is not a bricks and mortar program. It is around tenancy and support. What makes KeyRing exciting and unique is it is much more than a tenancy program because people go out there.
What KeyRing does is add value to the model of support. It allows people with disability to live active lives in the community and have a sense of belonging. Another important thing KeyRing does is it supports people to get to know one another and make friendships. People make friends with people that live close by and they are all supported to become part of the peer support network.
This is really important because all the research shows that over many years, the main reasons for tenancy breakdowns for people with intellectual disability is isolation, vulnerability and loneliness. This is what KeyRing aims to reduce and prevent.
Just to tell you what KeyRing is, because people think what on earth are you talking about? It is seven or eight people living in a close geographic area, it could be a suburb or in the close surrounds. People can live in a variety of housing options. We have people who rent in public housing, privately, people in social housing, some people own their own home, and we can also support people in boarding houses, for example.
The majority of people live on their own but we also have people sharing with friends and siblings, some people are partners and some people are married. There is a range of options people can have. What is special about KeyRing is people are all supported by one person that lives in the local community or knows it very well. Their job is to get everyone together and support them altogether.
I can say that certainly everyone who has spoken here today, if you would ask anyone what about KeyRing is the most important thing in their life, it is that they have their own option, whether they choose to live alone or with others. That's the most important thing to them.
This slide here is a little bit of a presentation, visual presentation of how KeyRing looks and really, people living in a close geographic area together. They might be in the same neighbourhood or if they are a little bit further away, we support people that live together by train or bus or public transport so they can get to other people’s places.
The KeyRing support person provides support in three main areas. That is housing and tenancy, community participation and access to services, and development of informal support and peer support networks. Every person has a weekly visit from the support person and telephone calls, and once a month they organise everyone to get together for a social get-together.
That can be a very casual thing, maybe go to someone's house for coffee or dinner, go to the movies, whatever they want to do, they do. Celebrating birthdays is often very special and people enjoy it so they do that a lot.
Here's a couple of photos of people at the front of the house.
Just moving onto the types of...housing and tenancy support, we look at single (inaudible) skill, liaising with real estate, organising maintenance, that's an important one, and also organising State trustees. We had some people that had State trustees for many years but before they got involved with KeyRing they had no one to advocate how to spend their money. So KeyRing does a lot of work to liaise with State trustees for how to live their life.
Looking at home safety and other things, which is very important. Day to day issues like how to use the remote, the heater, it could be a refrigerator breakdown, the roof caving in.
A whole range of things that can happen, and it's really dealing with day to day issues. We know that things are not set in concrete and things can change, but when things do go wrong, KeyRing can step in for support.
The second part of the KeyRing person's role is to link people with community, ensuring everyone has medical services – a local GP, that they are linked into the community health centre for all those ancillary supports.
We look at whether people have something to do during the day and if not, linking them to employment or linking them to different types of activities and places they may like to go where they can enjoy doing something and feel value in that. So, linking in to neighbours, community centres etc.
We look at getting people involved in the community, showing people where the coffee shops are, their favourite restaurants or hotel, where the library is or the swimming pool, and assisting people to access those sorts of things. And the flexibility with KeyRing is that in the support visit that people have weekly, if they want to combine that visit with another person in KeyRing with a friend, they can go with a support person and have a coffee together. So, it is flexible and aims to create flexibility for people to do what they would like to do.
I will just quickly skip through these last few pictures.They are just ones about local communities and people linking into things. Showing people how to use public transport is also something we do.
The social support network is an important part of KeyRing. People are supported to get to know one another and develop a peer support friendship network. Once a month, the support person will assist everyone to organise a get together, but it's more than that – the aim is for people to develop those friendships, for them to initiate and continue on their own. People can ring each other and organise to go out together, or drop in after work for a coffee, or go down to the local pub and have a drink together.
The idea is that they have someone who knows everybody in the community and can support them to develop friendships, joint interests and hobbies together.
Here are a couple of photos of the different sorts of social activities and things that people have got together to do.
Just a couple of comments that people from KeyRing have added in. What I would like to mention is just a very quick story about two people who were living in the same block of units together, they each had their own unit that they were renting and they had probably been there for a couple of years. They worked in the same place, caught the same train to work, stood on the same platform together, but they never spoke to each other. They did not know each other.
When we had KeyRing set up there, we supported them informally to get to know each other and develop a friendship together. And they did – they became very good friends. They could also hold spare keys for each other so that if they got locked out, they could knock on each other's door.
It just shows what can be valuable in KeyRing is that in that informal way you can support people to develop friendships. So, that's an important part of the model.
Another quick thing – it certainly is not just the people with a very mild disability. We have people with significant support needs and it works very well with other sorts of supports. People can have both formal and informal support and KeyRing can work quite well with those. So, that is an overview of the model. Thank you very much for listening and giving me the opportunity. Thank you.
GERALDINE FOWLER: Thank You Very Much for the Opportunity for Presenting the Keyring Model
/ NDIS Housing Showcase VIC(AUNDIS3105A)