The Wondering Wattle

09/12/2025

Today is Human Rights Day; a reminder that every person has the right to dignity, safety, inclusion and a real say in their own life. 🌏✨💪

At The Wondering Wattle, being 'human-rights-driven' in our support coordination isn’t just a fancy slogan – it’s how we show up every day for humans by:

* Seeing people with disability as rights-holders, not “cases”

* Protecting choice and control which means the right to say 'no'

* Challenging decisions and systems that undermine safety, dignity or culture

* Building supports together that are trauma-informed, values-led and centred on what matters to each individual person

Human rights live in the everyday moments – how we listen, how we plan, and how we respond, especially when something isn’t okay.

Today we’re recommitting to helping humans thrive, not just survive. We'd love you to recommit with us, too.

💛

To mark Human Rights Days we asked some of our 2025 Australian Human Rights Awards finalists to tell us what human rights mean to them.

02/12/2025

🌎 International Day of People with Disability 🌎

18/11/2025

🎉 Happy Birthday, Clare! 🎉

Today we’re celebrating our Support Coordinator, Clare. The reliable get-it-done thinker and doer for our families with kiddos on the scheme. As our paediatric-specialty SC, Clare champions children and their parents through the early-childhood maze, especially navigating the all-too-infuriating “parental responsibility” assumptions and and non-supportive school challenges, to make sure supports actually meet real needs and eliminate real barriers.

For so many parents, Clare is the calm anchor in the eye of the storm: steady, thorough, and always thinking, wondering, and fine-tuning her practice and processes to prioritise the betterment of deserving little and big people.

Our favourite things we love about our Clare:
💚Rock-solid reliability & follow-through
💚Evidence-led advocacy for kids and families
💚Calm under pressure, clear in the chaos
💚Endless curiosity and continuous improvement
💚Her wardrobe of endless shades of green

We love, love, love having Clare as part of our team and we celebrate all you are and all the hats you wear 💛 ✨

17/11/2025

Sometimes courage looks like Shane's post below.

"Saving Bedford" was critically important for the 1,000+ people, including participants we support coordinate with, who now have secure employment, a sense of belonging and deep connection to their workplace......BUT.....(and there's a BUT).......

The supported employment structure is NOT human-rights driven, nor entirely and completely inclusive, nor a picture of a 'fare day's wage for a fare day's work' with many, many employees in supported employment earning half or less of the minimum wage.

So, whilst my team and I join in celebrating the relief and joy with the workers that matter most (and their loved ones), we also sit in discomfort with a supported employent structure which continues to perpetuate antiquated, tokenistic principles of employability.

Let this brignt-light on Bedford, as one of the many supported employment providers, be a "shake up and wake up" reminder to us ALL that ALL people deserve a 'fair day's wage for a fair day's work'.

I am really pleased to hear that Bedford workers will have stability and job security moving forward. So many smiles and so much pride.

I just want to say something important while celebrating this moment. Our disability employment structure needs real attention. Many people in supported employment are paid wages that do not reflect respect or dignity. That needs to change.

But employment itself matters deeply. Having a place to go each day. Having a purpose. Having friends and community. Feeling valued. That is powerful for any person.

Big thank you to the Malinauskas Government for stepping in. I truly believe that without state support Bedford may have closed and hundreds of people would have lost meaningful work. Now the future looks much brighter.

I really hope this becomes a turning point for fair wages and improved dignity in supported employment for people with disabilities.

This is what inclusion should feel like.







Image description.
Bedford workers celebrating at an announcement event. South Australian Premier stands at the front holding a microphone under a TV screen while the room erupts into cheers and applause.

14/11/2025

At The Wondering Wattle, “Helping Humans Thrive” has always meant ALL humans – including those living at the intersection of disability, neurodivergence, mental ill-health and gender diversity. We know that for many trans and gender-diverse people with disability, the world is still not gentle, safe or accessible enough.

Australian research tells us that trans and gender-diverse people are more likely to live with disability, experience poorer mental health, and face higher rates of violence and discrimination than the general population. These aren’t just statistics to us – they are our participants, families, friends and our colleagues.

So during Transgender Awareness Week, this week, we want to say this clearly:

🌿 You belong exactly as you are
🌿 Your gender is valid, your access needs are valid, your safety matters
🌿 You deserve supports that affirm your identity and your disability

Our team at The Wondering Wattle includes both proud trans folk and fierce allies.

If you’re a trans or gender-diverse person with disability (or you love one) and you’re feeling worn down or left out by the system, We see you. We believe you. You deserve more than survival and we'd love to connect to see how we can support YOU to thrive.

All are welcome at The Wondering Wattle 💛

13/11/2025

Building meaningful connections with other kin-minded providers is an absolute must. Why?

1) Because people who connect with TWW have trust that we will connect them with others who are of our 'ilk' and trustworthy
2) Because my team at TWW benefit from the kindness and care of others through the wins, the losses, the highs and the lows
3) Because the sector is filled with douche-bags (not such a professional term but perhaps ok in this context?) and when we find the diamonds in the rough, we know we are all going to be ok.

Congratulations and heart felt grattitude to one of the most incredible kin-aligned providers, Fit N Well, on celebrating five laps around the NDIS sun - that's no small feat.

Anthony and the team have found a 'winning formula' for supporting mental health through exercise. TWW have participants who benefit so greatly from their support and, for me, as a Mum, I have seen first hand how profoundly impacting connecting my AudHD 15yr old with Anthony has been - she doesn't get to ANY regular appointments, except for her sessions with Anthony.

If you are south (or north from January 2026) of Adelaide - check out Fit n Well. It could be the missing piece of your, a participant's or a family/friend's puzzle to stable mental health.

Brave is kind
Meryl
Founder, Specialist and Support Coordinator

09/11/2025

🎉 Happy Birthday, Sarah! 🎉

Today we’re celebrating our Senior Relationships Coordinator, Sarah. The magician who connects participants with the very best hand-picked supports and somehow gets about “eleventy-million” things done at once. 📝

Sarah is our favourite horse-lover 🐴 and a fierce people-protector 🛡️. She brings sharp, strategic thinking to our team and notices early when something doesn’t feel quite right for participants or for us. With years of experience (and even more years of dedication and compassion), Sarah makes sure people have the extra support they need to live their best ordinary lives.

What we love about our Sarah:
Honesty & integrity 🫶
Grit & grace 🫶
A fierce commitment to matching the right support with each unique human 🫶

Sarah, thank you for embodying our values - courage, curiosity, community, and connection - in everything you do.

Big love and the happiest of birthdays from all of us 💛✨

04/11/2025

Let’s be honest: the NDIS is hard right now.

Funding is being cut, the rules keep shifting, the “guidance” feels more like restriction than support, and too many planning meetings are leaving people rattled instead of respected.

If you’re an NDIS participant, or you love someone who is, it can feel heavy, exhausting, and unfair. Especially right now. We can’t pretend to know everyone’s exact experience, and we’ll never promise magic fixes. But we can encourage you with this:

🌿 WINS ARE STILL POSSIBLE 🌿

Across the last 29 plan reassessments, The Wondering Wattle has supported participants to secure some genuinely extraordinary outcomes:

📍increases in total funding
📍inclusion (or re-inclusion) of Support Coordination (incl. kids!)
📍front-loaded supports to balance fluctuating needs
📍the kinds of funded supports that actually make an “ordinary life” possible

We’re pretty chuffed with these results because they’re not theory, they’re REAL changes for REAL people to impact REAL lives. They’re proof that even in the middle of all the chaos, our Specialist Support Coordinators and Support Coordinators are still creating impact that matters; person by person, plan by plan.

This is what “helping humans thrive” looks like for The Wondering Wattle team so, if you (or your person) need experienced, values-led coordination in this bumpy climate, reach out: people@wonderingwattle.com.au | 1300 966 337 we'd love to chat.

💛

03/11/2025

A powerful reminder, as we near the end of another school year, about the importance of inclusion and accessibility for ALL.

If you have kiddos in school who are struggling with meaningful inclusion and support, feel free to reach out.

We have a couple of exceptional paediatric specialty Support Coordinators who have guided parents and student-participants towards meaningful inclusion in their school.

We don't suggest we have ALL the answers but we certainly have strong knowledge of the obligations of education settings, ideas on how to advocate, and history of great 'wins' and success stories for meaningful, inclusive school engagement.

Transition planning starts now for 2026 to set up the strategies for success. We’d love to support you with the process.

💛

PS: "GCSE" in the video is the equivalent to our Yr12 in Australia

01/11/2025

🎉 Happy Birthday, Shannon! 🎉

Today we’re celebrating our Senior Operations Coordinator and The Wondering Wattle’s second-ever hire, Shannon.

Shannon is the yin to Meryl’s yang: the linear order to her constellation big-picture thinking. She’s the engine behind our efficiency and the calm behind the scenes who keeps us:
✅ databased
✅ tick-boxed
✅ trained
✅ systems-smoothed
✅ paddling like graceful ducks (above and below the water… mostly 😉)

Shannon loves a list… and a list of the list… and then a priority list of that list. More importantly, she builds processes that never, ever forget inclusion: for everyone, in every way, across every part of life.

Shannon has the BEST listening ears and team-holding-shoulders and, we love her deeply considered thoughts and ideas which make sure we all feel included as a team.

Shan, thank you for being our backbone and helping us deliver outstanding, rights-based support with enormous heart. We love that we get to celebrate you 💛✨

30/10/2025

Anthony and the team at Fit N Well use movement and simple exercise analogies to help people map and regulate their “big feelings.” It’s clever, practical, and meets people where they’re at.

We’ve seen real shifts for participants who’ve spent time with Fit N Well - greater understanding, more confidence, better self-regulation, sprinkles of contentment.

If you (or a young person you know; though it works for any age) find the usual “sit on the couch and talk about feelings” approach tough, consider reaching out to Fit N Well.

Why share this? Because celebrating what works helps more humans thrive and keeps the change going for our community. And that's what we're about here at The Wondering Wattle.

💛

28/10/2025

At The Wondering Wattle, we believe support should never be "cut-copy–paste".

Every person we support coordinate with has their own story, their own hopes, their own needs. We call it the 'individual experience' of disability.

So our team don’t just “find a provider.” We put considered thought into finding the *right* provider for each person, in each moment, with each individual's needs. Because no two lives are the same, so no two service connections should be either.

And when it clicks, it matters, and it works.

We received this note from one of the incredible OTs we collaborate with. This is what great NDIS supports should look like: teams working together, sharing information, staying human, and keeping the person they are all there to support at the centre.

To every allied health professional, support worker, LAC, family member and provider who shows up with honesty and care, thank you. Partnership is how we get safe, sustainable outcomes for participants. It’s how we can all be a part of helping humans thrive.

💛