Blog

Although she is originally from Yorkshire, in the North of England, Meg feels quite at home in the ConneXu community. Her training and experience in behaviour management and social work reflects her passion for working with people.

As Quality Practice Leader, Meg will be focused on working to connect people with the community, enabling them to develop their skills and grow towards independence. An intuitive person, she understands that people’s needs change, and each person has different needs. Read More

Corey is an intrepid young man who sets himself goals, then patiently works his way towards achieving them. Soon after moving into his flat, with support from ConneXu, Corey decided he was going to learn to cook.

He goes to cooking classes, run by Methodist City Action, twice a week and already has a delicious and impressive repertoire of dishes he can prepare. Read More

Through her role as Quality Practice Leader, Josie Reid has brought to ConneXu her ability to combine natural and community supports around people with disabilities to enable them to live life as they choose to.

Her work within the health industry during the last 25 years has led Josie into some interesting leadership roles within the community and disability services, giving her a useful depth of clinical and management experience. Read More

Melissa and Gabbie used to live at home, but as many young people do when independence beckons, both longed to go flatting. Their parents were reluctant to let them go, but persistence won the day. Read More

Grace is firmly focused on ConneXu’s vision of empowering the people she supports and connecting them with their community to enable them to achieve their personal goals. She first caught the executive team’s eye when, as a student social worker in her final year, she took up her 16 week placement at ConneXu. She has since graduated and taken up a role as a Community Facilitator, working 20 hours a week within our close-knit team. Read More

The success of last year’s Adaptive Cricket Day (run by Hamilton Cricket at Waikato University) encouraged many enthusiastic people at ConneXu to play in this year’s Cricket Day, held on 22^nd March. In fact, Sarah Hobden, impromptu ConneXu sports facilitator, says that there was so much interest she could nearly have filled three ConneXu teams. The day was a huge success with ConneXu winning two of its three games and the event enjoyed by all. Read More

In October, 2015, the Centre for Inclusion and Citizenship at the University of British Columbia hosted: Claiming full citizenship – an international conference on self-determination, personalisation and individualised funding.

The conference brought together over 500 delegates from 15 countries: researchers, policy makers, government representatives, service providers, agency administrators, people with disabilities and other interested parties. Read More

ConneXu is committed to supporting people in line with the eight principles of Enabling Good Lives. To achieve this we need to understand what the people we support really want and have processes and systems in place that ensure they are heard.

An important step was the recent establishment of a ConneXu Enabling Good Lives Committee. Facilitated by Lois Ure, the members of the committee represent their peers –  the people supported by ConneXu, with the intention of becoming their advocates, to speak on their behalf. Read More

When Jesse wanted to learn to swim, Chrissie Burd made sure he did learn. She became a qualified swimming instructor, and already Jesse can float and kick.

Jesse had been enjoying his trips to the Te Awamutu pools with Chrissie for some months and was now keen to learn to swim (February, 2015). Chrissie was determined to support Jesse in achieving his goal, which could bring Jesse so many useful outcomes. Read More