Message from our Chair & Managing Director

This year marked the launch of our 2024-2028 Strategic Plan. Whilst our core purpose remains at the heart of why we do what we do, the new strategic plan reaffirms our commitment and strategic ambition to significantly expand our impact in a positive and sustainable way.

Over the next four years we will expand our services to support more people with complex disabilities, continue to provide essential healthcare products, mobility aids and equipment for people to live independently, and build a sustainable and effective workforce in the NDIS environment.

We successfully merged with Statewide Autistic Services Inc (SASI), a specialist service provider for autistic people. With a shared vision, common goals and desire to maximise our collective impact, we have combined our resources and expertise to sustainably increase our scale and reach, while broadening our offering for the hundreds of neurodiverse customers we support.

Across the Independence Australia Group (Independence Australia, SASI and Zest Care), we delivered hundreds of thousands of hours of personalised disability supports and supports for vulnerable children, young people and families. We did this directly with individuals as well as in partnership with State and Federal Government agencies, insurance companies, workers compensation agencies and service providers across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.

Responding to the growing demand for services that support people with complex needs has been a major priority, resulting an increase in complex care customers engaging with our services. We continued to strengthen our relationships with specialist housing providers to deliver personalised accommodation solutions for people with complex disabilities to live independently. We were thrilled to re-launch our newly renovated Emma Road property in Croydon (Victoria) and achieved an overall occupancy rate above 90% across our mix of 14 specialist disability accommodation and supported independent living houses in metropolitan and regional Victoria.

Following the release of the NDIS Independent Review in late 2023, we continue to monitor the impact of policy and legislative reforms on everyday Australians living with disability. Whilst we welcome the recommendations outlined in the review, we are attuned to the impacts on our customers and therefore will be providing support for non-funded services as part of our social enterprise model.

With a growing recognition of the importance of mental health support within the NDIS framework, we reflect on our legacy of providing vital psychology and counselling supports to the many people living with and impacted by disability. First established in 2001, our psychology service was the first of its kind in Victoria. Today we remain one of only a small group of providers offering disability specific counselling and psychological services – providing over 400 one-on-one counselling sessions and 24 support groups and health & wellbeing workshops this year. We were also pleased to extend the service to support the veteran community through the Open Arms program delivered in partnership with the Department of Veterans’ Affairs.

Focused on deepening our impact, we concluded a four-year social impact research project in collaboration with Swinburne University of Technology ‘Independence and disability: maximising impact and NDIS outcomes for disability service users’, to develop a new framework to measure the impact of our services on the people we support. The insights and framework will be used to inform future development of our service models, improve individual customer outcomes, and increase our positive impact within the many communities we support.

Leveraging the success of our flagship Wound Care & Continence Education Day events for Australian healthcare professionals, we held our Support Coordination Education Days to offer industry insights and networking opportunities for disability sector professionals in metropolitan Melbourne. We look forward to extending these events to more professionals in the year ahead.

As a social enterprise we leverage commercial activities to support our core charitable purpose and are one of a small number of providers accredited under the NDIS Practice Standards for the delivery of both products and services, collectively serving thousands of NDIS participants nationally. As a one-stop-shop for customers to access both products and services, we welcomed the expanded focus on assistive technology within the NDIS recognising the important role in enhancing peoples’ independence – including everything from mobility aids to communication devices.

Our social enterprise continues to thrive, this year delivering hundreds of thousands orders to customers across Australia – reflecting the trust and loyalty customers place in Independence Australia as their one-stop-shop for healthcare consumables, mobility aids and assistive technology. Not only did we experience an increase in direct-to-customer sales, but we also continued to strengthen our relationships with our B2B customer base, supplying high care nursing homes across Australia and working in partnership with Government agencies to deliver healthcare products to recipients of several different funding schemes.

With a steadfast commitment to our workforce, elevated in our new strategic plan, we have continued to invest in our People Experience capability and capacity to build an effective, sustainable workforce and become an employer of choice. We successfully negotiated two new Enterprise Bargaining Agreements that now cover almost 85% of our workforce. The modern and competitive conditions agreed to in our new EBA, paired with our ongoing workforce development initiatives will help us attract, retain and build a highly skilled workforce to deliver on our core purpose and meet emerging business needs.

We successfully completed our NDIS Practice Standards and ISO 9001 surveillance audits, and in response to ongoing growth we reshaped our Quality & Safeguarding team to support the continued delivery of high-quality personalised services and products that maximise choice and control.

We also welcomed Professor Carol Adams to our Board of Directors at Independence Australia Group. Carol brings extensive experience in senior leadership, governance, corporate reporting and global standard setting for public and for-purpose sector organisations. Her international academic success, core values and lived experience are welcome additions to our Board and will enhance our governance practices.
Our sincerest thanks to our many partners, trusts, foundations and supporters who have contributed to our impact throughout the year. We are excited to build on the successes of this year and continue enabling positive change in the lives of people with disability
or other personal needs.

As we look to the year ahead, we remain committed to our purpose of providing choices for people with a disability or other personal need, enabling them to regain and retain their independence with an inclusive community. With the support of our employees, partners, supporters, donors and community, we will continue to make a lasting impact — for people, with purpose.