The Cobar LiveBetter community service has welcomed university student Meredith Calcino for work placement.
Meredith is currently completing her Bachelors degree in social work at Southern Cross University on the Gold Coast and hopes to go onto her Masters.
She will spend the next two weeks in Cobar working with LiveBetter staff and clients and then move on to Bourke for a further month of work placement.
LiveBetter’s Disability Support Worker Myshelle Gillette said Meredith will be invited to help out with a diverse range of services to help their aged clients, people with disabilities, their carers and families.
LiveBetter staff can be tasked to help with personal care and domestic help (shopping, banking etc).
They also work with clients to develop life skills and independence and assist them to improve their communication and social interactions within their community.
“In Year 11 I started my traineeship
in childcare to see if that was the avenue
I wanted to go into and, in doing that, I
noticed a lot of broken families and I just couldn’t bear letting them go back,” Meredith said.
“I wanted to be that person that they could rely on, so that’s what eventuated my choice to study social work.”
Meredith was introduced to some of the community on Monday at the RFDS monthly Carers morning tea, which is offered for the wellbeing of carers who are looking for support, a chat or just might need to “offload”.
