Welcome

Welcome to my new blog.

Over the last 6 years, since my 7th daughter was born with Down Syndrome, I have spent a lot of time and money on therapies and equipment to help her. Over the years her diagnoses have grown to include hearing impairment, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (a connective tissue disorder she shares with her sisters and I), Obstructive Sleep Apnoea, Bronchiectasis (a lung disease caused by scarring from repeated pneumonias), Autism, and next week she sees a neurologist to see whether she also has a mild form of Cerebral Palsy.
We are a Kiwi (New Zealand) family living in Australia. Samara was born here, in Brisbane in September of 2008. Her disability meant we were unable to qualify for Permanent Residence. And being born here does not make her a citizen until her 10th birthday. This meant she did not qualify for the services, equipment resources, respite, and financial support that other children with disabilities are entitled to. Because we have a public healthcare system, insurance doesn't cover most of these things either.

Our battle to get Permanent Residency was a long one, and with a mammoth effort, a small fortune, and a total uprooting of the family, we finally won that battle and got a Medical waiver so our Australian born daughter, and the rest of us, could become Permanent Residents. The story of this journey is on my other blog http://just-juniors.blogspot.com/ for anyone who wants to read it.

As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. And our circumstances certainly necessitated using our imaginations to find other ways of doing things! I also started spending a lot of time on the internet, like a lot of parents of special needs kids do, and started several pages, groups, blogs, 2 businesses, and a charity. Like a lot of parents of special needs don't! Lol.

To date I have my Disability Awareness business on Cafe Press. www.cafepress.com/justjuniors where I sell t-shirts and other bits and pieces, promoting disability awareness. Often very tongue in cheek, they reflect my opinion that if you can make people laugh, they will feel much more comfortable around you or your special needs child.

Then I started on my Facebook groups. So far we have www.facebook.com/groups/SKOZbuysell which is Australia's largest Facebook page for buying and selling disability related equipment for children. www.facebook.com/groups/SKOZsupport is another Australian based group where we share information on what support and funding options are available throughout the country. www.facebook.com/groups/specialkiwisinoz is a support group for New Zealanders living in Australia who have special needs kids. www.facebook.com/groups/SNEquipment is a worldwide group to ask questions about specific equipment before buying. www.facebook.com/groups/extraspecialkids is for Australian families with children with multiple unrelated diagnoses. And www.facebook.com/groups/DisabilityBudget which is the group that this blog has grown from, where parents can share ideas on ways to save money when it comes to equipment. 

An offshoot of the Special Little Kiwis in Oz page was started in 2013. A charity group, Aroha (Maori for love) Angels was started by me to help families by giving them used equipment that we have purchased or had donated. So far, with only around $5,000 spent, we have been able to pass on equipment that had an original price tag of $500,000! Which just goes to show how much wastage there is out there! Aroha Angels operates Australia wide. 100% of the proceeds from my Cafe Press store are now directed to Aroha Angels. 

In 2013, when we got our Permanent Residency, we suddenly became eligible for all the equipment we were not able to get prior to that. During the process of looking for, and getting quotes for equipment I discovered that Queensland was lacking in fairly priced products (Queensland was more expensive than the other states for the same thing), and variety. And so Just Juniors Disability was born. www.justjuniorsdisability.com is my website, and while I mainly sell within Queensland, I have  helped several customers outside the state. 

So as you can see, my interest and knowledge is fairly extensive in these areas. My calling in life has been found! I aim to help as many special needs families as I can, both practically and emotionally. I hope in some way, the ideas I share here will help you. 

These ideas are not all my own. Not by a long shot. I will be linking to other pages, and once I get established will ask people to guest blog as well. There are many blogs out there who share their brilliant ideas with others. My aim here is to bring all those clever ideas together into one spot. I will also aim to be as descriptive as possible in my titles and tags to help you find what you are after. My only regret with this format is that I can't categorise posts the way pages can be categorised. But I have found that most free websites don't offer this option. Maybe one day I will be able to fund a website to make this easier. But for now, this is the best I can do. 

In the meantime, please subscribe to this blog so you get all the updates and new ideas, and please share this with all your friends, therapists, teachers, anyone who has an interest in special needs kids. And please feel free to follow me on Pinterest, where I have several disability related boards. www.pinterest.com/kiwiaussie