Valley Way 13.10.23
Have a tour through the new Valley Way
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Welcome to Valley Way, supported living development for people with a disability.
00:04 I'd just like to point out here that our logo is written by one of our disabled residents,
00:10 Brett Roberts, he's a talented Aboriginal artist.
00:14 Coming through, these are our nine new homes that we've built between two and four bedrooms,
00:21 all for people with a disability on the NDIS.
00:24 Lawns and gardens all managed by Valley Grounds Care and Valley Nature's Care Nursery.
00:30 Hi, welcome to the Valley Way.
00:34 My name's David Isbell, I'm the CEO of Valley Industries.
00:37 I'm really pleased to show you around one of our nine houses we've just built on Wingham Road.
00:41 Come on through.
00:42 So this is one of our empty houses.
00:46 We've filled four of the nine houses already,
00:49 but all of the houses have very similar design concepts.
00:53 So the bathrooms, the bedrooms, the corridors are all very wide to accommodate wheelchairs.
00:59 The walls are made of sturdy, robust materials.
01:02 And then in the kitchens and the bathrooms there are particular features
01:06 which help people with a disability live a more independent life.
01:11 One of the nifty ones is the benches that actually raise and lower to suit people particularly using a wheelchair,
01:19 and enable them to transfer what they're cooking into an oven with a telescopic rail,
01:25 just all prepared to help them with little things with their living.
01:28 Flexibility in the living spaces is really important too,
01:31 so the main dining table actually raises and lowers.
01:35 And also, as on wheels, it can be moved around anywhere at all,
01:40 which again, for the guys in wheelchairs, really just makes a massive difference to live a little bit more flexibly.
01:47 In our high physical support houses, we're housing people who are in wheelchairs,
01:53 and previously what we'd have to do when we're transferring them to and from the bath or the shower
01:58 is use a manual lifter to lift them up into a chair and then transfer them into the bathroom.
02:05 And it was always a little bit of a mission.
02:08 So what we've installed in the roof is automatic systems
02:11 where we can transfer them directly from the bed in through to the bathroom
02:18 and just reduce the amount of transfers that they have to endure.
02:22 So people who were previously living in disparate parts of town are now living in a community together,
02:27 and so they've got some friends who live in the adjacent houses,
02:30 and it also helps the staff who work for Valley Industries.
02:33 They're working in a really nice modern workplace, and they've got their colleagues nearby.
02:38 And there's a real sense of community here.
02:41 They've got friends living in houses nearby.
02:43 We've got a common area with a barbecue where they socialise.
02:47 It's just a really nice, safe, comfortable place for these guys to live a regular, ordinary life.
02:53 You can have three residents in here if the carer is staying up overnight.
02:57 We also have some two-bedroom duplexes and a four-bedroom, like a larger four-bedroom house.
03:04 So there's a variety of styles which we can accommodate people with different needs.
03:09 So this is our first foray into these sort of homes,
03:12 but we've got a couple of other sites we've already purchased in Taree and Foster
03:15 where we're going to be building similar homes to these.
03:18 We've been very lucky here with our architect, Craig Teasdale from Port Macquarie,
03:23 who did a great job designing the homes,
03:25 and Alan Fadrus from Your Style Homes in Wingham has just produced a magnificent result,
03:30 a really, really good building.
03:32 [no dialogue]