CEO Update March 2023

Dear clients, friends and families,

LDS continues to strive for our mission of enriching the lives of those we support and we could not do it without you. I hope you enjoy reading about some of the great stories and achievements in this edition of LDS Community while getting an insight of how we are working on our mission of connecting people with disability in Christian community.

At the organisational level, we have been strengthening our management layers and are now nearing full complement of 11 team leaders and 4 client services managers. By investing in these leaders we now have much greater capacity to continue to focus on developing our teams, delivering continuous improvements, building relationships with clients and families and maintaining high quality standards. I appreciate your patience over the past year or so as we have worked hard to find the right people with the right values to carry on our work on into the future.

Together with Matt and Ben our Senior Client Service Managers, the leadership team is committed to deliver the best services we possibly can. Finding and recruiting good quality workers continues to be a challenge but one we are managing. Most new staff comment how they are attracted to LDS because of our heart for our clients and because of the values that we truly live by.

LDS continues to invest in training for our staff including training in mental health first aid and positive behaviour support techniques. We are excited about our professional development days coming up in March where we can all get together and learn about our unique “Model of supports” and ways to improve the services we deliver.

On another note, we have some exciting opportunities we are pursuing of how we can continue to deliver outstanding affordable accommodation to secure long term happy homes for our clients. This is not an easy task given the current property market but we are working hard to develop these opportunities and partnerships with the Lutheran Church of Australia and other community housing providers to meet the needs of our clients. All of our property initiatives are predicated on the basis of how we can create housing opportunities that are linked to our mission and build strong connections with community where our clients can belong and have a purpose so they feel like they are a valued part of that community.

We appreciate the special relationships we have with many congregations, families and community service providers and thank you all for the part you play in creating the spaces for our clients to serve others in a way that demonstrates their awesomeness and unique abilities.

In His service, blessings,

JvR