Quickword Podcast S1E4: April 2024

Hi and welcome to another episode of Quickword, where we give you the headline features from our newsletter.

This newsletter aims to connect and inform people that work with people about different health related campaigns, events and resources in an uplifting and positive way.

We Acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands that were never ceded that we live, work and record upon.

We pay our respects to Elders past and present, and to those who may be visiting our website or listening to our podcasts today.

My name is Jennifer Farinella, and I'll be talking you through what you will find in this month's Quickword.

Let's dive in.

Quickword starts with Q.

This month's quote is

"Storytelling is a tool for knowing who we are and what we want too. If we never find our experience described in poetry or stories, we assume that our experience is insignificant."

This quote's by Ursula Le Guin, who was a celebrated author whose body of work includes 23 novels, 12 volumes of short stories, 11 volumes of poetry, 13 children's books, five essay collections, and four works of translation.

Find out more at ursulaleguin.com

This month's Useful Fact

Isolated Patients Travel and Accommodation Service or IPTAAS provides financial assistance from the NSW in Australia towards travel and accommodation costs when you need to travel long distances for specialised health treatment that is not available locally.

To be eligible for IPTAAS you must be a resident of New South Wales, including Lord Howe Island, be enrolled with Medicare, not be receiving or eligible for financial assistance for travel and accommodation from third party insurance or other Australian Government services, be referred for treatment at their nearest health service, receive treatment at an approved health service, travel from their residence for treatment at least 100 kilometres one way or at least 200 kilometres in a week, by making multiple trips to and from that treatment.

Find out more at iptaas.health.nsw.gov.au

This month's Instagram Highlight

What's on Our Mind?

You know what bittersweet is, right? When you're feeling partly happy and partly sad at the same time. When you know ending a situationship was the right choice, but you also low key miss it. When you're feeling two seemingly opposite emotions. This is not a thought about cognitive dissonance, where you are in mental conflict of your beliefs and actions not lining up.

This is more a thought about holding both spaces simultaneously. What if in that nuanced space, we can feel deep sadness and grief, but we can also proper laugh and feel joy. What if we're alone, but don't feel lonely? What if we miss them, but we don't want to be with them? What if we feel rejected, but also free?

Emotions are not binary, one or the other. We know that two things can be true. Sit with the uncertainty, the liminal space. Seek out information from places like the Gottman Institute, Relationships Australia, and reach out and potentially find a professional that's the right fit for you if you need to. Perhaps what we can strive for is contentment and peace.

Follow us on Instagram for more content like this.

This month's Campaigns and Events

The Good Box is a social enterprise that creates beautifully packaged gift boxes for people experiencing homelessness in Australia. They're on a mission to abolish misconceptions surrounding homelessness, to prevent isolation, and increase communication.

Give a box to someone you see experiencing homelessness, or opt for it to be distributed by one of their awesome charity partners. Either way, you're going to brighten up someone's day. Their engagement programs for school and corporates aim to remove the stigma around homelessness, educate, and connect.

Find out more at the good box. com. au

This month's Know Your Websites

Yellow Ladybugs is a non government organization with strong bridges to community. They are dedicated to the happiness, success, and celebration of autistic girls, women, and gender diverse individuals. They believe all autistic individuals deserve to be recognized, valued, accepted, and supported in order to realize their full potential.

They are committed to shining a positive light on autism through the creation of positive and inclusive experiences for their members. They use identity first language, autistic rather than has autism, to respect their community's preferences, and because they're actively seeking to reframe the conversation on autism, to remove the stigma and to focus instead on acceptance in a world that celebrates neurodiversity.

They are an autistic led organization, which means that the majority of their team members are autistic. They recognize that actually autistic individuals are the true experts on autism, and their lived experience is a critical factor in Yellow Ladybug's commitment to being an organization that can advocate for its autistic members, whether they are children, teens, or adults, and whether they are formally diagnosed or self identify as autistic.

Find out more at yellowladybugs. com. au

This month's Who Are?

The Centre for Future Work is an initiative of the Australian Institute, to conduct and publish progressive economic research on work, employment, and labour markets. It serves as a unique centre of excellence on the economic issues facing working people, including the future of jobs, wages, and income distribution, skills and training, sector and industry policies, globalisation, the role of government, public services, and more.

The centre will also develop timely and practical policy proposals to help make the world of work better for working people and their families.

Find out more at futurework.org.au

This month's On The Blog

You might have still been on vacation back in January when we released the blog, "Our Summer Favs."

In it, we cover our favourite book, (hard to pick, but we did), movie, series, documentary, music, podcast, and artist from 2023.

Read the whole blog at caddyshackproject.com

This month's Resource

 The Understanding Dementia MOOC, Massive Open Online Course, was developed by the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre, based in the College of Health and Medicine at the University of Tasmania in Australia.

This world leading online course is free, easily accessible, and available to everyone with an interest in dementia. The ageing of human populations across the globe has contributed to dementia being identified as one of the public health issues of the 21st century. The MOOC current curriculum addresses this health issue by drawing upon the expertise of neuroscientists, clinicians, and dementia care professionals from both within the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre and beyond.

Since 2013, the Understanding Dementia has received over 360,000 enrollments from all around the world. We invite you to join their community and learn about the diseases that cause dementia, how the condition affects the person with dementia, and how they can be provided with best quality care.

Find out more at mooc.utas.edu.au

This month's Diary Dates

For all our upcoming webinar dates, check our website where you can register for free, and also complete free online modules around sexual and reproductive health in your own time.

You can read our monthly blog, find the map which shows you where to access free condoms at services who are part of the Condom Dispenser Project in the Illawarra and Shoalhaven, and order a free bag of 144 condoms, now with lube as well, from PlaySafe, NSW Health, Australia.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Caddyshack's Quickword. We hope you learned something, found a useful link or can pass it on to a colleague, friend or family member. You can find all the details on our homepage on the web at caddyshackproject. com Follow us on Facebook and Instagram, or check out our On The Couch podcast series.

Until next time, peace, love and protection.