In terms of access and inclusion feedback for physical accessibility, Brampson
Park and Hawker Park redevelopments that I've been working with Honny on
their going to start on Friday night with all of their incoming and outcoming,
that's one of their quietest times and it's going to be fairly intensive.
I'm a community development officer and I work for local government. My
particular title is community development officer for access and inclusion.
Craigie Leisure Centre - the works for that are
actually commencing this weekend. Great. I know.
I had no real idea what local government did.
To me, it really was rates and rubbish but once I
started work within the community development team
I became aware of just how much local government does
and the amount of areas that we're involved with.
I've always wanted to work with people, I guess and I wanted
to do something that was going to be helpful and, you know,
save the world a little piece at a time and what
better place to start than your local community?
So we're here at the front of this leisure centre because we're
about to undertake a sort of medium-grade building project here.
Why we're doing this is because we've had complaints from
several customers over the years and a number of groups
who have indicated to us that it's quite difficult for
them to make their way safely into the entranceway.
The paving that's here is actually quite uneven now.
We've got a lot of cross slope so, if you are using a wheelchair for example,
you can be coming up from the car park, not only leaning
backwards one way but also leaning off to the side.
So we're basically going to be levelling the whole front of the centre here.
Unfortunately, we are going to have to lose these three trees here,
because their tree roots are coming up and they're disrupting the
surface area and that's one of the biggest problems that we have.
They are beautiful trees but they're not significant.
We had that assessed to make sure that there's no
endangered species living in them for example.
And we will replant trees in one of our nearby locations to make up for that.
Obviously I work for local government.
We are a bureaucracy and there's a hundred odd pieces of legislation that we've got to comply
with so we do have a whole row of processes that we have to go through to accomplish things.
Thank you. Bye.
All right. Well, good morning, everyone. Welcome to my access and inclusion induction.
Access and inclusion is one of the major components
of my role so I am responsible for developing
and monitoring and overseeing some of the
implementation behind this access and inclusion plan.
Everybody's going to be affected by access and inclusion issues at some point
in their life and that's why we should all be taking it very seriously.
For example, you might have a sports injury - you've
broken your leg, and that's going to affect you in exactly
the same way as somebody who's been in a wheelchair
because they were born without the use of their legs.
Shall we start just going through them one by one? Yes.
Well, this meeting is the assessment panel for the community funding program.
We're looking at four applications that have been
submitted under our arts and cultural development fund.
What were people's thoughts on whether they met
the council mission and strategic objectives?
I've put 'definitely'.
Working in local government, working in community services in general actually,
you're always going to have to pick your battles.
Part of my job is actually convincing people that
what I think is important is important to them too,
so by showing them what the benefits are to them and the customers
that they're trying to deal with, it makes my work a whole lot easier.
In regard to value for money, did anyone have any concerns about?
While the funds are available, it's a lot of money for only roughly ten people.
It's not going to be though. It won't be, that's right.
They're actually planning on this being an ongoing program so it's ten people per course.
It's all about, I guess, understanding other people's
motivations as well as your own and then working with that.
I think with some programs it's better to have a smaller
number particularly if you've got at-risk young people.
Yeah.
'Cos they might have quite high support requirements and it allows you to have more,
well, closer to one-on-one contact than for a larger group where they become
a bit more anonymous and you can't necessarily engage with them as well.
OK. Well, that's fairly clear.
I'm in agreement. Great.
Well, I'm here today to visit the Bits and Bytes internet and computer
training program and see how the first ten-week course is going.
Groups of up to ten students learn some basic computer skills.
It's designed to be individual so they come
here to learn what they actually want to learn.
It was my job to put together the grant application and then
to be there as a point of call for whatever might come up.
Do you think that from the feedback that we've had from them so far that
they've gotten what they were hoping to out of this particular course?
I think so. I think we will probably get them back on another day, just for an
afternoon tea and then sit them down and talk to them about how they felt it went.
Great.
What they would like learn if they had the opportunity to
come back and what their interest is in the internet café.
That's what, you know, that's the sort of ...
Yeah, that would be important before we take it to the next stage. Yes.
Now we'll get a brush. You watch.
Get the brush.
And we'll make it bigger.
You watch what I do. You watch my hand. See that finger.
I've run out of paint!
When a project comes together, there's nothing better.
You have this huge sense of accomplishment, and obviously,
you've put a lot of work in and it's not just you.
You've done it by working with a number of different
people who've helped you get to that point.
But the best thing you can ever do is actually see somebody reaping the benefits of that
and getting out of it the outcomes that you were hoping to achieve in the first place.