Category: Updates

Winners of Dot Shaw Young Writers Competition 2021

We received 25 submissions and they all were great. The judges have made their decision and announced the winners of first and second place at our AGM last Sunday 31st October. We are proud to announce the 2021 winners here and send them vouchers, and books to their schools. See the poster for names and the link of their stories.  

We are pleased that we revived the Dot Shaw Young Writers Competition to carry on Dot Shaw’s legacy of supporting and promoting literacy skills for young deaf people. 

Ivan Callaghan shared a beautiful story during the AGM before the announcement of the winners.

CE’s Update – 12 November 2021

Transcript

Hello, I’m Jen Blyth, CE of Deaf Australia. I have a brief update for you all.

We had our AGM recently and we also have our annual report which is now available for you to access on our website. 

We also have a new makeup of the board;

  • Debra Swann 
  • Adrian Doyle 
  • Irene Holub 
  • Debbie Kennewell and
  • Ivan Callaghan. 

I congratulate them all for joining us.

We also announced the winners of the Dot Show Young Writers Competition. You’ll see who they are in the TTT newsletter. I congratulate all those who submitted stories to us and also to those who won first and second places.

I want to let you know that we’ll soon have a CEO Q & A session, to be held online on zoom and Facebook. People can ask us all sorts of questions they may have. The aim of this session is to ask any and all sorts of questions you may have. We might have some questions of our own to ask. You might have questions about Deaf Australia, about the CEO, the staff or questions about something you want Deaf Australia to provide; you can ask at the session. I look forward to the opportunity to discuss with you all.

Thank you. Have a good week.

New Auslan Shop Website

We’re excited to finally open the Auslan Shop with new website. You can have a look at our new website and order new products available now.

You can start ordering Christmas presents for family, friends or your children, anyone! If you have questions or need to discuss anything, please contact Salomon at [email protected] 

CE’s Update – 14 October 2021

Transcript

Hello, I’m Jen Blyth, the CE of Deaf Australia. I’d like to provide you with a summary of updates.. As you all know the deadline for the Dot Shaw young writers competition is coming up soon. We have finished receive submissions which we appreciate. I’ve read through them and I love them. We love the stories from all young deaf people from all over Australia. I adore them; I can’t wait to receive more. I’m not involved in the panel but if I were involved I would want to make all of you winners.

The second thing I want to remind you about is the AGM on 31st October starting at 7 pm. Please come.

The third thing I want to remind you about is that the deadline for nominations for the Colin Allen AM lecture has been extended. The lecture is on November 26th, a Friday night. We encourage you to submit nominations. If there is a person you’re keen to have present, about a topic you’re wanting you can nominate them.

The fourth thing is you probably have seen a lot of things happening in New South Wales over the news about the new premier not providing interpreters at his press conferences. You may also have seen the Australian Lawyers for Human Rights’ open letter questioning the decision of the New South Wales government to stop providing interpreters. A lot of things have happened as a consequence.

So those in the media and journalists have contacted us asking for Deaf Australia’s opinion and position. We said that it is important to provide interpreters at all press conferences. COVID is important, yes, but other things are too. There should be interpreters at all press conferences as well as the provision of captions

We also advocated to the Prime Minister that he should have an interpreter at every press conference. Every time we have an interview I emphasise that premiers and the Prime Minister both should have interpreters.
I also want to let you all know that I had a meeting with the Australian Lawyers for the Human Rights yesterday and it was a productive meeting. I will have a meeting with government MP next week to discuss the issues further and then later again launch a press release to say come on, you need to make sure that you have an interpreter beside you. The MP in Parliament today during question time asked what’s being done about the interpreting situation and their response was to put the question on notice which means they’ll come back to it later.

Our team is really enthusiastic and work hard but I’m sure you have seen that we have advertised EOIs for five positions. We really want our team to grow. It’s only until the of June next year because we rely on funding from the NDIA which finishes then. We don’t have ongoing funding. Which means we only have positions while being funded. The five positions are: Diversity and Inclusion Officer to meet with lots of different people around Australia to tell us what we should be focusing on, what we should advocate for and how we can improve our diversity and inclusion practices. The second position - Darlene will move to a new role within Deaf Australia so it means her job as a Disability Royal Commission Advocacy Officer position has been left empty. Darlene has been working as a DRC advocate and we want someone to come and fill her very big shoes.

The third position is project management, looking after projects. We have two big projects at the moment and we need someone to look after them. The fourth and fifth positions are project support offices and are part and full time. I’m also open to accepting a hearing and codas but of course they must be fluent in Auslan. Only one position is excepted - that of the project manager. If they are hearing and not fluent in Auslan that’s fine but we need to make

sure that we have a deaf person working alongside to pass on skills. I think that’s all from me now. We have had quite a few big meetings recently. I’m sure that at the next update I will tell you a lot more in detail, especially of that related to the New South Wales Premier. I hope that you will also be involved in sending off letters to demand interpreters as well. Thank you. Thank you and as usual if you have any questions or concerns, please contact me. I’m more than happy to respond and talk with you, thank you.

Auslan Shop Updates – 12 October 2021

Transcript

Hello! Just wanted to let you know Auslan Shop will be closed temporarily for almost two weeks. What this means is that you can order up until the 12th of October. From the 13th it will be closed until the 24th of October. Then, on the 25th of October we open again and you can start ordering again. And you know what? We will have new products in stock! Exciting times! If you have any questions or want more information, you are more than welcome to contact me. See you soon!

CE’s Update – 29 September 2021

Transcript

Transcript - Chief Executive’s update 29th Sept 2021:
Hello. I’m Jen Blyth, CE of Deaf Australia. I have few updates to share.

First of all, last week we launched our advocacy campaign for the Prime Minister to have Auslan interpreters at all press conferences. We asked the community to be involved in this campaign. That week ABC NewsRadio asked for an interview about this issue, and of course I said yes! The Auslan translation of the radio interview is on our Facebook and Instagram pages. I can announce that after the radio interview, the PM Office has been in contact with Deaf Services, because Deaf Services has a contract to provide Auslan interpreters. They had a discussion and I’m sure Deaf Services will give us update when they can. This is an exciting update because this is a wonderful example of collective and community advocacy. We worked together to make a small change happen! That is how advocacy works – with a series of small achievements. Advocacy can’t always result in one dramatically big change in a second. We need to work together, persevere, and keep working on the small things to make big changes. I also want to say thank you to the team who worked hard on this to make such an impactful campaign happen. And thank you to everyone in the community who were involved, shared our links, wrote to the PM and encouraged us. Thank you I really appreciate your support.

Secondly, I want to update on NDIS Safeguarding Commission. I hope you know that you can make a complaint or report to them about anything you see that is wrong when using your NDIS. Like for example – if you feel your interpreter didn’t do their job properly, you can complain to the NDIS Commission who will investigate. If you want to know more about this, please contact us and we can expand more on this. Same goes for interpreters – they can complain about any matters that concern deaf people.

We have a new website launch this week!! Thank you to the team, especially Shirley for designing and working on this awesome website. We hope you enjoy the website and give us (positive) feedback!

We will host our AGM on 31 October 7pm – Halloween night – perfect night for an AGM! Members should have gotten an AGM notice this week. This will be livestreamed online. Speaking of the AGM – we will be announcing the winners of the Dot Shaw Writers Competition then – we are excited to get your submissions! They can be stories, poetry, comics. We are SO excited to read them all. Please send them in!

The Colin Allen Lecture will be on 26 November which will be launched this week as well. You can nominate who you would like to present at this Lecture on our website.

We will soon be hosting in few weeks time for consultation with Deaf people for digital health, this includes things like Telehealth and Medicare online. We can consult only with 10 people. We will send out more information about this soon so keep your eyes out for this for the opportunity to share your feedback for digital health. This is a nation-wide opportunity.

Thank you. As usual, if you have any feedback, thoughts or enquires – please do contact us via many different methods shown on slide at end of this video. Thank you.

Tik Tok’s auto captions

We were consulted by TikTok to ensure they provide appropriate access for Deaf, Deafblind and hard of hearing people who view videos on their platform.

CE’s update (17 September 2021)

Transcript

Will be available soon

Introducing our team

Transcript

Hi! I’m excited to introduce this team. I’m Jen Blyth, Chief Executive of Deaf Australia.

Hello, I’m Shirley, I work as a community and development officer.

Hello, I’m Catherine, I work as a content writer.

Hello, I’m Sal, I’m the Auslan Shop co-ordinator.

Hello! I’m Rosalie, I work as an accountant.

Hello, I’m Paula, I’m a resource officer.

Hello, I’m Darlene, I work as a DRC (Disability Royal Commission) support officer.

This is our team, we’re really excited to work with you all in Australia!

CE’s update (1 September 2021)

Transcript

Will be available soon

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