NDIS recasts service sector
CENTACARE CHIEF EXECUTIVE ANITA VEIVERS IS PROOF THAT SEEMINGLY ORDINARY PEOPLE IN OUR COMMUNITY CAN ACHIEVE EXTRAORDINARY THINGS, WRITES ALICIA NALLY
IT may not look like it when she is cooking over a campfire in the bush, or witnessing the emotional high school graduation of her youngest daughter, but Anita Veivers is at the Far North Queensland forefront of a massive social change.
The chief executive of Centacare has been preparing for the start of the federal government’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) for the past few years and now it is here, she sees there is plenty more work to do in both education about the system and in harnessing an appropriate workforce. The 49-year-old, whose family hails from Ireland but who grew up in London and Swindon in southwest England, made a spontaneous decision to apply for work at a children’s summer camp in the United States after finishing school.
That camp turned out to be full of kids with profound intellectual and physical disabilities and Ms Veivers loved it.
Upon returning to the United Kingdom, she found a job supporting people who had returned to the community from a large psychiatric institution.
“It was a really steep learn- ing curve but it was a great organisation and they supported and trained me well,” Ms Veivers said.
“My sister-in-law worked in the disability sector and I thought what she did was in- teresting. I had a strong social conscience and was fortunate that an opportunity presented, so I was really in the right place at the right time.
“Throughout my career I have taken every opportunity for professional development and study which has allowed me to progress from direct support work to co-ordination and management and now into leadership.”
Once an Aussie backpacker, Ms Veivers’ husband Steve brought her back to his hometown of Cairns where the couple have spent most of the past three decades raising their three daughters. Among her biggest achievements, she rates raising three “confident, beautiful, young women with my husband, balanced with a full-time career” and laying the foundation for Centacare’s “transition to a business approach, where we are paid for services in arrears, rather than receive funding in advance”.
“This is a huge change for the sector and has already started to impact organisations across Australia,” Ms Veivers said. “The community service sector is evolving rapidly and in order to remain viable we have needed to transition from
MS VEIVERS WAS THE DRIVING FORCE BEHIND CENTAONE, A WEBSITE THAT AIMS TO ASSIST PEOPLE FROM LOCAL COMMUNITIES