Kylie lives with her family in a rural area in South Australia. She is a full-time carer for her 22-year-old son.

He has an intellectual disability and is also profoundly deaf in both ears.

She has five other children, two of them are homeschooled. Her days can be more than busy, but that hasn’t stopped her from pursuing her goals.

Kylie learned about the Your Caring Way program through Carers South Australia.

“I decided to join the program towards the end of last year, and they helped me with some training.

“I had around five coaching sessions and my vocational coach was great.”

“When I first started with the Your Caring Way program, I had no idea what I wanted to do.”

“The coach showed me the different options: volunteering, do more study or work and it has actually helped me with all three of them so far.”

“Then she put me in contact with Shauna my Placement Officer, in my own state, so that was actually nice that I had someone that I could contact and meet in person in South Australia.”

“She helped me organise some volunteering at Orana. We live in the river land, it’s a rural area and she sourced somewhere where I could volunteer just to help me work out what I actually wanted to do or what study option I wanted to do.”

“At the end of last year, I did an induction where they talked about what my volunteer role was going to be, and I was meant to start in the new year.”

“But then I decided that I was going to go ahead with study.”

“I decided I would put the volunteering to the side, but I will probably go back to that, because I need 120 hours of volunteering for my study.”

“I’m currently doing a Certificate IV in Community Services through Carers Queensland’s Registered Training Organisation (RTO). I started my course in February,” she says.

“I’m loving the course. Every Tuesday and Thursday from 9 am until 1.30 pm, I really like it.”

“Your Caring Way helped me access training and get motivated to find some work.”

“My trainer Vanessa is wonderful, an amazing trainer. I’ll be finished by the end of June and then do my work placement hours and see where I go from there.”

Kylie wanted to get her career started before joining the program.

“I was in the process of putting my name on another company, I just had another round to find someone to work with, and my Placement Officer also helped me with that.”

She is currently working every second Wednesday, caring for someone with dementia.

“That’s as much as I can fit in with the training and having a large family with a special person in our house, but it works for me.”

“Right now, I want to finish the course because I’m really enjoying it. My goal wasn’t to gain full-time work, it still isn’t, because I actually can’t.”

“If I can do a little bit of work, that would be great. It feels great to be studying again, I hadn’t studied since high school. “

“Later I’ll have a look and see whether I can find a position if nothing goes wrong.”