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Towards Better

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Australia
Townsville, QLD
Towards Better

Boutique disability consulting service in Townsville, QLD specializing in 'Good Life' Strategies.
(2)

23/10/2025

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work! 💪

As my friend Shannon at ActiveHR says, “Having Aces in their Places”. While our Principal Community Development Worker was away overseas, the Towards Better team truly stepped up.

Kristy – Admin extraordinaire – managed two payroll periods, handled invoicing, and led marketing efforts by creating a rock-solid new flyer we used at the Heatley Careers Expo. She also chaired a team gathering, keeping everything on track.

Maddie – Explored other church congregations around Townsville with an aspiring nun and progressed a mentee in hospitality skills, all while balancing her university studies.

Amy – Supported mentees to expand work roles, including one now working 3 days per week while studying. She’s also helping a new tenant create roles around home and community, mentoring TAFE students, collaborating with businesses, and sharing valuable social work strategies with the team.

Liam – Stepped up to support the team, helping a mentee regain his driver’s license, supporting a gym member’s independence, and assisting another mentee to secure and maintain two hospitality jobs, strengthening skills and future opportunities.

Jo (not pictured as she was unwell on the day) – Represented our team at the Heatley Careers Expo and Down Syndrome Australia, engaging with dozens of families. Many were looking to “Create a Vision with their loved one for the future.” Jo is now involved in two upcoming workshops: Service for One and Vision for Better Lives.

Basil – Celebrated six months of his first Social Work Placement! We’ve been grateful for his contributions with mentees, our CISCO Phone project, and resource-finding. His conversational skills, confidence, and approach have grown impressively.

💡 Curious about who we are? Learn more here: https://www.towardsbetter.com.au/who-we-are/

Good Lives, Great Businesses, Better Communities

22/10/2025

🌿 Looking Out for a Welcoming Community? Here Are 10 Signs to Be Mindful Of 🌿

A truly welcoming community isn’t just a place — it’s where everyone feels they belong and can contribute in meaningful ways.

When we say “community,” we’re talking about non-segregated, inclusive social places — where people come together through family, friends, neighbours, neighbourhood associations, schools, clubs, civic groups, local enterprises, churches, ethnic organisations, temples, local unions, local government, and even local media.

Here are 10 signs that you might have found (or be building!) a welcoming community:
1️⃣ People know each other’s names
2️⃣ Everyone has a role or way to contribute
3️⃣ Differences are valued, not just accepted
4️⃣ Newcomers are greeted and invited in
5️⃣ There are opportunities to connect — not just attend
6️⃣ Local businesses and groups collaborate
7️⃣ Support is mutual, not one-sided
8️⃣ Decisions are shared, not made for people
9️⃣ Celebrations reflect everyone’s stories
🔟 People leave feeling better than when they arrived

💛 Want a mentor, connector and resource guide to find a welcoming community where you can have purpose and friends? Lets chat!
👉 towardsbetter.com.au/for-individuals

🌻 Part of a community you’d love to see become more welcoming and attract new members? Lets chat!
👉 towardsbetter.com.au/for-organisations

🎥 Watch this inspiring video on valuing lives and communities that include everyone:
▶️ https://youtu.be/I2-WBu1Pbjc?si=1-XykF9Tr5vGsyOF

21/10/2025

The best part of our USA Trip: Family 💚

19/10/2025

🌱 What if your loved one’s unique skills, talents, and passions could become their purpose — and even a source of income?

Laundry 🧺 | Mowing lawns 🌿 | Organising 🗂️ | Using technology 💻 | Talking to people ☕ — these are just a few examples of everyday gifts that can be shaped into meaningful microenterprises.

At Towards Better, we believe it all starts with a person and a vision, not the money or the funding. That’s why we offer resources and workshops to help families discover what’s possible when you start with a good life in mind:

👉 Building a Vision for a Good Life – Workshop for Families: https://events.humanitix.com/building-a-vision-for-a-good-life-workshop-for-families-disability-towards-better

👉 Services for One – Online Workshops: https://events.humanitix.com/services-for-one-online-workshops

💬 Meet Jo.
Jo Lynam is part of our Towards Better team — a parent, community development worker, and MicroEnterprise Consultant with deep passion, lived experience, and decades of insight.

When Jo’s daughter was born with a disability, she refused to accept society’s limitations. With a clear vision of a good life, Jo helped her daughter start her own business — one that now gives her purpose, belonging, and a valued role in the community five days a week.

Jo knows firsthand that being seen as valuable changes everything.
Now, she helps other families do the same — to shape skills, gifts, and even obsessions into small, local enterprises that build autonomy, connection, and joy.

☕ If you’d like to chat about how this could work for your loved one, Jo would love to hear from you.

You can even book 1:1 mentoring with Jo using NDIS funding to start moving things forward.

💛 Learn more about our microenterprise approach and connect with Jo today: https://calendly.com/rickytowardsbetter/1-1-session-with-jo

www.towardsbetter.com.au

16/10/2025

Is your organisation ready to be more inclusive? We can help. 💛

At Towards Better, we collaborate with individuals, families, and community organisations to create inclusive, connected, and meaningful lives. Whether you’re seeking to build stronger relationships, discover valued roles, or foster genuine community engagement, we’re here to support you.

✨ Explore how we can assist you:
• For Individuals & Families: towardsbetter.com.au/for-individuals
• For Organisations: towardsbetter.com.au/for-organisations

🎫 Join our upcoming workshops and events to connect, learn, and grow. Links in bio:

👉 events.humanitix.com/host/601ccf69abde84000af6908e

Because when individuals, families, and organisations come together, communities thrive. 🌿

12/10/2025

🌱 Thinking Ahead: Building a Future with Purpose, Belonging & Control

For many families, the next few years are filled with big questions:
💭 How can my loved one find meaningful work?
💭 What will it look like when they move out of home?
💭 How can we make sure they’re safe, supported, and thriving — not just managed?

That’s where the Service for One model comes in. It’s a practical way for families to build a personalised support structure around their loved one — one that grows with them.

Here’s what this can look like in real life 👇

✨ 1. Finding Meaningful Work
With a Service for One, supports are designed around the person, not a roster.
• You can hire the right people to help your loved one explore interests and employment opportunities.
• Supports can include community networking, skills development, and microbusiness mentoring.
• Funding goes further, so more time can be spent on discovery and job creation — not admin.

🏡 2. Moving Out of the Family Home
When your loved one is ready to take this step, a Service for One can:
• Build a trusted team of workers who know and care about them.
• Help establish routines and supports for daily life and independence.
• Keep family members involved as decision-makers while gradually shifting responsibility.

💡 3. Building a Future That’s Sustainable
This model allows families to set up strong foundations now — including legal and governance structures — so supports continue seamlessly, even as parents step back.

🧭 A Service for One gives your family more say, more security, and more sustainability — while helping your loved one live a meaningful life connected to their community.

👉 Learn more about how it works (and how NDIS funding can support it):

https://events.humanitix.com/services-for-one-online-workshops

10/10/2025

🌿 A Fresh Start Begins with a Thoughtful Pause

As the year winds down, many families begin asking the deeper questions…

💭 What’s working well for our loved one?
💭 What needs to change next year?
💭 And how can we make sure they’re supported — not just now, but long into the future?

The Services for One Online Workshops are designed for families like yours — families who want to be intentional about the future, confident in their decisions, and surrounded by the right people.

✨ Over four practical, hope-filled sessions, you’ll learn how to:

Build a support structure that fits your loved one and your family — not a one-size-fits-all service model.

Strengthen natural supports (family, friends, and community connections).

Plan for long-term security and sustainability.

Safeguard against services taking over as parents get older.

Be part of a community of families doing the same.

📅 New Dates: (insert updated schedule once confirmed)
💻 Online via Zoom – 1 hour each session
🎟️ $350 per family – NDIS claimable

The Good Life Builders (Sheree Henley)
Joanne Lynam - Speaker and Author

There’s no better time than the quiet between terms and before the new year to reflect, reimagine, and reset.

🔗 Learn more & register: https://events.humanitix.com/services-for-one-online-workshops

Because safeguarding your loved one’s future starts with the small, thoughtful steps you take today. 💚

05/10/2025

Walking through the school gate for the last time is filled with the excitement of possibility, and the fear and doubt of the unknown.

For families with a loved one with a disability watching the school gate swing open for the last time has some unique challenges. All parents want to see their loved one find opportunities that offer insights for the future, whether it’s study or working. But many families with a loved one with a disability are overwhelmed with the fear of a million unspoken questions. Like what’s next? Who can help me? Where do I start?

Then there is the ultimate question: who will be there for my son or daughter when I am gone?

This difficult path can be illuminated for parents by taking one step at a time. Find your way to the opportunities you are seeking for your loved one to have the ‘good things in life’, just like any other young person. Namely, a job, friends, and a place to call home, in other words a feeling of belonging.

There are some key elements to ensuring success in finding opportunities for your loved one.

• Having a clear vision for the life that you want the young person to have
• Don’t be the Lone Ranger, build support around you for this life long journey.
• Having support or allies helps spread the load, and opening up all kind of possibilities that you alone could never come with.
• Support Circles, Boards, a Company or a Service for One are some of the ways that parents can build support around themselves and their loved one for the future.
• Having a well-trained team of support staff. While you and your Board or Support Circle will hold the vision, you need a well-trained team of support staff to help bring the vision to life.
• Understanding funding and how and what to use it for to bring the vision to life.

This workshop is focusing on funding. All the how, why & where of looking at funding through a different lens.

https://events.humanitix.com/services-for-one-online-workshops

One way of looking at funding is to see it as a tool. Funding alone doesn’t guarantee the good things of life.

However, when funding is used wisely, like any tool, it becomes an instrument of creation.

For example, A power saw cannot create anything in and of itself but in the hands of a good tradie it can craft a piece of timber into a beautiful piece of furniture. In the same way when funding is thought of and used in skilful ways it can play a part in helping a young person to have opportunities that can shape them into a strong, resilient, independent and interdependent member of their community.

Written Beautifully By: Joanne Lynam - Speaker and Author

01/10/2025

💭 Heading into the end of the year, many people are thinking about:

✨ Life after school finishes for the year
✨ Life after Year 12
✨ New volunteer work, career paths, or small business ideas they want to start chipping away at
✨ Setting goals for 2026 so they’re not in the same place this time next year

If you have NDIS funding – or are supporting a loved one with these aspirations – we’ve helped dozens of people across Townsville and beyond create:

✅ New purpose to the week
✅ Meaningful and active roles
✅ New relationships
✅ Goals for the future

Don’t have NDIS funding or aren’t sure yet where to next? No worries – we also welcome enquiries for an initial one-hour “discovery session” to explore options and possibilities.

📩 Send us a message or an email today to get started!

ricky@towardsbetter.com.au

Image: Message pad with the NDIS line items that people can use to work alongside our skilled team.

01/10/2025

💭 “What will happen when I’m no longer there?”

It’s a question many families quietly carry — and often, there’s no easy answer.

What if you could start building a future today where your loved one with disability is safe, thriving, and truly seen?

Our Services for One Online Workshops show you how families across Townsville and Australia are:
✨ Creating personalised supports that reflect their loved one’s gifts and preferences
✨ Building reliable teams who actually fit
✨ Designing sustainable plans that safeguard independence
✨ Learning from real-life stories of families who’ve made it work

These four 1-hour lunchtime workshops (starting 20 Oct) are practical, interactive, and NDIS-claimable. One ticket covers the full series.

💡 Don’t wait until the “what if” becomes reality — start shaping the future now.

🔗 Find out more and register: https://events.humanitix.com/services-for-one-online-workshops

🎥 Check out this video about our friend Emma from Master Shredder and her mom Jo who have continued to build and safeguard a great future using Service for One thinking and action: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1MgGV4rhQE/?mibextid=wwXIfr

29/09/2025

A lesson from Dyson about building the “house cleaner” skills of a homemaker

Dyson has a new vacuum with a neon-green light on the front.
When it shines on the floor you can clearly see hair, dust, crumbs and other particles—before and after you vacuum.

It makes it much easier to know when the floor is truly clean.

Now imagine you’re helping someone develop their homemaker role, and a key part of that is the sub-role of house cleaner—for example, vacuuming floors.

If the goal is to build their skills and knowledge, one thing to identify is what assistive technologies could make learning that task easier.

Assistive tech doesn’t have to be specialised.

Often it’s something already on the market, designed for everyone—universal design at work.

Enter Dyson.

They created a vacuum that helps any “house cleaner” quickly spot dirt and know when the job is done.

At Towards Better, our community development worker and job mentor minds always ask:

“How can we help someone learn the competencies of a role in a way they can replicate—without us standing beside them?”

This avoids a human becoming the “prompt” for the task.
Many services say they want to “work themselves out of a job,” but the real challenge is finding strategies that make that possible.

💡 Tip:
If you’re supporting someone to become a better house cleaner and vacuuming is part of the role, think about how they can identify what a clean floor looks like—without relying on you.

That might mean:
• Choosing a vacuum (not necessarily a Dyson) with a built-in light
• Using a small neon LED flashlight to check before and after vacuuming
• Setting a 15-minute timer to increase coverage
• Creating a simple, repeatable vacuuming pattern

Sometimes the best “assistive technology” is already right in front of us.

29/09/2025

See you in a few weeks ✈️🌎🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒

Address

Townsville, QLD
4810

Opening Hours

Monday	8am - 5pm
Tuesday	8am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Telephone

+61447574600

Website

http://www.towardsbetter.com.au/

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Towards Better

I am Ricky Esterquest. My business “Towards Better” was founded in 2020.

After many years of working in disability and community services, I noticed that while these service providers had the best of intentions, the design of their services and the way they worked with people with disability were often disempowering and possibly damaging to the image of the individuals that used their services. Additionally, even after 4+ years of the NDIS being “rolled out”, there still exists very few organisations that are truly focused on building the capacity of the 20% of people in Australia who have a disability and discovering opportunities for those individuals to be part of ordinary community life.

Hence, the name “Towards Better” means just that, moving towards better lives for individuals, better ways of services working with people, and better communities. What makes us most unique is our approach which focuses on the underpinning principles of Asset Based Community Development ( https://www.communitydoor.org.au/asset-based-community-development-abcd) and Social Role Valorisation (https://socialrolevalorization.com/srv-theory/). We believe in the “glass half full”; that both individuals and communities have gifts, talents, and contributions and that connecting the two can truly lead to something magical.

“Towards Better” works with individuals who are participants of the NDIS. Since we don’t believe in a “menu of services” this work can take many forms, but many times it can look like life or roles based planning, Identification, Recruitment or Training of a personalized support team, community development/inclusion work and customised workshops or training. We also work with disability and community service providers in either consulting, freelance or project management capacities and our areas of particular experience include training for staff teams, service design, NDIS specific service areas, community development/community building, grant writing and meeting facilitation. Lastly, we work with communities, neighbourhoods and community groups. Again, using an Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) approach we focus on both community-building activities, ABCD workshops and grant writing and project work.

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