Achieve Social Work

29/12/2025

📢 Achieve Social Work has capacity in 2026 📢

At Achieve Social Work, we believe support should fit you - not the other way around.

Our neuro-affirming Social Workers work alongside NDIS participants to honour individual strengths, identities, communication styles, and goals 💙

From 2026, we’ll have availability to support people focusing on choice, collaboration, and genuine understanding.

We can support with:
✨ Emotional wellbeing & mental health support
✨ Psychosocial disability support
✨ Advocacy, self-advocacy & navigating systems
✨ Life transitions (change can be hard & you don’t have to do it alone)
✨ Building routines, independence & confidence in ways that work for you
✨ Connecting with community in meaningful, accessible ways
✨ and much, much more!

We listen first, move at your pace & we truly value lived experience.

If you’re a participant, family member, or support coordinator planning ahead for 2026, we’d love to connect 🤝

We provide support across the Adelaide Hills and Metropolitan Adelaide.

📩 Send an email to: Chelsea@achievesocialwork.com to connect and learn more about support with Achieve Social Work.

08/12/2025

Highly recommend DE.Me for any DE’s out there looking for a change! ✨

DE.Me is Expanding in 2026 — and We’re Looking for DEs Who Want to Step Into PBS

(Sub-Contractor Role — Flexible Hours — SA-Based, but Work Anywhere)

Are you a Developmental Educator who’s ready for a fresh start in 2026?
Keen to lean into Positive Behaviour Support but want to do it in a place that actually values developmental practice, collaboration, and people over profits?

Hi 👋 We’re DE.Me — a small, hands-on, grounded Developmental Education company specialising in Positive Behaviour Support through a DE lens… and our caseload is growing (rapidly). So, we’re opening the door for one or two subcontractors to join our team next year.

This isn’t SEEK.
This is us — casual, professional, honest — inviting the right humans into our space.

We're specifically seeking:

✨ Developmental Educators who want to specialise as PBS practitioners
✨ People who want autonomy and connection
✨ Practitioners who value evidence-based, person-centred, relationship-driven work
✨ Humans who care deeply about ethical practice and the NDIS space
✨ Someone excited to grow their own caseload with support — not alone

We’re flexible with hours — this role can be anything from 0.5 FTE through to full-time equivalent, depending on what you’re looking for.
We care more about the right fit than the number of hours.

As a PBS Practitioner with DE.Me, you will:

Work with NDIS participants across the lifespan

OR (if you’d rather specialise):
We’ll support you to build a caseload around the age group / developmental / disability space you love — with 20% caseload variety encouraged to keep your practice fresh and clinically robust

Use a Developmental Education framework as your guide for PBS

Deliver meaningful, individualised support — not cookie-cutter plans

Build strong connections with families, support coordinators, schools, SILs, and the humans around your participants

Shape your weekly schedule in a way that works for your life, not the other way around

This is subcontracting — but in that DE.Me “you’re not alone” kind of way.

You’ll receive:

🌱 Regular professional mentoring + participation in DE.Me’s clinical supervision program
🧭 Support in building a sustainable caseload that reflects your strengths
💬 A genuinely collaborative space — we co-think, co-learn, and co-support
🏡 Flexibility to work from home, in the community, in schools, or in participant homes
🔥 Opportunities to deepen your practice, contribute to DE.Me projects, and be part of a team that is passionate (borderline nerdy) about its craft

To join us, you’ll need:

A recognised Developmental Education degree

Experience (or strong interest) in Positive Behaviour Support

The ability to submit session notes and reported hours through DE.Me’s systems
(we’ll set you up with a practitioner profile in Splose — no invoicing required)

Willingness to engage in ongoing clinical supervision & mentoring with us

Alignment with our values: ethics, transparency, collaboration, accountability, developmental thinking, and genuinely caring about people

New, emerging, and experienced DEs are all welcome — if you’re the right human.

Ready for a Fresh Start in 2026?

To express your interest, DM us on socials or email:

📧 emilyh@dedotme.com
📧 emilya@dedotme.com

Tell us who you are, what lights you up professionally, and what you’re hoping for in your next chapter.

We’re excited to meet the next DE who wants to grow with us.

Here’s to a big, meaningful 2026

16/10/2025

Finally a clear resource that Social Workers can refer to when we’re told that “Social Work is not funded by the NDIS” 🤦🏼‍♀️🙌🏻

Social work is vital for NDIS participants as it empowers individuals & families to navigate challenges, access essential supports, and build stronger, more inclusive lives within their communities - and so much more!

Social work included in new NDIS Therapy Supports Guidelines

The new NDIS Therapy Supports Guidelines have been published and are available here →📖 https://bit.ly/4onR6uW

This is a significant milestone in acknowledging the role of social workers in supporting people with disability. The AASW has consistently advocated for this addition by providing feedback to the NDIA.

🙏 A huge thank you to our NDIS Guidelines Working Group and many of our members who’ve advised us, your expertise has been invaluable in ensuring this inclusion.

This advocacy is made possible by members. Every member strengthens our voice and your membership powers progress. Become a member. https://bit.ly/4pGAsbf

12/10/2025

📢 ACHIEVE SOCIAL WORK HAS CAPACITY 📢

We are SUPER excited to have capacity to welcome new participants & families across Metropolitan Adelaide & the Adelaide Hills.

What can we support you with? We can supprt a wide range of challenges through practical, emotional, and therapeutic support. Some examples are:
- Advocacy
- Mindset (think a different type of ‘counselling’)
- Accessing communtuy activities
- Managing mental health
- Adressing housing instability
- Navigating child protection, justice, health & housing
- and much, much, more!

If you’d like to chat to see if we’d be a good match for you or your participant/s, feel free to send Chelsea an email: chelsea@achievesocialwork.com

10/09/2025

If you’re not already, be sure to follow along on Instagram - where I combine my 20+ years Social Work experience and passion for helping mums rediscover themselves, through Mindset Coaching & Breathwork.

Here’s a glimpse of what I offer (alongside Achieve Social Work 😉)

27/07/2025

Achieve Social Work is super excited to announce that we have a lovely new Social Worker, Reanna, on board!

When we say 'new', she's definitely not new to Social Work, just the team at Achieve Social Work...

Reanna is a highly experienced and compassionate Social Worker with over 16 years of leadership in disability, mental health, substance misuse, child protection, out-of-home care, and trauma-informed practice. Now working with Achieve Social Work, Reanna brings a deep understanding of complex care needs, client advocacy, and therapeutic intervention to her work with participants.

Reanna has held senior roles in both the UK and South Australia, leading large multi-disciplinary teams and delivered high-impact support to vulnerable people and families. Her skill set includes therapeutic work, crisis support, mental health, disability, trauma recovery, and goal-focused case planning.

With a Masters in Social Work, and a strong foundation in strength-based and culturally sensitive practice, Reanna is now available to work with NDIS participants requiring therapeutic Social Work.

Her calm, client-centred approach ensures every individual feels heard, supported, and empowered.

If you feel she would be a good fit for any of your participants, please feel free to reach out! Email Chelsea@achievesocialwork.com or feel free to give me a buzz 0414391773.

15/06/2025

We’re louder in numbers & we’re in this together!

Well said Meryl 🫶🏻

15 June 2025

Dear Members, Ministers, Senators, the NDIS National Disability Insurance Scheme and the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission,

The Wondering Wattle are writing to you with empassioned and equally exhausted hearts.

For the seventh year in a row, Support Coordination pricing has been left untouched in the NDIA’s Annual Pricing Review. That’s seven years of rising costs, increasing compliance, and greater expectations, without any recognition in the funding. No wage increase coverage. No superannuation adjustment. No margin to sustain the work that quite literally holds people’s lives together.

We’re a small, values-driven organisation. We walk beside people navigating some of the most complex challenges life can throw at a person. We meaningfully and deliberately match deserving participants with high-calibre providers. We don’t do this work for profit, or take it lightly. We do it for people with disabilities. For their choice. For their inclusion. For their dignity.

But the truth is, this funding freeze is pushing us, and many like us, to the brink. We can't continue to 'run at a loss' behind inflation for another 12mths. Especially given the extra load we are carrying with rapid legislation changes and little rollout time to process and guide participants.

This year, the cost of delivering services has gone up again:
* A 3.5% Fair Work wage increase
* A 0.5% increase in superannuation
* New compliance costs linked to the upcoming NDIS Commission reforms, including mandatory registration for all Support Coordination providers (that's another huge cost for a tiny organisation like us).

And yet the price for Support Coordination has stayed exactly the same. For seven years in a row you've demanded that "we work more for less". We just can't any longer.

We ask you to consider what this means, not just for organisations like ours, but for the wonderful people we support:

+ Participants who rely on their Support Coordinator to find housing, engage with therapy, attend appointments, stay safe, or simply be heard.

+ Parents and carers who are stretched to breaking point, depending on Coordinators to manage crisis after crisis.

+ Employees who want to stay in the sector but can’t afford to, as wages stagnate and burnout rises.

Freezing prices while increasing expectations is not sustainable.

It’s not ethical. And it’s not what the NDIS was designed to be.

So we are standing up, with urgency, to ask, beg and even plead for you to, on our behalf:

+ Act now on our concerns to ensure the NDIA passes on the minimum wage and superannuation increases to Support Coordination pricing

+ Support an independent, transparent pricing model that reflects the true cost of service delivery, including wages, compliance, and the real value of our work

+ Engage meaningfully with Disability Intermediaries Australia (DIA) and similar peak bodies across the country who are calling out for fairness

We are proud to deliver support that’s generous, human rights–driven, and grounded in relationship. But we cannot do it alone and we cannot do it without fair funding.

To recipients of this open letter, we invite you to walk a day in our shoes. To see what it takes to hold complex lives with care. And to help us to continue to build a system that values not just service delivery, but the people delivering it.

Brave is kind
Meryl
💛
Founder, Specialist and Support Coordinator

05/05/2025

🌸 Mother’s Day Mindset Moment 🌸

This one’s for the mums who give everything to everyone else… and feel like they've lost themselves along the way.

This Mother's Day, I'm offering FREE 1:1 Mindset Moments to help you reconnect with YOU — YOUR confidence, YOUR clarity, YOUR calm.

Because you deserve more than just a moment. You deserve to feel like yourself again. 💛

🗓️ Spots are limited — DM me “MINDSET” to claim yours.

*Note: 1:1 calls do not have to be held on Mother's Day - they will be scheduled when suits YOU!

13/03/2025

Let’s talk ice cream….Do you like plain vanilla? or rainbow with sprinkles and a wafer cone?

My life has got a heap more flavour since last week, completing my NLP Practitioner Training!

I would love to share some wisdom and help you find more flavour in your life!

DM me to chat!

13/03/2025

Have you heard of the concept ‘Perception is Projection’?

It basically means that your world is a reflection of your inner thoughts, feelings, values & beliefs. Once you truely get this, it is life changing! You are totally in control of your world! 🤯

I’ll give you an example - Today I woke up not feeling 100% & my initial thought was to cancel all of my sessions; however, I chose to show up, for me and my clients! I pushed on through knowing that this is my body cleansing from last week. I dropped the kids off, drove 45 mins to a clients house, as I arrived, she cancelled. Why? She was tired and not feeling well! Tell me I did not create this when I wanted to not show up!?

A side note - I then chose to use this experience to tick other tasks off my list, have an amazing, productive day! Win!

There is so much more gold nuggets that I learnt last week at my NLP training. If you’d like to know more DM me and we can have a FREE connection call! ☎️