From us to you – Merry Christmas. Wishing you a joyous day spent with loved ones.

Lutheran Services’ Intercept Youth and Family Service has taken home the 2019 Moreton Bay Region Business Excellence and Innovation award for Community Group of the Year at a gala event held at Eaton Hill’s Hotel on Friday night 29th November.

The youth and family organisation has delivered programs and services to the Moreton Bay Region for over 12 years, supporting young people aged 10 up to 25 years of age.

Manager of the service Catherine White said “We really are a youth and family hub,” she said. “When clients come to us, they get a variety of supports – not just one program.”

The service offers eight programs ranging from family counselling, support for young people at risk of homelessness, mental health outreach, high school based support, alternative education, programs for young people in care and specialist disability support.

To broaden impact within the community, Intercept also offers a range of free after school group programs for adolescents, as well as free parent information and work shops on a monthly basis.

Intercept Youth & Family delivered 21 Stay @ Home kits to young people and their families via non-contact drop off this week.

The kits contain items promoting self care, physical activity and creativity.

The resources and supplies are designed to support young people, parents and carers to relax, have fun, get active, be creative and prepare for learning at home or returning to school.

A message of thanks from Bishop Paul Smith to our care givers on behalf of all Lutheran congregations in Queensland.

Lutheran Services was pleased to be able to thank staff recently for their enormous efforts during the COVID pandemic.

Large brightly coloured posters with a loud and proud ‘thank you’ message greeted staff when they arrived. A sweet treat was a small token of thanks.

It’s wonderful to celebrate our workers – including staff across disability, aged care and youth & family – who bring their smiles to people’s homes everyday.

Thank you!

When COVID-19 hit and put the NRL season on hold, the footy mad team at Keystone Centre, Woodridge started hosting and posting the Keystone Footy Show to YouTube.

After half a dozen episodes, State of Origin champ and all-round nice guy Scott Prince was their first guest on the most recent episode.

It’s going to be difficult to top this one!

Community Services Manager Dianne Goddard said plans were in the works to continue the Keystone Footy Show next season, possibly in a slightly different format.

“We are looking to buy some more equipment and next year, we’ll continue the show – maybe even tackle some other sports in the off-season,” she said.

“It’s not just footy we love here at Keystone!”

Lee Jenkins loves the kitchen, mixing and making in equal measure.

Lee, a client at Keystone Disability Centre at Woodridge, is part of a collaborative inter-country conversation with Popeye Disability Service in Nagoya, Japan.

The two groups are creating and then sharing via Zoom a specially produced performance with accompanying music to reflect what is important to them. As the project develops it will be filmed and launched early 2021.

Confusion Inclusion For You is a continuation of a project started a few years ago between the groups – when the two could collaborate in real life before the pandemic scuppered travel.

Earlier in 2020 the Keystone crew visited Japan, performing at Nagoya’s performance centre with their Japanese friends.

Popeye recently received extra funding from the Japanese government to host the Keystone group again – which includes Emma, Lynda, Matthew and Andre – but the pandemic put a stop to that. So the funding was re-routed into a filmed ‘conversation’ between the two groups.

Confusion Inclusion For You will consist of each person’s story performance, accompanied by a specially written piece of music and based on the contents of a gift box full of meaningful items.

Last week, the two groups revealed to each other what was in their boxes: with the Hulk, sparkly jewellery, ten-pin bowling, dinosaurs, trains and sumo wrestlers some of special items.

Now they know more about each other, conversations are flowing and personalities are being explored.

Lutheran Services Creative Programs Advisor Clare Apelt said the application of creativity can have transformative effects.

“So if you are trying to teach disability clients living skills such as conversation and social skills, the whole thing can be very stilted and not very effective,’’ she said.

“But bring in fun and get people relaxed you explore not only living skills but also people’s personalities and their likes and dislikes.

“I’ve seen people’s personalities shine – like Emma who comes and talks to me now, is a little cheeky by stepping on my foot and saying hello – it’s wonderful.’’

In past performances the group has used popular music featured on the charts. Due to copyright it can be difficult then to share the performances, hence the collaboration with musician Guy Webster.

Having a piece of music composed for your performance is ‘incredibly validating’.

“(Composer) Guy has been drawing on people’s musical loves for the songs to go with the solo,” Clare said.

“For instance, I watched Lynda’s performance and it was the first time she had heard the music in full. In collaboration Guy and Linda talked about what she liked to listen to, so he wrote a melody that was a little melancholic because Lynda loves slightly melancholy love songs.

“As Lynda was moving to the music, she was just beaming.”

Bishop Paul Smith shares his joyous Christmas message!

www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1790100081149352

Inclusivity and access are key words in the disability and aged care space.

While access can be ensured with the right built environment, being truly inclusive can be more challenging.

Our Creative Programs Advisor Clare Apelt is a dance facilitator and has learnt that being curious and playful with aged care residents or disability clients can kick start their creative journeys.

Clare recently told Ausdance Qld magazine IN/FORM she believes ‘in the power of creativity and dance to transform and connect.’

“To achieve real participation by a person with a disability of some sort … (as a facilitator) I need to be curious and consult with them about what they want from the activity and any specific needs they might have,” she says.

When aged care residents or disability clients begin work on a project, Clare starts with the premise of curiosity and playfulness to build trust and collaboration.

“My work is process driven and often I don’t know what the end product will look like,” she says.

“I can work with the ideas, interests and strengths of my participants.

“This can be scary at times, but I have learned to trust myself and the process, allowing the work to emerge.’’

The Lutheran Services’ Creative Programs team conduct on-site activities every day with our 1200 aged care and disability clients. But the team has also enabled clients to stage dance performances at theatres in Brisbane and Logan in the past few years.

During 2019 and 2020 there were several successful performances.

If Only I Could was staged at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts with professional dancers working with residents from our Zion and Tabeel aged care services.

Uncomfortable issues such as dementia and aged care were explored in creative ways with Alice in Trinderland, at Trinder Park in conjunction with students from the local state high school.

Collaboration with other disability groups has proved a powerful combination when clients from Keystone Centre at Logan hosted and performed with multi-ability dancers from Mo-Ya-Co in Nagoya, Japan.

Our Keystone clients were then lucky enough to perform in Japan with them as well, before the pandemic saw restrictions on travel. This collaboration is continuing to be fruitful with our clients now performing with their Japanese colleagues via Zoom.

Congratulations to Teena, YJET’s superstar lead facilitator at Intercept Youth & Family Program.

Teena is a finalist in the Employee of the Year category at the Moreton Bay Region Business Excellence and Innovations Awards (MBRIT).

The award focuses on extraordinary professional achievement as well as contributions to the organisation nominees work for. Teena, you get our vote!