Independence Australia provides specialist services for people living with a disability or other personal need. These include one-on-one supports in the home and community, psychology and counselling, therapy assistance, support coordination, and 24/7 shared supported accommodation across five houses in Melbourne. We work in partnership with a variety of agencies including the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA), Transport Accident Commission (TAC), Commonwealth Department of Health and Victorian Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH) to deliver a range of services, while others are independently funded or supported by our social enterprise.

In May we expanded the delivery of our disability services to NSW, providing support coordination and in-home services to people located in Western Sydney.

Our support coordination team works with eligible NDIS funded participants of all ages across metropolitan Melbourne, regional Victoria, and Western Sydney. Our specialty is supporting people through life transition periods, including hospital to home transitions, housing exploration and self-directed capacity building for purposeful impact. In the last year, the team facilitated the successful discharge of thirteen people with complex disabilities and health needs from hospital and residential aged care, supporting them to transition to home settings.

Our shared supported accommodation service provides specialist supports to people living with a complex or significant disability across five homes throughout Melbourne. This year we welcomed six new residents to our shared supported accommodation houses, implementing personalised supports to suit their daily needs. In consultation with the Department of Families, Fairness & Housing we completed several home modifications across our sites and were successful in receiving a Commonwealth Continuity of Support grant to aid property updates at one of the sites.

Independence Australia supplies more than 12,000 continence, wound care, skin care, nutritional and other healthcare products, mobility aids and equipment across Australia. We distribute up to 3,200 orders a day from our six distribution centres across the nation.  As a social enterprise, part of the proceeds made from the sale of healthcare products, mobility aids and equipment go back into the community, supporting our core charitable purpose.

In the last year we experienced significant growth across the business delivering over 715,000 orders to our customers Australia wide. We extended our NDIS consumables customer base, and with a clear focus on customer experience, rolled out a new software solution to enhance the customer experience.

This year the marketing team focused on generating fresh and innovative content to enhance the customer journey. New videos, animations, brochures, micro sites, and fact sheets were created and interspersed into the physical and digital journey, to help our customers access specific service and product information suited to their unique needs.

We cultivated a robust collection of customer stories, sharing positive firsthand experiences of Independence Australia’s services and products. These stories, communicated in both video and written mediums, explain how and why they choose Independence Australia as their product or service provider and help others understand what we do. Similarly, these positive outcomes have helped us to communicate the impact that our social enterprise can have on the lives of the people we support.

The People Experience team is responsible for delivering the workforce planning and capability component of the Organisation’s strategic direction.

In partnership with our leaders, the team is responsible for managing the employee lifecycle, skills enhancement and development, and design and administration of activities to enhance the employee experience to attract and retain talent.

During what proved to be a challenging year for many, People Experience, in partnership with the Health and Safety team rolled out several initiatives to support the health and wellbeing of our dedicated staff and keep the workplace safe. The team ensured necessary supports were provided to help our employees overcome challenges presented by the pandemic and delivered consistent information to help them to make informed decisions to keep our workplace, customers, and
community safe.

The Quality and Safety team support the business in the assessment and management of operational and occupational risks.

This is achieved through an integrated risk management approach in compliance with the ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management Standard and NDIS Practice Standards.

As part of our ongoing commitment to the safety of our customers and staff, we continued to develop safe working practices to manage new risks presented by the pandemic and implemented a specialised risk assessment framework to improve quality of care outcomes for our complex care customers.

We continued to maintain compliance with the ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management System Standards, with the successful completion of our re-certification audit. Furthermore, our inaugural audit under the NDIS Practice Standard Certification was completed, allowing us to maintain registration as an NDIS provider.