Peer disability support work in the age of social distancing

Peer Me Up assists with support for daily living and social participation for participants of NDIS, social care and aged care.

Peer Me Up Founder, Rachael Vaughan, said the majority of the service's clients were young people aged eight to 35, and Peer Me Up teamed them up with a support worker in their own age group.

"I hire people to work with other people. Our target market is young people. We have a lot of young people on our books who are uni students and they have all the relevant checks to support someone who is vulnerable," Ms Vaughan said.

Peer Me Up workers are employed to work with people with a disability - mental, physical or intellectual.

"They spend time, build their social skills, help them learn tasks around the home," said Ms Vaughan.

The benefit of having a young person do this work with them?

"Children are often resistant to parents telling them what to do," Ms Vaughan said.

"Doing it with a young person is oftentimes received better than it coming from a parent."

Depending on the age and abilities of the client, Peer Me Up support workers might help them learn how to cook, throw clothes in the washing machine, budget, organise their homework, run errands, go shopping or to their appointments.

"We provide transport, and we provide assistance for children needing help learning fine or gross motor skills; we provide help with that 'therapy homework' that Mum and Dad need to do in the home, as it's often better received when our workers are helping out," Ms Vaughan said.

How has all this changed since coronavirus?

"We have had a few cancellations for people who are self isolating, but we've had a lot of increased bookings because [many] young kids and adults are not attending school, TAFE, work or university," said Ms Vaughan.

"The parents are at home with the younger person if possible, but if they're not they need support and supervision.

"Most of them have mild to moderate disabilities, but they need supervision to cook and go to the shop, for example."

She said all her staff have done mandatory coronavirus training, and are "fully aware" they need to interact with clients using good hygiene practices.

"They might play board games while wearing gloves, for example. They're being creative with what they can do. One worker always took their client to go swimming, and now they can't so they've been flying kites instead."