Marissa Chats To Danny Hui Ahead Of International Day Of People With Disability
Early in our Careseekers journey we shared a co-working space with Danny Hui, the creator of Sameview. Danny is a parent to three children with disabilities. From the moment we met him we were struck by his vision, humility and ability to connect with others.
His advocacy for his children, particularly in the education space, is done with one simple goal - to give his children the same education opportunities as other children.
Whether you are a person with a disability, parent, carer, support coordinator or provider we hope that you enjoy this profile of a man who is an amazing role model to his children and us all. He also uses the Careseekers platform to find and manage support workers.
Before Danny had children, he knew very little about the disability community. Today, Danny’s growing knowledge of the individuals who make up this diverse community is his strength.
A keen listener, Danny believes in the power of telling and sharing your story.
“It’s so important for people to own their own story and get to tell it. It is the most powerful thing that we have.”
Danny believes that change often comes as a response to hearing a person’s story, and gave me this example.
Danny and his partner Jess have three children, all with disabilities. Their youngest son, Monty, has a rare disease that presents similarly to cerebral palsy. When Monty wasn’t able to access his school’s library due to a flight of stairs his teacher would carry him up the stairs and Danny would finish work early everyday to come and carry him down the stairs.
“Needlessly difficult” is how Danny describes the process of getting the access to the school library changed. While the educators and those who interacted with Monty every day were onside, it was when the issue went into Government departments that it got lost and overly complex. What finally saw change happen was Danny turning up to Parliament House, in person, and telling Monty’s story to the relevant minister.
Once Monty’s school library was accessible, Danny wanted a process in place for other families to follow “Now that you have fixed it for me, can you show me a piece of paper so that the next family has an easy to follow application process?” Danny asked. Structural change can be slower and unfortunately this question is yet to be answered, despite Danny asking it at regular intervals.
What Danny finds surprising is that he often feels like he is the first parent to ever raise an issue. “As a parent you have to lead to solve a number of challenges for your child and it always feels like you are the first one to solve it, which is strange given that there are many people with disabilities.”
There are so many ways to solve issues and Danny’s way is through sharing his story. “What I have learned is that if you can share your story there will be a second family that will come along and say hey you have done this before.”
After Monty’s library was made accessible the family took part in a Department of Education video on accessibility. Sharing their story, Danny found many other families with children with disabilities reached out to them.
It is not surprising then that Danny and Jess decided to create Sameview - an online platform to connect and share disability care information between families and their team e.g therapists, support workers, educators.
Sameview was created seven years ago and responded to the family’s most pressing challenge at the time - managing the information and communication between the many different teams they had in their lives to support Monty.
Sameview clearly addressed a problem many families face, as over 11,000 people from the disability community use the platform today.
Reflecting on what he would create today, for Danny it always comes back to the person.
“How do you support someone that feels alone on an issue? How do you best hold that person’s hand or bring a group of people together to support one person? I love how beautifully diverse our community is and think what can we do for this one particular person? I don’t get excited about a big market opportunity, I get excited about individuals.”
To find disability support services, please visit www.careseekers.com.au/services/disability-support-workers
To find aged care services, please visit www.careseekers.com.au/services/aged-care-workers
To become a care or support worker, please visit www.careseekers.com.au/carer
To make a referral, please visit https://www.careseekers.com.au/referrals
