Disability

Supporting those living with disability to achieve their goals.

The Foundation supports and empowers those living with disability and has a particular focus on helping ensure people have the ability to effectively communicate. Our giving includes investment in expanding access to telerehabilitation services and services for those with aphasia, as well as programs providing communication aids for children with complex needs, and expanding employment opportunities for people with a disability.

BFF support to upgrade the Tools2Talk app is helping parents create bespoke communication aids for people with little or no speech. BFF has also provided support for the KidsChat program, assisting children with complex communication needs by providing parents, carers and speech pathologists with a variety of communication aids, practical advice, and family consultations throughout Victoria. Gifts have also assisted SCOPE’s social inclusion and accessibility programs Go Kids mobility services and the Balloon Football League.

The Queensland Aphasia Rehabilitation Centre brings clinicians, researchers, support groups, professional groups and consumers together to optimise the lives of people affected by stroke and with complex communication and rehabilitation needs. BFF is proud to support the creation of the first dedicated aphasia rehabilitation centre in Australia, and continues to support the extension of services via telehealth to rural and regional areas.

A BFF gift in 2015 helped the University of Queensland establish Australia’s first Telerehabilitation Clinic. It provides speech, audio, occupational therapy, and physiotherapy services to local, rural and regional patients, and trains allied health students to deliver telehealth services. There are now 11 locations providing telehealth services in Queensland and many hundreds of allied health students now trained in telehealth delivery. Thousands of people are now accessing services previously unavailable to them.