Paul Guest and his family stayed at the newly-opened respite house in Dromana owned and operated by Focus. Careworkers were included in a tailored package designed to help Paul's family manage their 3 young children, all with an Autism Spectrum Disorder or developmental delay and have a decent, carer's break.
Paul has offered Carerslink a father's view on the holiday.
Holiday in Dromana.
With a certain amount of trepidation, we packed the kids, toys and despite a concerted effort on my behalf to leave it home, the kitchen sink.
The house makes a great first impression. Relaxing, polished and everything new with a modern, cottage feel. Plenty of airconditioning and heating, laundry and a clawfoot bath. Of particular interest to me was that a kitchen sink was included as well as the absolute essentials of tea-towels, salt and pepper, dishwashing detergent and laundry essentials.
They even have a TV in the bedroom! We have a TV in the bedroom at home, primarily a shrine to the pre-kid phase of our life together - 'la-de-da land' as we call it now. It only rarely gets used now as we are too exhausted, usually spending nights on paperwork and research that we dont get time for during the day.
Now I am of the school that believes a remote should control every imaginable device and come with a saddle and a key-ignition start. This is particularly so on holidays where life's small luxuries should always be exxagerated.
Remotes are important. It is a little known fact that TV-remotes played a part in many of the more recent Olympics as a crude sex-test to weed out female athletes that took steroid abuse to the point of nudging 'alpha-male'. Any suspected gender frauds were placed in front of a coffee table with a remote control and a trashy magazine. Let's just say that instincts were left to play its part in what happened next.
Whilst Focus did indeed provide a TV in the bedroom, a victory for all mankind, it was in fact not a wall-mounted 104cm plasma/LCD; a minimum standard for the purist. However, an upstairs parent retreat with leather lounge, TV and DVD player is a more than fair compromise to such lofty standards.
The beach at Dromana is crystal clear and free of the seaweed and sandbars of Rosebud and Rye. The Dromana and Safety Beach area used to be known as Shark Bay when I was a kid although most of the sharks have now moved ashore and have set themselves up as real estate agents.
The house is located a few minutes walk from Dromana beach in a quiet relaxed street. Plenty of supermarkets, cafes and services are a short drive through the back streets to the township although we walked it a couple of times. There is a handy back-route to the freeway which offers a quick escape to the back beach, avoiding the Nepean Highway clog. Overall, Dromana is well located in the Peninsula. The traffic on the highway slows to a crawl at about Tootgarook, some 10 kms further into the peninsula so it is good to be able to move about freely on short trips. The freeway is only a minute away with on-ramps in either direction, Arthurs Seat, Red Hill and the Flinders peninsula is behind. The back beaches are easily reached via a handy back-route and the lure of Sorrento and Portsea shopping is uncomfortably out of easy reach. That will doubtless keep impulse shopping to a minimum.
Now 'me-time' in our house usually comes with plenty of strings attached as these precious moments usually come at the expense of Nadia or myself being left alone to manage the mayhem. Regardless of that, we wanted to have a holiday with our kids. The trick is that not a day goes by in our family where we don't reach breaking point with our children (think Krakatoa). Unfortunately, with special needs and special diets for the three, time with one child often comes at the expense of quality time with another. Time for Nadia and I together, without the children is something we have archived into storage. A holiday for us is not about a location, no matter how dreamy. It is a state of mind. It's about good management of our situation. It's normality. Without it, we're just taking our grief to a different location. It happens all the time when we arrive at a friend's house for a get together and wish we hadn't left home when Krakatoa erupts. When it doesn't erupt it is usually as a result of our working overtime to manage the 'risk' and as such we don't get to relax anyway.
What is perfect however is the concept of the 'extra' parent. Now as a bloke, this immediately conjures thoughts of multiple wives... enough to raise the hairs on the back of one's neck. Just the thought of the credit card bill would be enough but add 300 more shoes and handbags, the TV permanently fixed on the soap channel, a nag-fest interchange bench, a shower that is never available, too many salads and tupperware as far as the eye can see and perhaps you can see my point. Fortunately, I am not talking about bigamy, polygamy or another other 'amys that might exist in, say, Utah. I am talking about about responsible, very experienced, pro-active help - the type that Focus provide in the form of what I call Beach Sirens (I don't mean the type that wails from a plane upon a shark sighting on the peninsula).
I mean sirens. Think Homer's Odyssey. These care-workers are the appointed 'tag' in the tag-team wrestling event that occurs regularly with us. Just when you think the kids are about to pin your shoulders, count to three and then continue unhindered in their quest to destroy the fragile remnants of sanity we have left, along comes the help. Tag! They're in and we're out.
The provision of carers into the mix is the x-factor that makes the whole thing work for us. We were fortunate enough to have a generous family donate 55 hours of carers over the course of the week which we scheduled according to a plan designed to firstly ease the kids into the concept and ultimately leave the kids alone with 2 carers. We scheduled time alone for shopping, dinner, swimming and further time for one of the carers to help me take the boys swimming whilst Nadia took Siena shopping.
We eased our siren/s into the concept of our children with a trip to the beach park near the Dromana pier. Things were moving well enough until Nadia (my wife) decided to do some shopping. Insert Krakatoa. After Renee (our carer) helped me into the car with 2 of the three (Lachlan & Siena) screaming with legs kicking and arms flailing, few would have turned a blind eye if I offered Lachlan to the Rosebud Circus as an attraction. Parents could pay to see him in action and leave feeling like their own children by comparison were sent from the heavens.
Tempting as this thought was, I decided to persevere. After the park episode, no-one would have blamed our Siren from taking the rest of the week as a sickie. But in fact, things improved remarkably from there to the extent that even Siena was under control.
Siena is 2 years old, carries a big bat and knows how to use it.
A few remarkable things happened during the week.
1. The first time we left all three kids with the two carers, we sniggered at the thought of the poor Sirens being left alone with our children, watching the clock, helpless to their tantrums and antics and begging for our return. So imagine our shock when we returned to find that all went swimmingly well. It turns out that Siena and Lachlan, who usually share a mutual distrust and jealousy which invariably ends in Scenes from a Park, in fact didn't even register on the Richter Scale. It turns out that only the prescence of their parents will invoke the evil spirits in our children. Go figure! All we have to do is move out and replace ourselves, for the sake of our kids' mental health.
2. Nadia and I found ourselves without the kids on a beach walking hand in hand at Gunnamatta. This hadn't happened for so long that it was a bit like I was with an entirely different woman in an illicit rendezvous, except that it had the blessing of my wife. A turmoil of guilt, exhilaration and safety all rolled up into one. Suggestions of role-playing a certain Bolle advertisment as the surf was crashing in were quickly shelved upon realising that it was in fact my wife's hand I was holding after all and we were surrounded by dozens of little tackers with boogie boards. Innocence would be lost in a flash. The moment lost, we headed for the safety of the yellow flags at Gunnamatta for a dip.
3. At one stage I managed to actually fall asleep on the floor upstairs, without interruption, in front of the cricket on the TV, snoring and without an elbow from the missus. Other than that whole plasma thing, life doesn't get much better.
4. Our kids managed to change part of their restricted diet and inhibitions about the beach and waves were washed away (except Siena who wouldnt ruin a perfectly good hair day with a dip). There is something about a seachange that can sometimes change a mindset.
So there. The secret is out and I haven't even mentioned the deal. The house is available for $700 a week. to put that in perspective, last year we paid $1700 for a week in Philip Island that wasnt a pinch on what we had here. On top of that the care-workers are very reasonably priced and are, of course, optional. Focus will also rent the house for weekends during the off-peak season. There is so much to do down the peninsula that we have booked another week during the year just for a break.
The trick as to why this place works is the people. Your landlord is a charity that is in the business of caring and as such understands what we carers need and then they go about doing it. That's their investment and a good week for carer/s and a family is their return. Through the course of the week we were contacted by the Focus management who ensure that if we required any flexibility in the workers, any further help or advice then they were there for us.
If the measure of a good holiday is when you spend idle moments trying to figure out how we can all move in permanently, when the kids are still talking of the carers weeks later, when you arrive home and have forgotten nearly everything you left behind, when you spend the next month walking barefoot (both at home and just for a walk down to the shops), then this family had a good holiday.
Thanks Focus.
For Enquiries contact Nina Tindley at Focus.
Ph :03 5987 0988
Web :www.focuslife.com.au
Email :nina@focuslife.com.au