Using Skills and Confidence to Shine

Brian is a fun-loving, driven 18-year-old in his last year of high school. He is the youngest of a big family with four older brothers, a driving factor in developing his innate leadership abilities and a quality that has awarded him the School Captaincy. 

Everyday Independence has provided occupational therapy and speech pathology since 2017 to help him increase his independence with daily activities and social skills.

Brian has achieved many of his goals along his therapy journey. In addition to encouraging a more positive approach to the unfamiliar, his support team works together to use his daily routine to practice new approaches. This has also empowered his team to advocate for his needs. 

Over his final year of school, he started thinking about life beyond and what greater independence could look like. His long-term aspiration of Brian is to work in an office one day, and he’s always expressed how much he’d like to visit the ‘OT Office’. It seemed the perfect time to arrange a work experience placement for him at Everyday Independence’s South Eastern Sydney therapy hub!

During his time at the office, Brian helped with several different jobs and was able to practice many of the skills he’d developed over the years. One of his tasks was to communicate with some of his previous practitioners. He connected with Cassie (OT), who used to support him before she went on maternity leave, and Lauren, who Brian was previously ‘pen pals’ with on Microsoft Teams.  He eagerly asked and answered questions, made jokes and showed much excitement. Cassie noted an amazing improvement from meeting him a few years ago when he would hide and not engage with practitioners. 

Working at the hub allowed Brian to work towards his longer-term goal of being more autonomous in all areas of his daily life and to feel prepared for his transition out of school. He’s already asked to do more work experience days at surrounding hubs! 

He also has goals of being able to help his parents with grocery shopping, developing his money-handling skills and using short sentences to seek help, ask questions and express his wants and needs. Brian’s team has found working with him extremely rewarding, enjoyable and entertaining.

Seeing Brian so happy and excited about his role made me very proud of him. It was amazing to see him use all his skills and his personality shine.

Speech Pathologist, Teresa

Are you Ready to Achieve Positive Life Change?

Speak to our Access team on 1300 179 131 or complete an online form, and we’ll be in touch to learn more about how we can assist you or someone you care for.