The Family Collective...

Our Family Plan drawn on butcher's paper...

For nearly a year now I have been involved with a pilot project with Carer's Queensland (CQ) and Disabilities Services Queensland (DSQ). This project involves 10 families in the Darling Downs area that currently do not have any DSQ Family Funding. The aim of the project is to give one 'normal' family's funding to a group of 10 families to see if it can make a difference for those families that have children with disabilities or not. The pilot project goes for two years and at the end our group's input will help decide if this is something that DSQ will do with other families throughout Queensland. I feel very proud to be involved with this project as I feel that I am able to contribute to a process that will hopefully benefit many more families in the future.

What happened yesterday is that our group's facilitator and her boss from CQ came to our home for a few hours and we nutted out a Family Plan just for the four of us. Russell and I planned where we want our family to be in 12 months time, in 6 months time, in 1 month and what we can start doing next week towards our goals. We also enlisted people that we could approach to help us achieve our goals.

Our main goals are as follows:

1. We want Russell home during the week at night and not working in Brisbane.

2. We want to get the veggie garden really going, buying surrounds for the gardens as barriers and edging. Fencing needs to be attended to also.

3. We want the boys to play together outside more and interact more. This will be achieved by us getting a cubby house.

4. We want to get shade trees planted in spring and get more fruit trees planted. Within our time frame we want to be as self reliant as we can be.

5. By Christmas I will have my pigs that will be fattened up for when Sausage also get processed by the Home butcher.

6. To have bees at our property as well.

These goals have been fantastic to make and I am really excited about the pictures that were drawn by Annette. Thank you so much Annette and Chris for the hard work you have put into making our little dreams a reality. As a family we have extensively discussed the drawings since yesterday and the big page is still out covering our pool table as it is such a good reminder of what we are setting out to achieve.

The boys love that they are getting their cubby house finally and love to have their own veggies so will look forward this week to helping with the gathering of the cow manure that we have so much of. This has seen them cooperating all day yesterday and rather proud of themselves as well that they didn't fight a WHOLE day. They have tried to continue that today but so far has not worked. They are back on track as we 'speak' and I am glad that they are trying.

On a different note: So far the No Spending Week is going really well. I have things all planned out for the week which is great. Will let you know at the end how I ended up doing...

Cheers Damaris