Hi Members,
Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a wonderful and relaxing holiday period, and are all refreshed for the exciting year ahead. The board has already been hard at work, holding the first board meeting of the year last week. Busy making plans for 2018 (and beyond).
With the New Year, comes a new calendar of events. Steph, the DRTA education co-ordinator has been busy planning the years workshops and training events. We kick off the years education calendar with the “Access to Leisure” workshop being held in Ryde, NSW on February 6. This workshop is designed for those working in disabilities, rehab and mental health. The DRTA will also be continuing to provide CST training this year. Please visit the events tab on the DRTA website for more information and dates and locations of workshops/training.
Last year the board decided to provide on-line training for members, via the website, for those unable to attend workshops, training and conference. While last year’s conference was filmed, unfortunately the footage collected was unusable. But we were able to film the last workshop of the year and got good quality footage and presentations to use. Daniel Grey (Vic state rep) and volunteers have been hard at work editing the footage and getting it prepared to be uploaded. These will be uploaded to the education platform in the coming weeks, and will be available for members to access for a fee. Please keep an eye on the website for more details on when the on-line training modules will be available and how to access the education platform. And a huge thank you to Daniel and the volunteers for all their hard work in preparing the on-line modules.
Planning is already underway for the conference 2018. The theme for the conference and DRTA week is “Out of the Box”. The call for papers will be released very soon. We would love to hear some ‘out of the box’ presentations from members, new grads and first time presenters. Keep a look out for the call for papers and send those abstracts in!
You may notice a change in the look of the newsletter. We have given it a face lift over the holidays. I would like to say thank you the Emma Preston for all her hard work and dedications as the newsletter editor. While we won’t have an editor moving forward, Emma will still be involved in the newsletter – sourcing websites and journal articles of interest for members. Information and news articles will be available on the news tab of the DRTA website, with new articles being uploaded constantly. We still welcome and encourage articles from members. If you have an item or article for the newsletter, please send it to the office via email attention: newsletter.
Kind regards,
Kylie Rice
President