carecareers has launched a new television ad today about Talia, a young girl with cerebral palsy. With the support of a team of allied health professionals Talia has achieved a number of her life goals. Her story, and the team work in supporting her, is shared in this new ad.

Watch her story and please share it with your friends and colleagues. We hope you enjoy it!

A big thanks to The Campaign Palace and The Feds for the production of the ad.

Since I’ve returned to work this year I’ve discovered that a lot of wins have been made and more and more people are starting jobs or progressing further in the disability and community care sector.

I was really pleased to recently hear the news that a student trainee I interviewed last year, for a student traineeship case study, has continued on with the organisation and is now a staff member.

Seventeen year old Brodie (pictured) was part of Valmar Support Service’s school-based traineeship pilot program, which commenced in early 2009. As part of her experience Brodie worked at Valmar in Tumut one day a week and also completed a Certificate III in Disability Work through TAFE. She was also completing her Higher School Certificate at the same time.

A few years on Brodie is now working in Valmar’s supported accommodation program and studying for a Certificate IV in Allied Health. Valmar have also continued with the traineeship program.

It just goes to show that programs like this really do work. Brodie is really happy with the outcome and so is Valmar – they have an enthusiastic and committed young staff member ready to make the disability sector the place she develops her career.

For more information about the traineeship and Brodie read the case study.

I’ve returned from maternity leave now and wow, it’s definitely great to be back in the carecareers team!

While I very much enjoyed looking after our new arrival (Max), on a Full Time basis, I’m happy to be working on such a great project again too…all the while juggling my other roles as a mum, wife, daughter, friend and colleague.

Since I’ve been with carecareers I’ve seen it go from strength to strength. It’s substantially increased its reach and improved on its success bit by bit.

While I was on leave so much was achieved, which is great news! There are even more people discovering the disability and community care sector as a rewarding career path, and many more employers are advertising with us.

Over the 2011 calendar year nearly 10,000 jobs were advertised on our website which was an increase of more than 111% from the previous year. And in 2011, 5,471 job seekers (to be exact!) registered with carecareers, which means 11,000 people are now registered with us.

Our team has expanded too. Our Project Manager, Mike, started mid last year and we have two additional Talent Officers, Lucy and Jen, who have joined our Irish friends, Patrick and Peter.

We also have two team members who are looking after the schools and university program which is called projectABLE. Jillian is the Marketing Coordinator for the project and Maeve is looking after the new digital components of projectABLE. Both have experience in the disability sector and are excited about encouraging students to consider the many and varied career opportunities within it.

As editor of carecareers my role is to look after the online side of carecareers, including the content on our website, this blog and our social media profiles, like Facebook and Twitter.

I do this so that you can learn about the sector and people with disability, search for jobs, share info and get involved; whether you’re just discovering the sector, have been looking for a suitable job for a while, have been working in disability or community care for years, are searching for your own staff or are a client accessing a service.

carecareers is unique and we’re all about recruiting people to work in the NSW disability and community care sector. We also want to share true insights into what it’s all about so if you’d like to contribute please get in touch with me.

I’m looking forward to the exciting year ahead for carecareers and I’m definitely looking forward to watching our little Max grow, explore and laugh every day (just like he is in the photo below).