2021 has been another strange year. As the world continued to grapple with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the human services sector saw significant staff shortages, Hannah’s House remained focused on our goal – providing care, comfort and joy to children with life-limiting and complex conditions and their families.
This year, we provided support to more than 80 children and families, delivering over 60,000 hours of in-home care. That’s more than ever before!
Playtime
We entered our second year of our Playtime Program, which offers individualised play plans for each child and fortnightly playgroups.
Playgroups have a broader focus of helping children and families to get out and about and enjoy increased social and recreational opportunities. We rotate incursions of craft, art, music and other indoor therapies with excursions to disability friendly places around the metro area.
We had so much fun at our playgroups this year with messy mat, music therapy, arts and craft, as well as excursions to awesome places like Scitech, Swan Valley Cuddly Animal Farm, Fringe Festival and Winter Wonderland.
Thanks to the ongoing support of Telethon, new partners in WA Charity Direct, a special gift from the Royal Perth Golf Club Women’s Charity Committee and CommBank Staff Foundation, we were able to substantially expand our activities in 2021.
Here’s a fun little look back at our Playtime year.
Next year, we look forward to expanding our play activities further, including commencing a youth group for school-aged children.
Our Playtime program also extends to family and parent events. This year we had some special times at Adventure World for Easter, A Mother’s Day High Tea at the Royal Perth Yacht Club, Dad’s Day at a Freo Dockers game in June and a wonderful end of year Family Christmas Party at the Perth Zoo.
Five Years of Hannah’s House
This year we also celebrated five years of independent operations providing care, comfort and joy to children with life-limiting and complex conditions and their families.
After successfully piloting an in-home respite program with Nulsen Disability, we launched our own service in November 2016.
Our first client was baby Kamden. This sweet little boy was only five months old and his parents Sarah and Ian were dealing with the unexpected reality of having a child with complex needs. Having to relocate from their community in Karratha, the couple were navigating life in Perth, juggling with FIFO and taking their baby boy home from hospital without any other support. That’s when Hannah’s House were called in to help.
Kamden is now five years old and thriving beyond expectation. He is a participant of the NDIS and together with Sarah, Ian and his little sister Scarlett, is still very much part of the Hannah’s House family.
Spend a few minutes to watch his story.
Sunny the Bear
Special thanks again this year to our great friends at Surgical House. This year we attended the Source Kids and Live Your Potential Expos, as well as the Telethon Family Festival with our new mascot Sunny the Bear.
Surgical House commissioned Sunny in conjunction with District 360 Supports.
He is made from more than 11,000 Lego Bricks, weighs over 20kg and took Ryan and Shannon from the WA Brick Society more than 70 hours to build!
Our first Annual Report
In 2021, Hannah’s House released our very first ‘Year in Review’, which provides insight into our purpose, history, goals and achievements. You can read it online here: https://hannahshouse.org.au/updates/2021-in-review/
Thank you Lotterywest!
To support our progress towards maintaining quality management and delivering excellence in client service, we were pleased to receive a Lotterywest grant in June. This will be used toward the development of an integrated client and business management system that will allow Hannah’s House to significantly improve organisational capability and capacity.