Episode 4 - Hayley & Kate from Melba Support on intimacy, connection, and person-centred care

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Transcript

Maddy: This podcast is recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nations. We pay our respects to the traditional custodians of this country and elders past and present. We extend our respects to any First Nations, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people joining us today. Welcome to today's episode of No Spoons to Give, the podcast where we explore life's ups and downs with neurodivergence, chronic illness and disability, and chat with the voices that make our community so wonderful. So how are you going today, Larissa?

Larissa: I'm good. I had a bit of a long drive this morning, but I've had a double dose of coffee and I'm ready to go. How are you going?

Maddy: It's always the way to do it. I'm going well, running on fumes, but still running, so it's good.

Larissa: That's good. That's the main thing. Have you got a recommendation for me this morning?

Maddy: I do. I have a really good recommendation for you, if I do say so myself. It's a book called Year of the Tiger: An Activist's Life, by Alice Wong. It's a raw genre-bending memoir made up of a series of essays about finding and cultivating community, growing up with intersecting identities and the unending fight for disability rights. Alice Wong is a queen. She's amazing, and it's such a powerful book, so I really recommend it.

Larissa: Love Alice Wong. I say this every week, but we do need to start a Spoony book club because you just have the most amazing recommendations and I think our community would love it.

Maddy: Oh, I would love to do that. What about you?

Larissa: Yeah, I've got a book recommendation this week. So it is an older book, maybe five or six years old, it's called How to Endo by Bridget Hustwaite. It was the first book that I ever picked up when I suspected that I had endometriosis, and it's a guidebook that holds your hand through the process. It's very evidence-based and she does update it, which is great. One thing that stood out for me with this book was that if I hadn't have read it, I may have never received a diagnosis and therefore treatment. So for anyone who experiences period pain or menstrual pain, I highly recommend it. It's a great guidebook.

Maddy: That sounds fantastic. And today we're going to be chatting with Hayley and Kate from Melba Support Services, an individualised disability support service designed to help disabled people in regional Victoria to live fabulously purposeful lives of their own choosing. Hayley is the CEO of Melba, and is a dynamic and innovative leader with over 30 years experience in the disability aged care and community sectors. Under her guidance, Melba has transformed from a small regional service to one of Victoria's largest disability care providers. Kate is Melba's innovation lead and she is vision and hearing impaired. Formerly a journalist, she now leads innovation integration to solidify new financially sustainable ideas as a foundation for fantastic outcomes for people supported by Melba.

Larissa: Welcome, Hayley and Kate. Thank you so much for joining us. For those who haven't heard about Melba, could you tell us a little bit about yourselves and what Melba does?

Hayley: So Melba has been around since the 1970s. In fact, we've just celebrated our 50th birthday, well a couple of years ago. But for us it's still very fresh. And we've been delivering individualised supports through a human rights framework now for near on 25 years. So as an organisation providing disability supports, we were one of the first to implement that human rights framework, and that's absolutely critical and vital to everything that we do. So really we're talking about person-led services, services designed for and by people with a disability, and ensuring that we're always innovative. And of course, one remains innovative when one is listening to what people want and how they want it. So in simple terms, I like to say we provide supports to people when they want it, how they want it, and with whom they want it. As simple as that.

Maddy: That is a fantastic way to summarise all the amazing work that you're doing. So what would you say that makes Melba stand out from other disability support organisations?

Hayley: I reckon it is our human rights approach. A lot of people talk about human rights and disability, which is fantastic because up until a couple of decades ago, people would just look at you blankly if you talked about human rights and disability in the same frame. And now we're all talking about it, especially with rural commissions. The NDIS has certainly promoted human rights. But from my perspective, what makes Melba stand out is we are committed to all human rights. A lot of people will talk about the right to accessible housing or to accessible education, and these are all basic human rights, but nobody's talking about the right to intimacy or the right to connectivity with others. So it feels like we all want to wave the banner of human rights, but who's actually talking about all human rights and they're all being as critically important to people being able to live a fabulous life? And that is really important in terms of somebody defining what that fabulous life looks like for them.

And what I find astounding is we've made little movement in that in many years. And when we talk to people about what they want, because this is something else that also Melbourne is absolutely always been committed to, and that is the people who purchase our supports are the ones that design their supports. And we have very strong advocacy groups which tell us what they want and how they want it. But when we go out to focus groups, and maybe Kate, you can talk a little bit more about that. The first thing people always want is connectivity. They actually want to know what other people are doing, how to relate to other people, how to meet other people. And it's not just about what we think of traditional terms of intimacy. So it's not just about sex, sex, sex. Intimacy can mean many, many different things. But I reckon it would be the number one thing people talk about, even beyond accessible housing, accessible jobs. What do you think, Kate? When we get down to the ting tacks?

Kate: Absolutely. That's the number one thing that, especially when we start that conversation because we know it can be a tricky conversation to start. Not everyone wants to come up to a support worker and go, "Can you help me access intimacy?" It's tricky. We've got to really work with everyone to find out what intimacy means to them. So for them, it could be something like Spoony where they're connecting with other friends and other people who share their interests, for example, and who understand spoon theory on an app. That might be what they want. They want it online. For other people, it could even be something like they want a pet. And you'd be surprised at how many people with disability are told by support workers, by the organisation that supports them, "No, you can't have a pet. You can't do that."

We will always look for what is the most innovative way to provide services that meet people at their point of want and their point of need. We are always innovative because we never feel like we've nailed disability services. That's never going to happen. There's always going to be evolution within this sector. So I'm not sure if you know, so it used to be back in the dark days, people with disability would automatically be shipped off to an institution to live. Done, forgotten about, and we know the horrors that were committed there. So then the whole system moved to group homes like, "All right, you guys who live with disability, who've never met each other before, you might not even like each other, let alone choose to live with each other. You go and all live in this group home." Now we're at the point where we're even devolving that model as well.

Always progressive, always innovation. And that's where Melba leads. We want to find out what people want, which is why we keep asking them, and that's what we want to deliver to them. So in terms of intimacy, when we have that conversation, we work out with people, what does it mean to them? What do they want? What are they looking for? What can we help support them to access? So it's really going to meet them at their point of want when it comes to intimacy, and that's what we deliver. And it's a really interesting conversation to have. It can be tricky, but that's why we're working on giving people ways to navigate those conversations so that they can end up accessing the intimacy that they want.

Larissa: That's super important work that you're doing at Melba. I particularly love how you're co-building what you're doing alongside the community as well and listening to what they want. What's your process for, I guess, understanding what the community wants and then implementing that and then refining it to make sure it's continuously what they're after and it meets the needs of different people?

Hayley: It's an excellent question, and we are constantly learning how one does that. I think the key is making sure that you absolutely stick to your principle of person-led, and ensuring that the person themselves is determining how they want that support to look. But in terms of that bigger picture, we actually have a group called ARROW, which stands for Advocacy, Rights, Representation, Outcomes and Worth. And it's made up of people who purchase Melba Supports. And they actually report directly to myself and the board, and we have them across the whole of Victoria. There's different groups, so we'll often use that group as a sounding board or as advice from a bigger picture perspective around what should a model of service look like. But every model of service has to be able to be individualised, so that when we're talking about really meeting people's needs, they're determining along the way what that looks like.

So it's like wrapping the service around the individual and then that person directing and leading, whether it's working or whether it's not working. So it's also making sure that you have checkpoints for want of a better term. Is this working? If it's not, what do we need to shift? What do we need to change? So we never think about what we get right or wrong because that language prevents you from really innovating. It's more about, is this working for you? If not, why not? We'll often say, "This is the traditional Melba way," We'll call it. And that is very simply, we use it at executive, we use it at delivering supports. Three key questions, what's working and what's not working, what needs to change?

Maddy: I think they're excellent questions that I think a few more organisations definitely could be asking. I think that it's pretty fantastic and almost revolutionary to be really centering-

Hayley: Thank you.

Maddy: ... the focus on the people rather than the service in itself because people are the focus. People deserve to live the lives that they want to lead.

Kate: We reflect that too in our organisational structure. Ours is a right way up. So at the top of our organisational chart, we have our people supported, and at the bottom we have the CEO. So it's something-

Hayley: Well, actually the board. Sorry, the board.

Kate: Oh, the board, yes. Yeah. And so that's how we work it. We live and breathe this way of being. It's not something that's just policies and procedures. This is genuine, this is authentic. That's what the Melbourne difference is. It's our commitment to delivering services that are shaped by people.

Hayley: And I think it is important though. Here's me, I'll come back in. So many organisations are person-centred, they do aspire to this. We are seeing with the NDIS a lot more individualised approaches. But I think the key is around not being complacent and acknowledging that you can always do better, and that you always must listen to who your actual customer is. And I know a lot of people shy away from the term customer, some do, some don't. But it's actually who are we supporting? Who are we servicing? And as long as we continue to listen and we don't always get it right, and I think that's really important too, to be able to acknowledge we don't always get it right.

Maddy: I think so too. I think that's where you grow in learning how you can do better, as you've just explained so well. What is your favourite part about working within the disability community?

Hayley: There's lots. First point is the people. I don't think there's probably any better way of putting it. It's just the people. And I think for me personally, it's the combination of working with people and everything that such a diverse world has to offer. In fact, we often have debates about what actually is disability, because disability comes from this very much impairment perspective and especially around neurodiversity, it's like it's neurodiversity and yet we see it in this negative way, so we shouldn't. I see it as working with people and all the fabulousness that people bring. And also, I've been very fortunate that I was very much raised within this really strong human rights framework. And so what better connection than working with people and human rights? So that would be me.

Kate: One of my favourite parts is absolutely the people, and getting to organise and run events for them. So I went to our people with a whole series of focus groups and asked them, "What events do you want? When do you want them? What do you want to do at them? Where do you want them to be held?" And the feedback was amazing. And I use that to inform the events that we've rolled out. We've done speed dating events that were neurodiverse specific. And that was an incredible experience to be in the room with people while they're meeting other people, hearing the laughter, the chatter, the conversation afterwards when they're coming up to me and going, "Oh, when's the next one going to be? Let us know."

I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, I'll let you know." And then they're like, "All right, I've just met this one. We're going out for coffee. See you." And I'm like, "Oh, that is brilliant." There's been people who've been catching up on weekends after meeting at our events. And to provide that opportunity for them to be doing what they want to do is amazing. And I remember after one event, one of the people came up to me and she said, it was at our Valentine's Day event last year, she said to me, "Oh, that was heaps better than sitting on the couch at home." And I just thought, that's why we do this, to support people to live a fabulous life and to give them that choice of doing what they want to do.

Larissa: That's magic. I absolutely love that. We chatted a little bit before about intimacy and how that doesn't just relate to sex, but wider relationships. With the events that you've been hosting, how have you noticed that this has improved the quality of life of clients using Melba?

Kate: It's a really interesting question, and I love the use of the word intimacy. And I think it's really important for us to frame that from the start. What is intimacy? Because a lot of people just think about intimacy and automatically their mind goes to sex, sex, sex. And that's fair enough, we get it, but it's not that for everybody. So a lot of the work that we've been doing in terms of our intimacy programmes at Melba is defining what intimacy is. And so of course, we went to our people and asked them, and the answers and the amount of, "Oh, I suppose a variety of what intimacy means to people is just amazing." So obviously sex and perhaps supporting a person to access a sex worker is absolutely there, but that's just one end of the spectrum. There's a whole other range of things that intimacy means to people.

So some of the examples we can give you are things like, it could mean having a pet, being supported to have a pet and cuddling up to your little fluffy dog at the end of the night is just a really lovely form of intimacy for a lot of people. It could mean forming friendships. It could mean your relationships with your family. It can mean even intellectual intimacy, having those deep conversations. It can mean financial intimacy. So sharing finances with someone is a form of intimacy. It could be religious intimacy being supported to go to church and spiritual intimacy. So when we do talk about intimacy, we are talking about a whole lot of different things that it means to different people. And of course, we also recognise that some people don't want to access intimacy, and that is also okay. So there's no right way to experience intimacy, except for consensually, of course. Intimacy means different things to different people, and that's part of the process. It's working with people to understand what it means to them, so then we can meet them at that point of need. What do you think, Hayley?

Hayley: Absolutely. I think it's one of the biggest lessons that we've learnt along the way. I mean, Kate and I were having this conversation before we walked in. I feel like I've been talking about this for the past 40 years, which is really sad when you think about it. But what we've realised over the years is intimacy means different things to different people. I think the challenge is when people make assumptions about what a person with a disability should or shouldn't do, and I think that's where we get really quite, I guess, distressed in a way because it's actually not upholding somebody's human right. And so what we want to do is not just provide the ability for people to access intimacy in a way that's meaningful for them, but also have an impact in terms of hopefully educating families.

Because we often see people with a disability grow up, remain in the family home, and often seen as the perennial child. Interestingly yesterday, was it yesterday or the day before, Kate, we were doing a session, and a support worker talked about somebody that was supporting who was 26 years of age, and this young man wanted to experience connectivity. And that didn't necessarily mean sex or getting a sex worker. It was just a form of intimacy, a relationship. And sadly, the support worker was sharing with us that the mother said, "Oh, no, no, he's just a child." And we can understand that in a way. Do we agree with it? Absolutely not. So we think that part of our role also is to help educate and support, so that that 26-year-old young man is not restricted in any way, shape or form, in being able to access intimacy in a way that's meaningful to him.

Maddy: Yeah, that is so important. I think educating families is the other part of the process. And yeah, that's so fantastic that you are really able to make a difference there.

Hayley: Well, we hope so. I mean, it is a lot of trial and error and we're about to embark on a big education programme for families and for parents. And so stay tuned, we'll come back to you. But I think also with apps like Spoony, I think that is an incredible way forward because it's not just about... It's about connectivity. And I think that's really important. And what we find, especially with family and others, is once they understand around an individual and what their needs are, we can then bring them along.

Larissa: Yeah, particularly with platforms like Spoony too, for some people. I mean, there's so many people at the moment saying, "Leave social media." But for some people, that's the only way of connecting and forming friends, and it's a way for them to do it on their terms as well and actually connect with like-minded people or they might share similar lived experiences. So yeah, I really like what you've spoken about, so many different forms of intimacy and connection. We might take a quick break and then when we get back, I want to chat to you about support workers and what they can do to best support their clients.

Hey, Maddy, do you want to know what one of my favourite profile features is on Spoony?

Maddy: That you can use it to post more photos of your dog?

Larissa: I'll take any opportunity I can to post dog pics, but no. Did you know that Spoony allows you to share your support needs on your profile so that your new friends can understand you a bit better? On mine, I've got routines, quiet spaces, energy conservation and visual schedules. Visual because we all know how much I love mind maps and naps.

Maddy: That's so cool. Can I put energy conservation there? I have to pace my energy or else I get really exhausted?

Larissa: You absolutely can. There's so many cool profile features that make Spoony unique to any other social platform. You can also display your conditions or illnesses, share your interests, and let people know how your energy levels are tracking by using our signature Spoon status. I'd really encourage people to check it out for themselves. You can sign up for free using the link in this podcast, or you can find us in the app store or Google Play.

Relationships and intimacy can be challenging for people with disabilities. Why is it so important that we support disabled people to build these meaningful connections and also provide them with the right tools and education surrounding these topics?

Kate: It's a really interesting question and the use of the word challenging, and we know that it is. We know that relationships and intimacy are really challenging for people with disabilities, but it's because of the world around them. It's not because of the person with disability. And we want to be really clear about that. People with disability have been segregated from opportunities to experience intimacy. We know that they've been pulled out of sex ed classes at school because it's considered to be, not for them. They've been excluded from the community where they would ordinarily develop those incidental relationships, that might even end up in romantic intimacy. And there's a lot of pushback that we see from families around not allowing a person with disability in their family to have access to a girlfriend, a boyfriend. We've even seen cases of support workers saying no to someone who wants to have a pet. So when we look at challenges around intimacy, it's because of the world around them. So I mean, have you ever seen a person with disability in a sex scene in a movie?

Larissa: No.

Maddy: I can only think of one, which is a TV show called Latecomers, SBS TV show, but that was quite revolutionary, so that's the only one I can think of.

Larissa: In general they're so underrepresented.

Maddy: Absolutely.

Kate: So culturally, people with disability are excluded from intimacy too. And it's really hard because when people with disability don't see representation of themselves anywhere in culture, it's hard for them to be able to come to that realisation of, "Oh, hey, that is available to me. That is an option for me. I can ask for that and I can look for that, and it's okay for me to want that." So I think that that's a key thing where those challenges are coming from. And of course, because there's been this exclusion for so long and this lack of education, we find that people with disability, in many cases, they don't have the confidence to pursue it because they've never had it as an opportunity before. It's never been something that's available to them, and education is a whole other challenge. Hayley, I'll let you talk about the education piece as well.

Hayley: Yeah, and just picking up on that, Kate, it also makes me think about when I was growing up and I'm a person who doesn't have a disability, I got to explore and test and try and climb out the bedroom window late at night to go party when my parents didn't know, all those things to explore and push the boundaries of growing up. And intimacy in relationship is all part of that to learn that, to make mistakes. And again, a person with a disability often doesn't get or didn't get that opportunity. So in terms of that, we're also very respectful of where families do come from and can understand that there's a lot of fear involved. So if you've not had that experience or that skillset, there's that fear around safeguarding. So is my loved one or am I going to be abused? How do I keep myself safe? And I think that's where it's so critical around the education, not just for people with a disability, for everyone, it's the same.

It's about understanding if you understand and if you're informed, what is consent? What does consent look like? How do I say no? Can I kiss someone and then if they go to touch me somewhere else, can I say no again? So it's about ensuring that people with a disability have access to that education, that feel fully informed, educated around what is right and what is wrong for them, and how you explore that. And I think the more we're educated, the more we're informed, the more we know that we then reduce that risk of abuse. But I want to also be really clear that we absolutely, I absolutely understand where it must sit for a family member in terms of listening to those families and that fear that they must hold for their loved one in staying safe. So I can understand that. So we've got a responsibility to educate, and educate the person in a way that's meaningful for them, but also the family.

Larissa: Do you have any advice for disability support workers and carers about supporting and empowering disabled people to live their best lives?

Hayley: So if I had, it's well, that's your primary role. So the first piece of advice for support workers is, your primary role is actually, and forgive me, but it is our purpose and we fully believe in it, it's to open up a world of opportunities for people to live a fabulous life. And it's one of the skillsets of a great support worker to be able to do that. But what we do know in the intimacy space, it can be really challenging. You heard the story before about a support worker that wanted to support a young man to access intimacy and the family member was no.

So that support worker has to work together with the person, uphold their rights, and what do they do if actually the family member is saying no because they don't want to breach the rights of that individual? So what Melba's done is we've developed an education course for support workers to assist them to be able to support individuals to access intimacy. And I might hand over to Kate to talk a little bit more about that and together with that education programmes for families, which we're launching later in the year. But I'll hand over to you, Kate, to talk about the support worker programme and what the great feedback we've had so far.

Kate: Yeah, it's really interesting. Of all the training that we run at Melba for our support workers, this is by far the most popular. And the feedback has been amazing. It's been really well received. People's responses have ranged from, "Well, now I know what to do," To, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe it's taken this long, but finally we're getting training on this." And that's the reason we did it. We did it because we knew support workers were not feeling comfortable or confident in supporting people to access intimacy. And we knew that people with disabilities wanted their support workers to have the skills and knowledge to support them, and we'd asked them. It's part of our constant conversations that we're having with our people so that we are shaping our services to meet them at their point of want and their point of need. So what we've rolled out with support workers is training that helps them understand what intimacy can mean to people.

And some of the great examples that our people have shared as part of this training is for one of them, intimacy means instead of being showered, which is almost sounds like a medical procedure when you put it like that, right in that language, to be showered of a morning. Now she is ready for her shower disco, and so they crank the music and she has her shower to that. And that's a form of intimacy because you're making more of a person-centred activity out of it. And we also have another person, he loves having spa experiences instead of just a bath. And so again, you get the aromatherapy, you get the beautiful soft music, you get the big, soft, fluffy towels. It's a real experience. We have another person and they talk about their little dog cuddling up to them at night. You'll notice that people having dogs is a real theme here.

People love having their pet dogs. It's just gorgeous. And it's one of the many ways. So what we do in the course is we assist support workers to know and understand how to support a person to access intimacy. And sometimes it may be how to access a sex worker. Other times it may be working out with that person, what intimacy do you want to access? What are we talking about here? What feels good to you? And it's all about making that person, making sure that that person has the opportunity to feel comfortable, to feel heard, to feel valued, and to feel connected. And so that's how they learn from us, the support workers, how to support a person to feel all of that and have that opportunity.

Maddy: That's absolutely fantastic. It's so good to hear that you have such a robust programme to help support the support workers to do their best work because I feel like that's such a gap just generally within the community.

Hayley: And we've just started on this journey, so one of the other really positives that's come out of this is that we focused on our people leaders. So it wasn't just directly support workers, so giving our people leaders all those skills to then support their teams around having that conversation. And we found that has been really empowering because often our front-facing leaders don't get that opportunity either. So that's been really successful, hasn't it, Kate?

Kate: Oh, absolutely. And it comes back to the idea of continuous innovation, and that's exactly why we do it. So for example, Spoony at the moment. 10 years ago, we wouldn't be teaching our support workers anything about assisting a person to access intimacy online or on an app or digitally because it just wasn't available. So when you look at things like the evolution of technology and what becomes available, we have to keep abreast of that. We have to know what's going on, and continually bring those innovations back into the disability context to benefit the people we support and to offer it as a choice for them to take up if they want to. So that's part of that continuous innovation, what's new, what's happening, what's going to be of interest of our people to our people that we can offer? And that's why we do what we do.

Maddy: Just jumping off from your point about technology. So Melba has been running for over 50 years, in that time there's been so many different advancements in the world that benefit disabled people. How do you think technology has enabled and supported disabled people to live their best lives?

Hayley: That is an excellent question because I think from an organisation perspective, one of the challenges we have as a not-for-profit is often technology is the last thing you spend money on. You're so busy wanting to provide quality support, education, training, who has the money to innovate? It's really difficult, and especially when we look at the disability support worker model of support currently, and I'm not going to go into the details of the costings, that's a whole other podcast. There's meant to be enough left over for innovation, but there never is. So I think we've really been behind in terms of technology and providing best possible supports. And I think now what we're seeing is if we don't invest in technology, we will be left way behind. So even things like supporting people in their home. So there's two ways here to look at it. One is from the service delivery perspective, and for example, technology has advanced that dramatically. So now a support worker, and we're not quite there yet, but being able to talk into your phone to take notes.

Now that's a huge time-saving and it frees that support worker up to actually deliver support rather than writing all these copious notes. So being able to embrace technology from that perspective, from a service delivery point of view, but vitally important as it's provided so much more accessibility for individuals who have a disability. So when you look at technology like being able to, it doesn't matter where you live, you can still connect because you can get on your laptop, you can get on social media, that wasn't available before. So it's really had huge impact in connectiveness, I think for people with a disability. Then you could look at what's available in what we call smart homes and how that has increased people's independence. Because we've always believed independence is not about how much support you need. It's actually a state of mind. So if you can direct and determine how your life looks, even if you need 24/7 support to do that, it's your independence in determining what your life looks like.

Technology has hugely advanced that. So no longer do you have to live in a home where you've got staff in your home 24/7 because that's what you need. You can now live in an apartment with great technology, have staff around 24/7, but they're not in your face, they're not in your space. You can press a button or you can call on them. You can open and close your doors through voice. You can have systems that actually track your movements. So if you're actually unwell or having a bad day, that system can determine, well actually, you've not been to the bathroom, so then somebody's notified. So it's actually increased independence dramatically, both in the physical way, emotional, social. I just wish we had more bucks to be able to test and try and do a whole heap more. But I think advanced technology is just fantastic. I think our challenge is keeping up.

Maddy: That's a fantastic answer. That leads on to my next question. We're really, really excited to be partnering with Melba this year. So I was wondering, why have you chosen to partner with Spoony and what's been your favourite part of watching us grow?

Hayley: I think it was a synergy between our passions and that is all around giving people access to connectivity. I mean, you've heard us talk about intimacy and it's a basic human right, and nobody's talking about that basic human right. And the use of the right app with social media gives such accessibility, not just locally or regionally or nationally, but globally. So super excited to be working together with Spoony. We've been looking at a lot in this space, and it's just so fantastic to find partners such as yourself, same culture, values, beliefs. Kate?

Kate: Absolutely. And I think just jumping back into my business innovation mode for a second here, the key word there for me is growth. So watching you guys grow is part of what made us so attracted to Spoony as an opportunity for people with disabilities. So when we got to do our due diligence and we're going through a market analysis of existing apps on the market, we wanted to make sure that what we were doing looking at all wrapped up in that, that it was all led by our people supported. And so we'd asked them, we'd already held focus groups where we actually said, "What do you guys want in terms of online digital apps? What sort of solution are we looking at here?" And they told us that what they want, the two key things that they're looking for is a really big user base. They want to meet a lot of people.

What's the point of going to a party to meet people, and you get there and there's only two others kicking around there? So we are looking for a really huge user base and a smooth interface as well. People wanted a really good product to use that's not glitchy, not buggy. And so I did a deep dive on all of the reviews of all of the existing in-market apps, and Spoony came up trumps every time, by far the biggest user base. And so I knew our people would love that because they'd already told me and I knew that the product was good because the reviews were saying that it's good to use, it's easy to use, it's not buggy. And the others weren't getting that great feedback. So once we had that, we knew it was going to be a wonderful partnership and we are so excited to see that continual growth because it gives me tingles. What can we do for people with disabilities to get more and more connected? What a huge space to be able to move in and what a huge opportunity.

Larissa: Thank you so much for the kind words. Yeah, we're so excited to be partnering with Melba and yeah, we've received similar feedback from our community. They've been loving the app. Our community's growing day by day, week by week, whether it's through our marketing channels or word of mouth. People are wearing Spoony merch and sharing it with their friends, and we just love to see that amongst the disability community. I am mindful of your time, both of you. I know you're both very busy people, so that's probably a great spot to wrap up on. But yeah, we definitely have to keep our conversations going and get you back for another episode because you both have so much incredible insight and knowledge and I need to pick your brains more and more please.

Kate: We'd love that.

Hayley: Yeah, we'd love that.

Larissa: You're really passionate.

Hayley: We are.

Kate: Thanks guys. It's been a fantastic conversation and we really hope that the listeners have enjoyed some insights as well, so we've really enjoyed our time here.

Hayley: Indeed.

Maddy: Thank you so much for coming on.

Hayley: Thank you.

Larissa: Thank you. Thanks.

Maddy: Thank you. This podcast is brought to you by Spoony, a safe space for neurodivergent, chronically ill and disabled people to make friends and find support. Spoony is the world's very first social app designed with accessibility at its core. If you like this episode, it would mean the absolute world to us if you could hit subscribe or share it with a friend. If you'd like to join our Spoony community, you can download the app on the app store or via Google Play. And if you'd like to keep up to date with us on social media, you can follow us via the links in the show notes.